Ruts and Glory

Years ago I was going through a tough time in my life where I was desperately unhappy with my job and suffering from a serious financial crisis. I felt incredibly sad and angry for being in such a terrible life situation, yet I couldn't stop my feelings of hopelessness and despair, and therefore I couldn't find the motivation to find my way out of my rut.

I also felt upset that I felt so low and that I wasn't automatically able to "get over it" no matter how hard I tried. I recall having a dream around that time that I had fallen into a sink hole, but instead of screaming for help and fighting for a way out, I just stayed there. Calm. Unable to move. I allowed myself to relax and didn't bother putting up a fight. I trusted that if I were meant to find a way out, I'd find a way out. That dream was very alarming to me at the time, and I wondered if I was in fact ready to give up on life.

But not long after that dream, I allowed myself to calm down and relax in my waking life despite whatever troubles I was experiencing, and instead of giving up, I eventually found the motivation to take action.

Why do we as humans always feel so guilty for experiencing negative feelings from time to time though? Why do we insist on shelving our negative emotions, when our emotions are true and authentic and beg to be experienced? The more we resist our true feelings, the longer they are perpetuated, making us feel too paralyzed to take action. I have the tendency to do this to myself a lot.

I'm going through another tough time in my life, and I'll admit I've been stewing over things that are wrong instead of appreciating things that are right. I've felt pressure to take action to fix things even with having zero idea of what steps to take. As a result, I've been feeling paralyzed again. Stuck in a rut.

But this weekend I recalled the book I read last summer called, The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. The Power of Now suggests embracing whatever we are feeling at any given time. By giving in to our feelings, we go through them, not over them, which leads us to clear our minds and regain a positive attitude. Embracing our feelings, no matter how unpleasant, validates them, but also makes us realize we don't want to feel them for too long, and therefore compels us to take action.

I also read a few articles this weekend about the positive side to losing your shit and the importance of practicing emotional first aid. I've been so quick to panic and worry about my life situation, and then quick to panic and worry because I'm feeling so down. But I forgot that I'm not the only one to experience this kind of thing.

I also forgot that Stephanie Madden doesn't simply believe in "getting over it," which is a very harsh and unattainable idea. If it were so easy to "get over it," then psychologists and self help books wouldn't exist. I think one needs to "go through it" in order to come out stronger. At least I find that it helps me to "go through it" in order to rekindle my motivation to move forward and achieve.

So, for the last few days I chose to allow myself to ignore everything and just feel whatever I was feeling, no matter how unpleasant. And a funny thing happened as a consequence. I woke up this beautiful Sunday morning with a strong desire to accomplish, create, and cross things off my To Do list. I didn't feel hopeless this morning, I felt hopeful. I felt positive that I would have a productive day, and I did. I'm not 100% in the clear of negative emotions, but not being perfectly content is what makes us want to move forward in the first place. Pushing everything aside until I was ready to face it properly was an important exercise for me in not letting myself spiral out of control into a sinkhole of sadness.

As with strength training, actual strength is gained during recovery. The very same principle applies  to life. With a little R&R and emotional first aid, it is possible recover ourselves and find our way out of a rut.

It's important (although not easy) to let everything go that isn't totally in your control and trust in yourself and God that things will eventually turn around. They always do. Things always turn around when you are emotionally ready and willing to find the energy to turn negative into positive.

Book Report

My #4 goal for 2010 was to read 10 books and write about each of them. It just so happens that I've read more than 10 books this year, but the following are my favorite quotes and/or passages from 10 of the books I read:

1. City of Thieves by David Benioff: "I am aware that I am aware"

2. Loving Frank by Nancy Horan: "I have been standing on the side of life, watching it float by. I want to swim in the river. I want to feel the current."

3. Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby: "She had to defend him in order to defend herself. That was why people were so prickly about their partners, even their ex-partners. To admit that Duncan wasn't up to much was to own up publicly to the terrible waste of time, and terrible lapses in judgement and taste."

