I caught the front end of Oprah last night. She was discussing how to become happy in life. I lasted 10 minutes into it…. mainly because I wanted to see these too-tight-pants she was telling us not look at (I am Reverse Psychology’s bitch). By the time she got to Law Of Attraction happiness, I was done and started another book about some story of suffering in some third world country.
Her latest expert/ new best friend was explaining that happiness comes from such practices as surrounding yourself with happy people and happy energies. Or from realising what you have…. get perspective and all of that. I didn’t find out the other eight steps - I am the arch enemy of Pop Psychology.
There is an amount of truth to decorating your world in positive affirming complimentary energies. Even to maintaining a degree of perspective. But if you are hurt, do not shirk it off with “there are people starving or dying” or crap like that. Those same people have emotions, have been rejected in love, ache because of a lost friend. Allow your emotions some value too.
I also find, it is the people who are so desperate to believe in pop psychology & bulleted steps to a happier life who are those people who are so scared of facing their real woes. They want to focus on ticking the boxes as it is a way to keep running. Hide behind the equation rather than really aim for the true happiness which people harp on about.
No amount of happy mates or working in townships is going to dissolve your shite. The only way to purge yourself of it, is to face it. To spend silly amounts of time, money, strength on understanding you will not die from the pain and realisations it causes. Yes, it is going to shake your world up completely, change various things you used to (healthily or unhealthily) rely on to live, and make your heart, your head, your body, your very fucking emotional soul ache.
It is all about walking into the abyss, with only hope that you are meant to be on the other side, and that the other side is a whole lot prettier. Bluddy hell… my other side had best outdo even those little Garden of Eden fables!
Hard work, determination, courage is what will lead you to happiness. Not Cosmo’s Ten Steps or Oprah’s Secret Recipe. Sometimes, things in one’s life should not just be gotten over and moved on from. But fucking faced up to and bitched slapped about.
It’s like losing ten kilos, for good. Crash diets won’t work. They’ll just exhaust you. To lose the weight you have to climb onto some dumb gym apparatus, you have to rework your diet, and more than likely, you’ll have to dramatically cut down on some vice you love.
I continue to retrieve that dumb persistent physical and emotional flab. But I persist in working it back off. I cry I shout I walk I talk I fight I laugh I remould I question I love I forgive I forsake I let go of I booze I starve I apologise I binge I run I yoga it out I breathe I just lie there I push away I suck and lick I make no sense I beg for support I do not care and I ache so desperately I feel myself collapse in the middle of the Pick n Pay Fresh Fruit section, yet to all other patrons I seem just A-OK.
I have seen my abyss. I am nowhere certain if I am near through it. But last night I watched a programme (House) that for the past few years would have hit my soul & my repressed issues so hard, probably thrown me off balance for a few days, maybe had me sobbing to myself far into the night, but now it just saddens and passes through me. Because that was my past. That was my shite. So I will always feel it. But I won’t be knocked off course by it. In the past, I would desperately have watched this episode of Oprah, begging her for the answer to heal it all, but last night I turned it off and did something else.
7 comments:
Champers,
I agree with your take on a all this pop psych. If you don't internalise any issue, deal with the origins of it and work through it - make it work in your own way and environment you are not gonna be helped by any secret; 7 spiritual rules, ; Oprah or Dr. Phil episode.
If you want a check listn buy Cosmo or something akin to it.
At least when you've had enough of the "How to's" and checklist you can go to the crossword puzzle of page 78.
So apparently you've seen your abyss, but how many others have you been showing your abyss to lately??
We all think we KNOW what it is that should make us happy, and we try to live by it, but the reality is not that simple. You're right - you simply cannot disconnect yourself from what you're really feeling and going through. Also - I believe that without our sadness, or difficulties, the good things and happiness would see thoroughly trivial. All these things have a place, and to deny it is to lead yourself into a bland existence.
I say laugh, love, hurt, cry, scream...
Now where's that happy pill...
"Whomever goes to fight monsters should take care not to become a monster. If you stare into the abyss long enough, the abyss stares back at you"
I dont watch Oprah, but maybe the gist was not ot surround yourself with negative energy vampires - people who have the means to get over it or deal with it but somehow prefer the drama of misery.
Hi Highs!
It does take quite a bit of courage/ rock-bottom bouncing to actually realise you are doing your best to avoid something(s), then to acknowledge it has control over, and then actually to face & smack it around into submission.
Hey, maybe it is if you are obsessed with the glossy mags' quizzes or sobbing over random superficial tv programmes, it's time to look at WHY.
Rev - You still trying to work out if some lesbo saw me spread eagled this past Sunday? :) or rather :P
There are crossword puzzles at the back of Cosmo? Damn, here I've only ever thought it was the sealed sex section. Excuse me...
Jam - You think you know what would make you happy? Really? I ain't even that far in or out of this to know. I think right now I am just learning what actually does not make me happy and/or does make me sad.
Kyk - that's why I rather walked into it, I am no good at staring contests!
Trigger - Hello World Traveller!
The programme didn't look like it was going that indepth, but that's another issue. True that one must be careful about this aspect. To keep on with my analogy, perhaps these people are those skirting the abyss, who never actually step into it, who are too scared and too content in their misery to actually face their "stuff", and who need to keep you on the original side so to justify their own fear & inaction.
It is a tough one to know. But nowadays I judge this by - my mates should be those people looking out for me long term, by looking UP for me, waiting for me to get out of my own abyss, who remind me that they can't help me through it but they can be around in some capacity & that they are so impressed/ happy that I am enduring it to the end, reminding me of my progress rather than saying "enough is enough" OR pushing me back down when I reach a milestone.
(Hope I am making sense in this train of thought typing!)
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