Category: Random Thoughts

  • Burning out

    I seem to have lost any inclination to want to share my thoughts and instead have been preoccupied with sharing photos recently. I even changed my theme to place more emphasis on the pictures, but I know the new theme probably won’t last. My constant search for a theme that reflects what I want to present my digital world as is a reflection of the changing moods I go through constantly in my efforts to find my sweet spot in life.

    It still eludes me. Very little is comforting, and I choke on my food far too often. Yet another indication of my impatience with life. I’m constantly agitated as if I need to be somewhere else doing something else even though the present moment is not always unpleasant. I’m afraid of getting settled in this single life that I’ve established for me. Only me. No one else plays in this space. Just me. But it seems like me is not enough so far, but I’m resisting the temptation to seek a companion because of this dis-ease that I feel. 

    I need to slow my thoughts down to a sprint. Right now they’re racing ahead at blistering speeds that rarely allows any of them to be fully formed before being replaced with another thought, not always from the same train either. Perhaps my focus on photography will encourage such a slowing of my pace. Maybe I’ll pause for long enough to absorb what beauty abounds, instead of always analysing, critiquing, and interpreting. I need to slow down. I’m burning out. 

  • We’re Strange

    There are no guarantees in death, except the end of life. So don’t plan on achieving peace, comfort, closure or anything else, because none of it is a given. However, life holds certainty, even though we don’t always interpret its certainty correctly. But the natural order that is established, and the laws of cause and effect that apply, will always apply, every single time. And the only thing we can control in all of this is how we respond to what we encounter along the way. 

    We can’t cause anyone else to act a certain way or feel a certain feeling any more than we are able to influence them. And we can’t influence them unless they deem us significant in the context of their lives. But just like how we apportion such significance to those that we choose or want to be significant in our lives, the same applies in reverse, but yet we fail to realise this simple truth, which is why we constantly strive to acquire the heart of some that may only have a fleeting affection for us, but in fact holds us as insignificant in the bigger scheme of their lives. 

    We erroneously believe that we get what we deserve. We don’t. We never will. This world is created for respite, not justice. It is created as an opportunity for us to perfect our own humanity, not to impose our sense of humanity onto others. We may polarise towards like-minded beings and in that be further deluded into believing that what we’re surrounded with is in fact a reflection of the world that is beyond our reach. It’s not. Our world is what we make of it. Our perceptions and expectations are products of our fears and aspirations, rarely with a healthy dose of reality. 

    We’re too afraid to be alone, that’s why we recoil at the thought of being different. Even in our differences we seek affirmation. Even when we don’t expect acceptance or adoption, we need to be acknowledged to be of some value in our being different. But when that is withheld, we assume that we’re defective and therefore inconsequential and insignificant, when in fact we quite possibly may have achieved what we’ve been striving for and dreaming about all our lives. We’re unique. But we only want to be unique if we’re unique like everyone else. 

    And then we die, hardly having lived at all, but affirmed in our mediocrity, and celebrated in our conformance, but rarely appreciated for our individuality. But we lack an appreciation of our self, and are still surprised at not being appreciated by others. We’re a strange bunch, aren’t we?

  • I’m tired. And on days like this, I feel like I’ve lived a life that’s wasted. I feel an emptiness and a void when I see posts of pain and anguish from people I admire or like (for various reasons) and I’m incapable of responding in a way to alleviate their pain, or at least give them a reason to smile.

    I’ve always wanted to be the silver lining for someone, but people usually expect sunshine without any rain. I don’t know anyone that is capable of that. Some may pretend better than others, but we all have our darkness that we’re contending with. Some darker than others. 

    I trust more easily those that expose those struggles of theirs, rather than those that live a life of pretend so that they can maintain a facade of strength and composure. If we lie about our life, how can we be trusted about anything else?

  • New Year, Same Life

    Tomorrow is just another Sunday that follows a Saturday, the same way it has since the day I was born. And I believe it’s been happening for a long time before that as well. Whether I call it the 1st of January, or the 29th of February, it will still be the day that follows Saturday and precedes Monday…like it has all my life.

    The jaded one in me finds it difficult to attach any significance to this, the same way I find it difficult to attach any significance to a birthday. And it seems the pragmatist in me agrees. We start dying the moment we take our first breath, and we start living the moment we realise that we’re dying. And in between, we take it all for granted and feel like martyrs or victims the moment we’re faced with a challenge.

    New Year’s day is up there with Valentine’s Day, Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, and every other stupid capitalistic bullshit event that was ever coined to give us a false sense of comfort that we’re celebrating life through these events when in fact we’re simply celebrating events and forget that life is being neglected in between, because we’re conditioned to limit our celebrations only to those days deemed worthy of celebration, and we take for granted the rest of the moments that occur at times that have not been deemed significant by the great ones. 

    Fuck occasions. Celebrate life. It’s a whole lot more rewarding, and cheaper!

  • The Fruit of Betrayal

    Betrayal seems to be at the heart of 95% of all cases of mental ‘illness’. When I reflect on my life, especially the low points in my life, betrayal in some form or another was the driving force behind me not wanting to go on. But this betrayal was not always blatant, nor was it always a result of a romantic relationship. 

    Being betrayed by someone you love as a soul mate or companion in life just simply makes you want to kill, or die, or kill first and then die! But so often we seek affirmation from our partners to make up for the insecurities established in ourselves through interactions with a much broader audience of significant others, that I believe betrayal by a lover or partner is so much more hurtful and destructive, because we expose our fragility that much more. 

