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Happiness is all in your mind

Your Life Isn't About You

The Cheese Grates It: The New Hard Times

My son (age 27) once described his generation (the older end of the Millennials) as being “the youngest bunch of old fucks telling those damn kids to get off their damn lawn.” He described a feeling of not exactly hopelessness but discouragement.

The world has changed a lot. My mother (who will be 80 next year) harangues my son that he needs to finish college and get a degree. However, he and I both see that as more student loan debt. College might be a good idea someday. It isn’t right now. 

I grew up during the Cold War (graduated high school in 1983). There was a pervasive sense of doom, like you might as well get all that you can get NOW, because there might not be a future. The 1980′s may have been a decade of excess and parties, but it wasn’t all colorful, bubbly fun. I think that Stranger Things may be one of the best depictions I’ve seen of the 1980′s. There was a lot of darkness and fear beneath the surface.

At nearly 53 years old and with multiple health conditions, I’d like to be able to impart a sense of hope to my son, but I’m afraid I don’t have one to impart. I hope things change and get better, I really do.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

There are no Homosexuals,Hetrosexuals, Transgender or Asexual People

Beyond sexuality there are people. With a clean mind one begins to see that such labels, such easy definitions are all, as are borders and the concept of time, man-made. Homosexual people don’t exist. Asexual people don’t exist. Heterosexual people don't exist. Transgender people don't exist.

These are simply ideas in your mind. Ideas placed there by others desire to categorize everything even that which defies categorization. The word God is a perfect example of something that defies easy description. It is better to simply experience existence in its purest form, in an unfiltered state.

People are simply people. All deserve the same love,  the same compassion, the same tolerance as anybody else. 

Let go of those deeply seated attachments and free your mind.

My Friend Robin/Fear of Abandonment

Robin Williams had a great deal of wisdom to share and he worked hard to make sure that people didn't feel as lonely and broken as he often did even though many people loved him. He gave us wonderful characters to love and treasure. As an unhappy youngster in my early teens, Mork was one of my best friends. I would dream of having adventures with Mork when things were going as awfully as the often did.

I tend to think that the people who feel that Robin made an improper choice by taking his own life are people who do not understand the way that dementia destroys the mind. The autopsy done after Robin's death confirmed that he had Lewy Body Dementia. People who worked with him on Happy Feet say that he was already starting to have trouble remembering things at that point. 

When your mind is everything, knowing that it is failing you is devastating. Robin knew that something was terribly wrong, and he knew that it wasn't going to get better. I don't feel that he made an erroneous decision at all. This is not to say in any way that suicide isn't a tragedy or that he isn't loved and missed. Suicide is a tragedy, and Robin Williams is missed and will always be loved. However, I will say quite frankly that if I develop dementia, I will make the same decision as Robin did, and I do not apologize for saying this.

Now, on to my fear of abandonment.

Today I had a flashback to an incident which happened some 43 years ago.

My family moved to Colorado from New Mexico when I was ten. We were living in faculty housing. I thought I had made some really good friends. 

There was a disused gravel quarry behind the faculty housing, and we used to go up there to play. One day as I was out walking, I saw my "friends" heading up there without me, not having bothered to call me to join them. I took a shortcut that I knew to beat them there. I could run really fast in those days.

When they arrived, they saw me sitting down in one of the small pits.

"What are you doing here, Cie?" Jason asked.

"Just playing by myself," I said.

"Well, why don't you play with us?" said Marty.

"I don't want to," I replied, huffing away.

They could see that they'd fucked up and they hurried after me. I realized that their parents had told them that they needed to be nice and include me, and they didn't want to get in trouble.

"Cie, wait, we're sorry," said Amy.

"I don't care," I retorted. "I'm going home.

"Come on, please, let's go play at my house," Jason begged.

Stupid desperate child that I was, I convinced myself that they'd just made a mistake, that they hadn't thought about calling me, that they really liked me. However, after perhaps a half hour, they were giving each other looks.

"We have to go inside now," said Jason. "We're going to watch a show."

"Well, can I come watch too?" I asked. "We always watch Star Trek together."

"No, you wouldn't like this show. It's called Mentally Retarded."

"Well, maybe I would like it."

"No, I don't think you would. See you later."

Jason and Amy were brother and sister. However, they also invited Marty in, and he wasn't a relative.

I was desperate, but I wasn't that stupid. My so-called "friends" didn't like me very much. I was just the stupid outcast kid that their parents forced them to play with.

I blocked this incident out of my mind for years because it was so painful. However, even to this day I feel desperate and worthless when people haven't communicated with me in a while. I feel that just like Amy and Jason and Marty, nobody really likes me, they only talk to me because they feel sorry for me.

Years later when another friend, Lee Ann, drowned, Amy was at her funeral. She tried to talk to me and I pretended I didn't remember who she was. I was still hurt over the way I'd been kissed off by her and my other supposed friends in childhood.

Lee Ann hadn't been along with the others on the day at the quarry. She was a couple years younger than I was and seemed to genuinely like me. She was only 22 years old when she died. It was a terrible loss.

I hate myself when I feel and act stupid and desperate. I know it pushes people away.

I wish I hadn't been made to believe that "imaginary" friends like Mork weren't as important as 3D friends.

In many ways, such friends were much better than the ones I had in life. They never abandoned or betrayed me.

~Cie~

Bishop John Shelby Spong