Reflection @ MindSay

Why is it so hard to keep a sense of humor? Why do we always seem to seek out evil motives behind our spouses, friends and partners behaviors? Is the behavior in question generally of evil intent? Or do we try so hard to protect ourselves that we project negative intentions on our spouses, friends and partners?

 

If one is healthy enough, would one not practice this personality trait of relationship destruction?

 

Insight please.

I looked at a poster at work today which said "self-search now, or soul-search later". And I remember whenever I did something "bad" as a child I was sent upstairs to my room to think about what I did. Indeed part of the punishment in prison is supposed to be self-reflection in the absence of anything else to do for a long time.
Maybe it's because self-reflection and soulsearching changes things?

Or that it might be depressing to accuse ourselves and think of worst case scenarios.
Afterall, bad people who are happy don't tend to think too much inwardly, because they wouldn't stay bad for long if they did.

Infact people even discourage over-thinking, I think there is a fear that they don't know how to get out of the psychological holes they dig for themselves. Also if someone relies on a mindstate to cope they might not like the idea of challenging it themselves. I think though there's no such thing as getting stuch in a deep dark hole to nowhere - it's actually a tunnel to a much more peaceful state of mind that we never could have imagined before, with non going back - infact not being able to imagine it I think is why we might lose hope of it being there

i should be thinking of sleeping and swim team,

and psychology homework and spanish recitation,

but for some reason my mind is just wandering...

 

i'm painting my nails beige. yeah, no joke. beige.

how refined is that?! back in the day, it was my

goal to forever wear the custom made, "sandestiny"

or my favorite dark purple called, "the night after."

oh how those were the days.

 

i feel like i'm boring now.

 

i wake up around 5:30 (if i'm really good), swim

or lift weights. i spend my mornings at school, my

lunches undwinding, and my afternoons working. my

evenings are all about homework and/or avoiding

it. that repeats itself 5 times. and then the weekends

are weak attempts at sleeping in, followed by a jog

maybe and some more avoiding of homework. then

there's sunday swim team. sometimes i go get ice

cream with the fam. i try to hit the home football

games, but in the end i opt to stay home because i

don't want to be stuck with some drunk college

students for the night.

 

see, i'm boring.

 

i used to have flavor. well, mild flavor. but in my

eyes, i rocked out. me and my bestie would sit

on the front porch and swap man stories, while

sipping the very unhealthy pepsi beverages we

obtained from jump start. we'd throw in mike

and ikes and hot tamales or chocolate covered

raisins. always something delicious. we'd drive

by people's houses and think of ways to pimp

them and/or their cars. but we never did. we'd

crank text our friends, laughing and giggling the

whole time.

 

i used to have parties. wild, crazy parties. well,

the only things we got high off of were mountain

dew and nerds. but they were awesome parties.

 

and then senior year rolled around. granted, i made

a lot of friends. but in the end, i witnessed a side

of myself and a side of the world that i didn't really

want to be a part of. i really hope people don't

think i'm reclusive or a snob... i just don't want to

lose myself again. to be lost in the craziness of

wordly vices is no fun. being lost period is no fun.

 

i found myself, er God showed himself to me and

is working through me. and i don't want to lose

that. i know that there's nothing i could ever do

that would make him stop loving me or stop

caring for me. but i really don't want to be so

out of touch again.

 

so, maybe boring is ok. maybe boring isn't really

boring. maybe it's sane, maybe it's contained, maybe

it's maybeline.

 

or maybe, maybe it's just me.

To what degree does man owe his life to another.  Perhaps, he owes nothing, and yet everything.  Man seeks to find wholeness is another's warmth and soul, yet he must find himself within his own souless stew. It is the torment of man to be able to gaze upon an object of beauty and vibrance without being able to touch it.  One touch could corrode nd destroy the object leaving it in disrepair.  A tangible movmenet toward the statue would leave texture on his fingers and memories of it in his mind.  The more we touch the more we corrode and connect with people and the world.  Is there any escape form the devastation of corrosion to the beauty and objects we adore?  Perhaps it is a common agreement or compromise between man and that which man finds to be worthy of such exploration beyond the visual.  If our eyes were cut outs our hearts would still yearn.  What we see is only the first embrace of enchantment leading to an unattachable love and understanidng of the memory of texture whcih the object has given to man.  To understand with such breath the breathless expression that man not only partakes in but adores is to see life and nature at work.  A tandem of respect and consequences, patience and virtue, will and desire, to gain by losing.  To never have had is the most man can ever hope to have for the absence of such pychological categories inthe mind leaves man in the contentment of ignorance.  That which we never know never knows us.  We can abstain and remain in the contentment of ignorance.  Safety of not knowing becomes our world of knowing only the known to us and ignoring the known to man.  It must be a leap of discontent and will to break out of such security and transcend to a place of utter uncertainty, fear, and yet beauty.  It is here that we find man wrestling with love and hate, frustration and confusion.  It is with empotional effect that we ignore the diffciult in place of seeking the simpleness of life.  Lost in the illusion of happiness we are only suppressing, and slowing, the corrosion we fear consuming us.  Happiness is but a state marked by spontaniety and in excusable actions that lash out against any prevailing law or norm in the name of assuming one's or announcing one's self to bree liberated in happiness as a pure intoxicating form of emotional exctasy.  We fool ourselves by following, not what we believe, but what others have conditioned us to understand as happiness.  I gaze up a statue which I cannot touch.  I see it in its beauty.  I see it from afar and let it be.  I stand apart but close just to see.  The things we love should not be confused with happiness.  Love brings happiness and hate, but happiness is a state all its own.

