Poisoned and Afraid

Maybe humanity doesn’t need to be saved. Maybe most of humanity is already dead. They were given the choice between the red and blue pill, and guess what, both of them were just poison. It was just poison that closed your mind from anyone else’s point of view.

And now, all of your feelings and reactions are not even your own, they are just handed to you on a paper plate. You’re just continually at the same BBQ with the same people, that have the same beliefs as you and just wait around for someone to serve you what you’re supposed to think.

Then when someone disagrees with you, you get triggered, because the poison you consumed starts attacking your nervous system, and you can’t handle anyone else’s opinion. The poison is strong, I felt it many times myself. It really knocks the love out of your heart, and you start attacking – even people you care about.

People turn against each other, wanting to prove each other wrong, but they don’t see the human behind the mask. Yes, we are all wearing our political masks, designed in the fear factories we choose to subscribe to. We filter all of our information through these masks and simply can’t allow anything new to penetrate.

When things get tough, and I need clarity I turn to nature. I like to go outside just before sunset, which helps me reflect about my day or what’s really important in life. I try to trust my intuition, even when it’s hard, or I feel uncomfortable.

I don’t trust the mainstream media, since they have failed me after the September 11th attacks. I remember watching the news every night, feeling the fear from the Red and Orange alerts being injected into my body, being afraid to go to the mall, or to a concert. Months of this and none of the predictions from the media ever came true, but here I am, almost 20 years later, still feeling uncomfortable in large crowds.

I haven’t been posting on social media much lately, because I’m seeing everyone being judged for expressing themselves. People are shaming others for being too negative, or for posting too much fluff. People are posting misinformation just to prove others to be wrong, and not doing any research to actually make sure the information they are using to wage their attacks is realistic.

These are crazy times. Things that seem normal, may not be normal at all, but things that sound like they are out of this world could actually be true. Things are not just black and white, red or blue, we have to use our critical thinking, and tap into our instincts, tap into our human nature. We don’t want to act like we are already dead, repeating stories that we are fed by the media. Lets listen to each other and try to understand when other people are coming from. Lets not be robots that repeat the same phrases over and over without giving them any thought.

Let Yourself In

If it’s just me, it’s hard to see the details, and hard to zoom out my own lens outside myself. It’s hard to stand outside of me and watch me feel the things I feel inside. It’s hard to see my face in selfies that I take and to see my true expression in the smiles that I fake when I am trying to trick myself that I am not upset; that I can’t even get mad; that the reality is that I don’t feel anything and I make myself believe that this is true.

When I see someone else in pain, especially in a group or a community setting, their pain overwhelms me. I find myself swimming in it, in their collective woe, I am drenched in emotion, uncertain where I end and where others begin. I want to fight for them. I am angry to the depths of my bones. My bone-marrow boils inside of me, because someone else is being mistreated now, and I – I can see it with my eyes. It’s like a film, and I am connecting with the characters. The people are beautiful and weak like little shrubs blowing in the wind and I want to save them from their pain.

Their pain, it makes me so uncomfortable, and I want it to stop. But my own personal anguish, it is asleep somewhere; it is nowhere to be seen. It is not under my desk or in my jacket pocket, no, that is not where it is. I am numb to my own pain, perhaps is for self-preservation. Perhaps, the pain is having a very explosive reaction right inside; right behind some secret door. And it’s waiting for me to slow down enough to find this door, to find this door and break it down so the pain can come out and be seen. The pain would fly out and settle in the room around me like every feeling I ever tried to hide from had a face. Their faces would now be visible to me and could get acquainted with them. Each expression would tell me a story about when I pretended not to see it; why I pretended not to notice the event that happened.

Everything would become clear if each feeling had a face that’s tangible, a face separate from my own. And I can see these inner faces and love them; love them like I love the painful faces of other people. For now, I know the only way inside is from within. It’s frightening to close your eyes and look away from everyone else’s story; everyone else’s movie. But how can I meet all these invisible faces, if I won’t even let myself in.

Different and Weak

Gym was always a class I dreaded as a kid. Not only was I clumsy and not very good at sports, but I was forced to participate in team sports; forced to be on teams that didn’t want me there.

Yes, picking teams was the worst part of the day. It was usually for kickball or volleyball. Each day, it was me or Anna that got picked last, and it was worse when Anna was absent. I stood there, feeling shamed, staring down at my black sneakers, hoping that this day would be different from the rest; that maybe this classmate choosing people would finally notice me. I kept waiting and waiting to be seen. But it would always be the same. Sometimes there was an odd number of students and the teacher was forced to make the choice on their behalf. I stood there as he decided my fate and as the selected team sighed heavily when I was sent over to join them.

Those days, they didn’t want me because I was weak and I was different. I wasn’t good at kicking the ball and the opposing team would usually catch it right away. Sometimes, this made me relieved, because I didn’t have to run. Nowadays, I often feel relief when I don’t have to do something risky either.

Nowadays, I am still weak and different as I was back then, but I choose to label myself as vulnerable and creative instead. Now when someone does not want to choose me, I take a deep breath and choose myself instead.

I embrace my weakness, knowing that my vulnerability creates space for others to be vulnerable with me too. I’m shy and because of my shyness, others don’t have to be afraid of feeling shy too. My shyness flows and blend with other parts of me; like watercolor or emotions it comes on thick and then washes out into a translucent tint. Because I am different, I am okay with trying different things. I already labeled as different, so I might as well be creative about it. This otherness has opened a different world for me, a world that I had to create in order to fit in somewhere. It is an imaginary world, but I love it and tap into it when I feel like creating something new. I draw and write from this space.

Different and weak were once flows that I felt ashamed of, but now I know that that shame is not me. The world breathes in beauty now, and I am no longer afraid to choose myself even if someone else cannot see me.

Starving to Be Seen

It’s sometimes hard to notice that the person you’re trying your best to hide from is actually yourself. You know, that face you briefly notice in the mirror in the morning before work; the skin you judge for looking a little too dry or just too tired. This is often the only part of you that makes the cut into the all of the scenes of the day.

You run around worrying about everybody else to the point that you forget they you are not even feeling fulfilled. You are so full of experiences and tasks to be completed that you don’t even realize that inside you are starving. And you wonder: how can I be so hungry with such a full plate?

You are in such a need of fulfillment that you constantly look for little things to solve. There are easy wins like giving a friend advice or doing a chore for a parent that temporarily satiate this desire, but what creates a constant infusion of energy is dealing with situations that are simply unsolvable. These kinds of food for thought sort of entanglements are always eager to feed your mind with new ways to create thinking patterns that can keep you distracted for days at a time.

One way you can avoid looking at yourself is by constantly analyzing other people in your life. This is especially potent with romantic relationships where you are constantly worried about controlling the feelings of your partners. You just really want to know what their world is like and how you actually fit into that world. It can be puzzling when the situations are unclear, and so a lot of our insecurities get automatically triggered.

Instead of diving deeper into our own insecurities and figuring ourselves out, we tend to focus on how we are perceived by the other people. This is a story we can easily get lost in, as it consumes us and eats away at time. It’s almost like being behind the blurry lens of a dream, and this array of racing thoughts is strangely comforting, so potent that we prefer it over taking the time to see what is real here in front of us.

Anyway, if we get lucky and find ourselves in a moment of stillness, let us focus our energy on what really matters most. Let us try to see what it is that really has the potential to bring us sustainable fulfillment, so we no longer have to feel the need to escape from ourselves.