is by stargazing, head tilted up towards the heavens. Thoughts swimming for miles and miles in every direction, emotions moving with the tides, all occurring simultaneously in a humble head. Enchanted.
When I don’t feel like making the effort to lie down in the open space outside, I gaze into my own thoughts. Without much restriction and utterly alone. Don’t get me wrong, thinking of the mind-bogglingly tiny size of the planet Earth is definitely a lonely feeling, even after you try to grasp the number of probable habitable planets outside our galaxy. S’not like they’re a phone call away. However, exploring one’s own thoughts uncharted can be an invigorating experience, as well as a depressing one.
Unfortunately there have been countless plunges into the dark recesses of my mind that resulted in unhappiness. Most of my invigorating experiences are acquired from hands-on experiences, where there is an external influence, be it an article, books or a good friend. Could it be that I am not making frequent enough trips to those parts of my mind with a pleasant mood? Proper reflection I may be lacking. Courage is definitely needed. I think of these unhappy thoughts as ‘unsupervised thoughts’, because after a couple of years of observation of my reactions to situations, I have been able to predict, time and time again, my impending sorrow. And like any other wonderfully irrational human being, I sometimes go ahead and make myself unhappy anyway.
One’s greatest enemy is oneself and one’s greatest friend is too, oneself.
So I welcome my enemy and my friend with open arms. The arrogant bastard that coerces me into reevaluating my chances of hope and the patient friend that rescues me from the self-less exorcism of my own ego and the temptation of reliance on anything that has a Platonic shadow. I love them both, like how I love my legs. Strong but stout. Nothing is useful until you use it, with a desired outcome. This is the positive side of things – the idea that everything is good when you see it as so. Sickeningly positive because anything we perceive to be good makes it so to us and only us.
I often hear the standard advice-cum-solution to unhappiness spurred from solitary, unsupervised thought. Like postcards coming from distant relatives, meaning nothing to the receiver and ghastly repetitive. It’s understandable. How can we expect others to understand why we are bothered by the intangibility of love? Or why we feel the nagging desire to climb Mt. Everest next month? Such problems of the mind can hardly be solved by others. Granted, I am guilty of having sent those cards of hopeless recovery (not the postcards), but only because I do so out of a sense of obligation. I still do. ‘Don’t think too much’ has been said to so many, even during times when I go beyond my obligation to cheer the person up. Come on, what’s a girl to say? Although this goes without saying, the best remedy is still to listen.
Listening is much appreciated when it comes to conversing with others. What about the dilemma of that deals with the matters of ourselves, especially when we wallow in self pity? If my theory of listening holds true for anyone – ranging from childhood friends to complete strangers – then it should also do so for ourselves. Listening to ourselves doesn’t have to mean babbling in front of the mirror, because even that wouldn’t work. I think it’s the an underlying need for our feelings to be addressed and to be given attention. So maybe we need to think a little less (since we are overdoing it anyway) and listen to ourselves more. Less advice, less judgement and a little more lovin’.
Just popped by for a quick look, because I’ve got some other commitments to live up to; you reminded me of Thomas Hardy’s Tess, in his novel, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, with your comment on ‘stargazing’ in particular.
You might enjoy the book. It’s a lengthy read, but you might enjoy it. Just a heads up.
Okay, I felt particularly kind, so here you go, something to test your boundaries (and possibly whet your appetite):
Abraham talked on, rather for the pleasure of utterance than for audition, so that his sister’s abstraction was of no account. He leant back against the hives, and with upturned face made observations on the stars, whose cold pulses were beating amid the black hollows above, in serene dissociation from these two wisps of human life. He asked how far away those twinklers were, and whether God was on the other side of them. But ever and anon his childish prattle recurred to what impressed his imagination even more deeply than the wonders of creation. If Tess were made rich by marrying a gentleman, would she have money enough to buy a spyglass so large that it would draw the stars as near to her as Nettlecombe-Tout?
The renewed subject, which seemed to have impregnated the whole family, filled Tess with impatience.
“Never mind that now!” she exclaimed.
“Did you say the stars were worlds, Tess?”
“Yes.”
“All like ours?”
“I don’t know; but I think so. They sometimes seem to be like the apples on our stubbard-tree. Most of them splendid and sound–a few blighted.”
“Which do we live on–a splendid one or a blighted one?”
“A blighted one.”
Enjoy yourself. (:
Hey thanks! Though it looks like a real old one. Hopefully I’ll come across it someday.