Antonio Garcia

Indiana University

It's been a quiet weekend, indeed.  Relatively solitary and peaceful, full of trail running, yoga, bike rides, church, reading, writing, work.  I asked myself around mile 11 of my trail run, as the 4 Non Blonds lyrics, "To get it all out, what's all in my head" coursed through my cerebral cortex, "What do I have to offer to the world?"  My perspective as a single female, age 29.5, living in California.   As a runner?  An Ivy-league graduate"  A single female with a salary and a mortgage?  As roller-coaster love life (currently at a nadir)?  I am the conglomeration of these entities, trying to do my best each day to be a good person, to be creative in my pursuits, to feed my passions and inspire others, to live and love as best I can while here on Earth.

I go to church sporadically - but I went today and came away with the intent to focus on the happiness not on myself and my tiny existence, but on God.  It is hypothesized that the reason for the 1000% increase in depression since the 1950's is due in large part to the lack of our society's sense of a greater power, a Lord God Almighty, or something like that.  I agree w/ this statement but I dare say the increase incidence of diagnosed depression is because the maker's of Prozac, Zoloft, Welbutrin, etc. make a pretty penny every time we get the blues and seek out a way to feel better.  Whereas before, silent suffering was the norm, these days you tell a doctor you're feeling down or tired or anxious or anti-social or confused or any other transient mood and you can walk out with a prescription of your preferred chemical cocktail. 

I'm not against anti-depressants, not at all.  I don't buy into the "comfortably numb" notion that Americans are numbing themselves through medications.  I think we enable ourselves to cope with life in many ways, medications just being one assure our neurotransmitters are up to the task of dealing with the challenges of life.   Sure, a supportive network of friends and family can help with this regulation as well - but for us loners living states away, with self-induced pressures to be and perform in a certain way, with busy schedules that are hardly conducive to bonding with friends, and without a regular sex life - well, sometimes a little extra seratonin or dopamine in one's system can be just enough to keep us functional and, for lack of a better word, something close to happy.

Anyway, where was I going with this?  Oh yes, my quiet weekend.  "Getting it all out, what's in my head."  I'll be 29.5 in exactly 18 days.  On the precipice of that age at which I used to think I'd be married, have a first kid.  But I'm no either of those things.  I've date more men in the last few years than I care to think about.  Why can't I make a long-term relationship work?  This is a big question for me as I'm relatively easy to get along with, reasonably attractive (my facebook friends rate me as #2 on the best body category), and I do fall in love with people.  I also happen to enjoy sex and men, supposedly dig this type of girl.  The last guy that broke up with me said I was "smart, kind, and very sexy"  but he also said i was "righteous" (i think he meant self-righteous) and "didn't feel comfortable thinking about a relationship".  I'll have to get back to you, my future readers, on what he meant by this - something about something that happened or that I did early on in our relationship (it involves another guy driving me to the airport instead of him.  Extremely juvenile, if you ask me).

So, 29.5.  I stand at the precipice - a strong, independent, attractive, athletic, smart single woman.  I am blessed beyond measure.  And all I want is a good, strong, smart, capable man to take me in his arms, adore me, and have a family with me. When I ask myself what I want, that's my only answer lately.  A family.  A man who loves me.  Why?  Because I feel that's what I've been put on earth to do - to raise a family, to love my children and my husband, to take care of them and to receive the joy that comes with giving and receiving love.

On my short bike ride home from yoga tonight, still sweaty, thinking of what to have for dinner, I passed by one of the small little houses that cost millions of dollars here in menlo park.  I glanced through the bay window and saw, sitting around the dinner table, a family.  A man, woman, and child - talking, eating.  Nearly made me cry.

I've been crying more often lately, most regularly after yoga.  It's the emotional release from all the hip-openers, somehow makes my emotions flow out of me.  I cried in yoga class on wednesday during final shivasana.  The song struck me as poignant and sad.  It went like this: "Goodbye, my lover, goodbye my friend."  There might have been a subtle, "Cause I can't make you love me" line in there, too.  Whatever it was struck a chord and  I had tears streaming down my face, but it was dark and it all blended in with my sweat so no one could see.