Last night, an idea popped into my head that I absolutely MUST immortalize in this space because it represents a big game changer in how I think.
A triumph of recontextualization, if I may say so myself.
And this is MY blog, so nobody can stop me!
Anyhow, the idea is this : instead of looking at my journey as me having to leave the cozy chrysalis of my comfort zone and strike out on my own into the big scary world, I will now think of it as leaving my old, crappy comfort zone in order to transition to a new, clean, superior comfort zone.
Kinda like switching to a better hotel room after a free room upgrade.
That is way less scary and daunting a prospect than having to leave my comfortable world behind forever. I can do almost anything if I know that I will safe at home at the end, even if it’s not quite the same home as the one I left.
Heck, I could look at it as the same ol’ comfort zone after renovations and a good professional cleaning job.
Damn that sounds good. I wonder how much it would cost to get this room cleaned?
Anyhow, the important thing is that I have changed how I look at things in order to better accommodate my own mental health and I think that is very significant.
It’s the sort of thing I need to do in order to move forward and therefore something I need to give myself permission to do.
One of the problems with the “logical” point of view is that it inherently drives you to think there is exactly one absolute objective truth and only one correct way to see it and everything else is illusory bullshit.
And while the objective truth of the hard cold world is, in fact, singular and absolute, the way we look at it definitely is NOT.
There is no “correct” point of view. There can be dozens of equally valid and objectively truthful ways to look at the same thing and we are therefore free to choose whichever one works best for us.
Because after all, the point of all this, including the search for truth itself, is our happiness, not flawless clarity or perfect objectivity.
So optimize for THAT, my big bad beautiful brain. I hereby empower you to completely discard any depressing or unhelpful point of view as being inefficient, insufficient, and injurious to our objectives.
I mean, come on. Why hurt myself?
It’s true that sometimes the truth hurts, but that doesn’t mean that which hurts is true.
That’s one of depression’s biggest tricks : to cut off your ability to feel pleasure via anhedonia and then use that to convince you that only pain is real and then use THAT to convince you that all kinds of errant bullshit is real because it hurts.
It’s one hell of a scam, I will give it that.
But pain is no better indicator of truth than pleasure. And there are always a myriad ways to look at things. So why not choose the one that makes you happiest?
More after the break.
Bring me my brain hammer…
..because I am trying to pound the lesson from Part I as deeply into my skull as I can before the tide comes in and washes it all away.
So I guess the lesson is written in sand.
In this metaphor.
Which seems unwise.
What I am trying to get at is that I know how my depression works and it is very good at playing the long game.
It knows that no matter how wonderfully enthused about my most recent revelation I am now, eventually I will become distracted and let it fall out of my mind entirely and then my depression will simply put things back to “normal” and erase all my gains.
That’s why I keep having revelations and then remembering that I had the exact same revelation before. Sometimes multiple times.
Making real change happen in this messed up mind of mine is going to take a lot more than merely panning for gold in my stream of consciousness.
And that’s where things get complicated because actual change has to happen in the layers far below the conscious mind, beyond (and below) the reach of the rational, conscious, thinking mind, and that’s where my map of the universe ends.
Past that, there’s only an impenetrable blackness with “here there be…. stuff?” written on it in day-glo purple crayon.
Like, I know there are lots of things there – most of my mind, in fact.
But I am still scared to go there because it is the Unknown to me.
Jesus, I am way off track, aren’t I?
This is how it happens! My bad self knows it can’t directly attack a thought I am trying to defend because I am way too strong for that.
But it knows it just has to lay down a trail of breadcrumbs made of fascinating insights and it can lead me far, far away from the actually important insights that could pose a threat to its godawful regime.
This is where my usual lack of focus gets me.
And off the top of my head, I don’t know what to do about it. I would love to be able to nail my resolve to the horizon so it would always be there to remind me of what I need to hold in my mind instead of letting it go out with the tide.
My intuition tells me that if I want something to stick, it has to really mean something to me, and I agree.
But that scares me a LOT. That would involve those deep layers of my mind where I keep my most tender parts safe from the hostile and horrible outside world.
The one with my rapist in it.
And nobody gets to touch that part of me. NOBODY.
Least of all me.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.