Science doesn’t know the answer to this question. None of us do. There are some ideas and some speculations but no proof. I was thinking about that when I wrote this.
Time
Time
You move
Forward ever
Nothing the same
Ever forward
Time
Pulling me
Inexorably
Toward an end
For me
Time stops
I wonder
If
Time itself
Ever ends
For those of us who struggle with mental health issues it is easy to look down on ourselves. We have the idea that we are not as good as others. Unfortunately, for some, this is what we have been told.
This is so far from the truth. Some of the most famous and inspirational people suffered things that would be categorized as a mental health issue today. Below is a list of some of these people and an estimate of their problem.
We may not consider ourselves to fit into this list but it is obvious that we all have something to offer to the world. Never put yourself down. Know that you have gifts that are needed. Ignore those who want to put labels on you and just keep going.
I have this quote hanging where I can see it when at my desk. It is so powerful. There is always so much that we don’t or can’t understand and we can chew on it over and over. Rilke says that we have to let it go and gradually we will be able to live into the answers.
If we persist chewing on them we can’t move forward. We have to LIVE today. We can’t be obsessing over things we don’t understand. Let it go.
The small things matter. Many times we look at the “plan” or the “big Picture” and forget that there are many steps to get there. Then we get discouraged when it takes time to come to fruition.
Nothing is accomplished without the small steps. Nothing gets done without us putting in the work. To get an education we have to study, to learn a skill we have to practise. Nothing worthwhile is done without work.
The small steps get us there.
Life can be pretty scary. The news tells us nothing good. There is anger and violence everywhere. That may explain why so many of us have anxiety. Maybe to be anxious is the right response to what is going on around us. Lately I have heard nothing but bad news. People I care about are sick and quite a few have very rare problems. Is this because we have too many people on the earth or because the earth is tired of us and wants to shake us off? Too much to think about.
The trouble with anxiety is that is grows exponentially. It starts small and you can get past it and then it begins growing like a virus and you find that it has taken over. You are no longer living life but just existing. There has to be a way beyond this. It’s understandable that any help has to be started long before the problem arises. If not it’s not strong enough to push the anxiety down. The trouble is when everything is ok we tend to ignore the fact that something has to be done beforehand. Again, we come back to persistence and determination. Just putting one foot in front of the other. We have to keep moving forward.
Hope. Not a tangible things but real none the less. Hope can transform us. Help us to live each day. I think that’s why Emily Dickinson called it “the thing with feathers.” It can make us fly.
I know that some times there doesn’t seem to be any hope but I wonder if it has to do with what we hope for. As a nurse I have seen patients who don’t have a chance to survive what they are going through. No hope as they or family can see and hope for life is not there. There may be a different kind of hope. Hope that we find in the programs from Hospice. Hope that death can be better than the alternative.
I don’t know how I got so deep into this topic but I have seen those for whom death would be a blessing. It’s not the plan any of us want but some day it will come. I “hope” that when it does we can find acceptance, love and a peaceful end.
Life can be challenging. Sometimes things become overwhelming and we feel as if we are drowning. The feeling that one more thing will put you over the edge is awful. When that happens we have to use any tools we have in our tool box to bring us back from the edge. Many ideas have been brought up in the blogs on Word Press and I have tried many of them. Some work and some don’t. The good news is that we can try different things and see what works for us.
My granddaughter says that every school should teach Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. She says that all children need to learn the skills that are taught in that program. I suspect she is right. There are so many issues cropping up with children today that we have to change something.
I feel that I was lucky to have learned many coping skills from my mother but I am not sure that many people have that advantage today. We are such a society of quick fix that we don’t learn to cope with anything. One of the doctors that I worked for said that what people want is to come to a drive-in window and have the doctor reach out and say “heal” and it will be done.
Coping is learned when faced with real life. If we think that nothing should ever go wrong we are much mistaken. I worry about people who have never faced up to a major problems as they have not learned how to cope.
Next week I have signed up for two tasks at the Mediation Center. One is a Community Conference with two children involved and the other is a standard mediation. The Community Conferences (I’ll call them CC) are hard. It is so sad to work with these teens and hope to get them to see there are better ways to deal with conflict that violence. In some ways I am not looking forward to it. I will keep on doing them for now and may have to evaluate if it is for me.
The other mediation is simple and sometimes it can be too simple but there is not stress involved. It is hard to weigh them against each other. I will just keep on for now and see how this goes.
Matthew Fox writes:
The crises we find ourselves in as a species require that as a species we shake up all our institutions—including our religious ones—and reinvent them. Change is necessary for our survival, and we often turn to the mystics at critical times like this. Jung said: “Only the mystics bring creativity into religion.” [1] Jesus was a mystic shaking up his religion and the Roman empire; Buddha was a mystic who shook up the prevailing Hinduism of his day; Gandhi was a mystic shaking up Hinduism and challenging the British Empire; and Martin Luther King, Jr. shook up his tradition and America’s segregationist society. The mystics walk their talk and talk (often in memorable poetic phraseology) their walk. [2]
Fox wrote this a while ago but it is right on target. We do have to change. People are complaining about church. They say it is not relevant. They say the members are hypocrites. We have lost some idea of what it is all about. We need to look again with fresh eyes at the gospel. We need to think clearly about Jesus’s words and what he did. We need to reinvent ourselves and renew what it is all about.
I have three children. They are all in their 50’s now and that is hard to believe. They were born 3 years apart making the oldest 6 years older than the youngest. When they were about 10, 13 and 16 there was fun conversation going on at dinner one night. The kids were taking about each other’s mistakes…the older two pointing fingers at each other debating who had made the worst mistakes.
Somewhere during the conversation the two of them realized that they had not said anything about the youngest…..and they couldn’t think of anything to say about her. One of them, frustrated that they couldn’t point at her asked: “Why don’t you make many mistakes?”
She responded: “I watch what the two of you do and don’t make the same mistakes.” An amazing piece of wisdom from a 10 year old. We could all learn from her.
Too often we can’t see the wisdom of learning from the mistakes of others. If we did the world would be a better place. That is what history teaches us if we are willing to pay attention. Don’t make the same mistakes with the same outcome. Learn from the past and from the mistakes of others.
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