    But more often than not, the betrayal that is likely to set the wheels in motion for a healthy dose of mental ‘illness’ is experienced much earlier in life. Sometimes, I believe, it’s as early as when we’re still toddlers just growing into our conscious states. I often test my rationale around this by observing babies because that is the most innocent and sincere state any person can ever be in. They act purely out of instinct and respond entirely based on their inherent nature without having been tainted by life yet. While they may be selective about who they allow to cuddle them and comfort them, they nonetheless respond to those affections without restraint. But when they are shunned in deliberate ways by the care givers that they naturally expect such affection from, it starts building the sub-conscious processes required to protect themselves from such harshness which eventually manifests as defence mechanisms or survival instincts. The more the pattern is maintained throughout childhood and into adolescence, the more deeply ingrained this sense of emotional starvation becomes. 

    I think that the earlier in life that these experiences occur, the greater the chances are for teenagers and adults to be diagnosed with mental illnesses that seemingly have no direct correlation to their life’s experiences. For this reason, I believe that reflection and honest, sincere introspection is the greatest weapon we can employ in avoiding such a pitfall. But society seems to enforce the idea that unless you’re affirmed by others, you’re wrong or worthless. So in this process of reflection, we judge ourselves based on our perception of what is or is not appreciated by others and use that as a benchmark against which to determine our self-worth. 

    (Just some random thoughts I needed to write down)

  • Thoughts on Tumblr

    In many cases, but definitely not all, Tumblr gives me a view into what really rests within a person’s heart without distracting me with societal prejudices. I’ve often been pleasantly surprised to read the thoughts and passions expressed by bloggers, forming a mental image of them, and then stumbling across a photo in their archives that reveals how stereotypical my assessment of them really was. Not negatively so. Just a few innocently incorrect assumptions. 

    Some people tend to use their Tumblr blogs to form an alternate reality for themselves, while others use it to expose a side that they’d dare not expose to anyone in real life. Yet others seem to use it to engage in a way that would otherwise not be possible because a lot of what is shared and discussed on Tumblr would probably raise more than just a curious eyebrow in real life. I think I fall largely in this group.

    There is pretty much no one in real life that I can engage with about a lot of what I share on my blog without them thinking me to be strange, superficial, pretentious, or worse. But my true joy in blogging was realised when I finally accepted that seeking affirmation for every post I wrote was not what I wanted from this. That was the most liberating realisation for me because up to that point, I realised that Tumblr was turning me into an attention whore. So more recently, my blog has become a more true reflection of me, rather than what I want others to perceive of me. 

  • Insomnia

    A few years ago I struggled with insomnia in horrid ways. There were times when I would lie awake in bed staring at the ceiling until 03h00 with nothing and a million things rushing through my head at the same time. Eventually, I’d get out of bed, drive around all the scary neighbourhoods in the middle of the night, since I’d never attempt that during daylight hours or in the early part of the night, and eventually return home at about 05h30 to crash in bed around 06h00, only to wake again at 06h30 to get ready for work.

    This cycle went on for weeks at a time, if not months. The only thing that occasionally helped me at first was warm milk loaded with honey and ginger as a night cap. More recently, chamomile tea helped as well. But I found with chamomile tea I would wake up feeling heavy-limbed and groggy. Quite possibly because I still went to bed too late. 

    But the most effective of all was the tongue exercise that I discovered somewhere along the troubled path. I realised that each time my mind was racing, or I was distracted, my jaw would normally be clenched and my tongue would be pressed against the back of my teeth. This happened even when I was laying in bed trying to sleep. Eventually I would focus on just relaxing my jaw and my tongue, and without realising it, I would quite quickly drift off to sleep. Peacefully as well. 

    The theory in my head goes something like this. Our bodies seem to be naturally inclined to want to express our emotional or intellectual state. Hence some people gesturing unconsciously whilst deep in thought, or others having conversations with themselves, etc. So I figured that instead of trying to clear my thoughts when my mind was cluttered, I should rather focus on relaxing that part of my body that was reacting to the racing thoughts – my tongue. By focusing on relaxing my tongue, in fact not even focusing on it, but rather just allowing it to relax, my thoughts cleared and my mind was able to switch off for long enough to fall asleep. 

    It’s served me well ever since. 

  • Random Thoughts

    I read an interesting post this evening about many interesting things…what struck me the most about it was the references to random events or occurrences, and also the basis of scientific theories as opposed to the use of the word ‘theory’ as a colloquial term. So I started wondering about randomness and if it really does exist…I mean, can something really be random in the true sense of the word, or do we just use the term ‘random’ to describe something that either has no discernible pattern, or just isn’t important enough for us to want to figure out the order that exists within it?

    I think it’s both, and I also think that in its truest form, randomness does not exist. If it did, it would mean that the laws of cause and effect are fluid and not fixed. So I think that everything has a predictable and fixed pattern, but when the variables are either unknown, or too numerous to compute, we refer to it as random. 

    Another random thought I had was about evolution, origins of creation and all that interesting stuff that I seem to get myself caught debating so often recently. Just like evolution is a scientific theory, and if I understood the post correctly, it would appear to be a significantly misunderstood theory as well. I could then also through a similar approach theorise that my view on creationism is in fact as scientifically grounded as evolutionary theory. For me, within the context of creationism, it is entirely logical to believe that all the species in their current form were created that way with the similarities and differences exactly as it is in order to be a model for us to realise how minor differences in parameters of creation can cause such significant differences in existence and being. 

    This makes more sense in my head than it does in words…so I’ll stop before I get a headache…