No, Trust Me, It's a Good Thing.

[naamah_darling]

I should be sleeping. Right? Sleeping? Isn't that what people do when it's 4:30 a.m. and they have shit to do the next day like, oh, give blood and see friends and do art show stuff and paint and write and buy flea treatment for the mammals and feed snakes and . . . and . . . and

Comments

[topknot]

Interesting book from what I've heard.

I scored 10 out of 25 (or however many). I'm almost miffed as I considered myself pretty sensitive.

Hmmm.

[naamah_darling]

Might be worth looking at anyway; if you only have a few of the traits, but they are super-strong, you could very well be sensitive anyway. Sargon scored lower than me (I had all but two, he had about half) but he's still firmly in sensitive territory.

[jadziabryn]

You always put things much better than I can, but I must say I agree with your feelings on aging and dying. I'm not afraid of dying, and as you said, am not "one of those people who wishes life on others." But I am afraid of losing control of my own body and soul. I used to work as a house keeper, and one of our clients was a small nursing home. The memories of that place still haunt me.

My grandmother was confined to a hospital bed, on morphine, unhappy and barely functioning for a good long while. She'd told me over a year before she got so bad, that she just wanted to die and see her husband again. When my mother called to tell me she'd passed... I said I was glad. Because I was! It's what she WANTED and she was finally pain free. My mother was floored.

I'm still not sure why she was so shocked. It's what grandma WANTED! I mean yes, sad that she's gone, but... so relieved that the agony was over. Well, maybe I'm just nuts.

[jadziabryn]

Oh! And of course just to babble more, THANK YOU for the book recommendation! Sounds like something that could help me quite a bit. A little scared at what I scored on that test, too...

[naamah_darling]

Hell, I took it and scared myself. It's more of a celebratory thing, really. You're a sensitive? Congratulations, you're gifted. Yes, life is tough for sensitive people, but we arguably get a lot more out of it.

[naamah_darling]

Yeah, the relief thing really stuns a lot of people. I try not to make it too up-front, but it's almost impossible, when there's been so much suffering, not to have a totally obvious loss of tension at moments like that. I don't know how people can be ignorant of suffering, and not weigh it in the balance against the good of life. And I say this as someone profoundly afraid of death.

[rev_jo]

i tottered on the atheist edge for a while, so i know how you feel..
now, i'm agnostic..i believe that there's a god/higher power..whatever..i just don't think you can describe god..our 3rd-dimensional meat-puppet minds can't grasp something like that...hence, the "old-man-with-a-beard" schtick..

faith is something that you can't prove at all...how can you describe or prove a feeling? just go with whatever feels right to you..

[naamah_darling]

I still love that icon.

I try to be open to the idea of Something, because it gives me peace, and there are days when it's not so tough. And then there are days where it's hard and scary and unpleasant, and I just have to put my faith in the fact that whatever is happening, and whatever's real, I can learn from it.

Not always comforting, but it's something, at least.

[rev_jo]

i've never bought into the whole 'man behind the curtain, pulling strings' idea of god..i don't think our universe is consciously controlled in any way...what would be the point of it?
personally, i've always looked at our time in our flesh-buckets to be school..if our 'souls' are indeed eternal, i don't think you would learn much from bouncing around in the ether..and, based on reincarnation, we keep coming back to learn new things...
the core of my belief on why we're here, is that as we go along and learn and grow and evolve, so does god...

[trouble841]

I've also read the Highly Sensitive Person, and purchased the accompanying workbook - do you have it as well?

The workbook has some pretty fascinating exercises in it.

[naamah_darling]

No, but it's on my list to get, now. Thank goodness someone is writing this stuff. Wow.

[nodrogg]

We are, we in the West, at an awkward stage. We've learned how to prevent death as and when it usually occurred... but we haven't learned how to maintain the result. Old age should be a treatable condition, just like tuberculosis. In centuries to come, conditions like your grandfather's will be as horrifying to recall as the Elizabethan attitudes on personal cleanliness. [One bath in the winter and two in the summer, at most - and clothes were quite simply never washed. They'd shrink, ruin the seams, and the colors often weren't fast.] People never brushed their teeth, what a bizarre idea - it was taken for granted that by thirty you had a mouthful of black rotting stumps. [Imagine people's breath.]
Unfortunately, the advanced treatments to cleanse the buildup of physiological age and keep you twenty-five forever - to "brush your years" - are not yet available. So it's the worst of both worlds: No, dying at thirty-five isn't jolly - but neither is what you describe.

[naamah_darling]

Yeah, it's a Catch-22. The only answer right now is for each individual to make the effort to control what happens to them. In cases of dementia, obviously, this cannot happen. :/

I'm glad I live now and not then, but I think I'd be happier still in the future.

[nodrogg]

Yah, me too. The analogy to dental care is really rather apt - the prevention of deterioration - and right now, we're in the stage you'd be, back then. In an age that knows not toothbrushes, flossing or toothpaste, where the only dentistry is yank - you'd have to be extremely careful of what you ate. Nothing too acidic or sweet, preferring any kind of fine-milled bread or whatever that would naturally clean the teeth without scouring them, &c., &c. [The teeth of Egyptian mummies are the best clue to their age at death, because the breads they ate were literally stone ground, and the grains of stone left in the bread wore down their teeth.]
The analogy to today's anti-oxidants and lo-carb this and sugar-free that are striking. Just so, you'd only be somewhat delaying the inevitable, because the actual dental hygiene and dentistry technology you need to keep your teeth throughout your life, as most people do today, still wouldn't be there. You would eventually start losing your teeth nonetheless
This, too, is the very case today:

[naamah_darling]

I'd be happy with the same number of years as anyone else -- 70 or so -- as long as I knew I'd be healthy for most of that time. I realize that as it is, I'm already blessed or lucky to be as healthy as I am right now. The fact that over the past few years I have enjoyed excellent health (game leg and bum thyroid aside, those couldn't be helped) makes me alternately hope that I will remain healthy and fear that my luck will run out.