4. Push by Sapphire: "Abdul get tested. He is not HIV positive. Something like that make me feel what Rhonda, what Farrakhan, say - there is a god. But me when I think of it I'm more inclined to go wid Shug in The Color Purple. God ain' white, he ain' no Jew or Muslim, maybe he ain' even black, maybe he ain' even a "he." Even now I go downtown and see the rich shit they got, I see what we got too. I see those men in vacant lot share one hot dog and they homeless, that's good as Jesus with his fish. I remember when I had my daughter, she nurse nice to me - all that is god. Shug in Color Purple say it's the "wonder" of purple flowers. I feel that, even though I never seen or had no flowers like what she talk about."

5. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini "Perspective was a luxury when your head was constantly buzzing with a swarm of demons."

"...I brought Hassan's son from Afghanistan to America, lifting him from the certainty of turmoil and dropping him in a turmoil of uncertainty."

"I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded, not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night."

6. The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore: "There's a term in the hood for a face like Tony's, that cold, frozen stare. The ice grille. It's a great phrase. A look of blank hostility that masks two intense feelings - the fire evoked by grille (which is also slang for face), and the cold of the ice. But the tough facade is just a way to hide a deeper pain or depression that kids don't know how to deal with. A bottomless chasm of insecurity and self-doubt that gnaws at them. Young boys are more likely to believe in themselves if they know that there's someone, somewhere, who shares that belief. To carry the burden of belief alone is too much for most young shoulders."

"It made me think deeply about the way privilege and preference work in the world, and how many kids who didn't have "luck" like mine in this instance would find themselves forever outside the ring of power and prestige. So many opportunities in this country are apportioned in this arbitrary and miserly way, distributed to those who already have the benefit of a privileged legacy."

"One of the key differences between the two was the way their communities saw them. Here [South Africa], burgeoning manhood was guided and celebrated through a rite of passage. At home [America], burgeoning manhood was a trigger for apprehension. In the United States, we see these same faces, and our reflex is to pick up our pace and cross the street. And in this reflexive gesture, the dimensions of our tragedy are laid bare. Our young men - along with our young women - are our strength and our future. Yet we fear them."

7. Virgil and Beatrice by Yann Martel: "There's nothing like the the unimaginable to make people believe."

"Creative block is no laughing matter, or only to those sodden spirits who've never even tried to make their own personal mark. It's not just a particular endeavor, a job, that is negated, it's your whole being. It's the dying of a small god within you, a part you thought might have immortality."

8. My Horizontal Life by Chelsea Handler: "I used to think I was a black person in a past life because I looooove black people. It's the way they express themselves that draws me to them. White people, for the most part, are too conservative with their emotions and not nearly as effusive as black people when they get excited. If you've ever watched a game show where a white person wins and then, later, a black person wins, you've seen the difference. Black people don't stop and think before they jump up and down in celebration. They are so much more spontaneous and festive, and I've always felt that without that kind of energy, what would be the point of anything."

"It was Valentines Day and I had spent the day in bed with my life partner, Kettle One. The two of us watched a romantic movie marathon on TBS Superstation that made me wonder how people who write romantic comedies sleep at night.
     At some point during every romantic comedy, the female lead suddenly trips and falls, stumbling helplessly over something ridiculous like a leaf, and then some Matthew McConaughey type either whips around the corner just in the nick of time to save her or is clumsily pulled down along with her. That moment predictably leads to the magical moment of their first kiss. Please. I fall all the time. You know who comes and gets me? The bouncer."
    

9. Lit by Mary Karr: "What hurts so bad about youth isn't the actual butt whippings the world delivers. It's the stupid hopes playacting like certainties."

"Their bottomless cool - their cynical postures grown from privilege they were ungrateful for - could make me hate them. Born on third base, my daddy always said of the well off, and think they hit a home run."

"The righteous cry of married men everywhere, for it's a cliche that every woman signs up thinking her husband will change, while every husband signs up believing his wife won't: both dead wrong."

"When you've been hurt enough as a kid (maybe at any age), it's like you have a trick knee. Most of your life, you can function like an adult, but add in the right portions of sleeplessness and stress and grief, and the hurt, defeated self can bloom into place."

10. Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman: "Sometimes writing is like talking to a stranger who's exactly like yourself in every possible way, only to realize this stranger is boring as shit. In better moments, writing is the opposite of difficult - it's as if your fingers meander arbitrarily in crosswise patterns and (suddenly) you find yourself reading something you didn't realize you already knew. Most of the time, the process falls somewhere in between."