Body. Mind. Spirit.

I have spent a long, long, long time trying to settle on what the meaning of our lives is. I have tried to make the messy and chaotic nature of life into some coherent sort of formula without success. And the reason for this is obvious, life is not organised, it is not the same for everyone and it does not follow a straight path. But as I try to figure out how I will get through this by being "okay" I have settled upon an age-old philosophy based upon the balance of three different components.

Body
We must look after our bodies and keep them in good form. This means eating the right foods, doing the right exercise and keeping in shape. We must look after our health. We must dress ourselves in clothes that make us feel good. As humans, we are essentially made up of a physical component, an emotional component and a spiritual component, and although we may see our "body" as being the most superficial of the three, we still must not underestimate the importance of looking after it. As we learn to do this, we will be more energised towards life and have greater confidence in ourselves.

Mind
Our attitude is of most grave importance. It is imperative that we perceive things rationally, not through a warped lense. We must be kind to ourselves, love ourselves and feel confident with ourselves. We must remember that attitude is everything - we are not slaves to our circumstances, but can actively overcome them in the way we respond to them. Finally, we must believe in ourselves - whether you think you can or you can't, you are right.

Spirit
I believe this is the most extensive component of the three. To me, this component encapsulates the essence of life and what it means to display human spirit. Above anything, it involves doing things that make you feel free and make you feel alive. We must engage ourselves in living and doing things that give us "flow", the mental state in which a person is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of an activity. Let us find the things that make us feel free, alive and happy: netball, surfing, writing, swimming, reading, running, yoga, relaxation, helping other people, being compassionate, spending time with friends... Find what it is that makes you feel alive and enjoy it for the rest of your life. Share experiences with people. Help others to do the same. Let go. Breathe. Be free.

I often see the latter component as the greatest of the three, as I believe it is the one that is directly attached to our meaning and our happiness. However, these three components are intertwined and are all equally important. Without one, the others cannot exist in harmony, so it is important not to throw out balance. Love your body, nurture your mind, release your spirit.

Live.

Visualisation.

Many psychology studies have shown the effectiveness of visualisation as a means of learning and creating change. I was once told by my physiotherapist that imagining a muscle in my knee as a lemon being squeezed with each squat could actually lead to faster recovery. I have also been told that imagining myself taking a spectacular intercept or executing a creative feed would translate such things to a netball game. Seeing things clearly in our minds seems to make them more real in reality and the consequences seem more significant. Here is my own image.

If a person is unfortunate enough to suffer from a crush injury, blood flow from the affected area or limb is restricted and is unable to flow towards the heart. In first aid, one is taught to remove the object as soon as possible. However, if such an act is not possible, there may be little hope for the injured person, because the longer the object remains unmoved, the more the toxins build up and threaten this person's life.

The toxins accumulate to a point where, once the object is removed, they gush out of the area and are free to destroy the rest of the body; like a tourniquet when it snaps, the blood rushes from the site.

So now imagine these toxins not as physical pain or infection, but mental pain. Perhaps if when we are crushed and the object oppressing us is not removed for an extended period of time, our negative thoughts and emotions too begin to accumulate. The toxins build up, so that, even when that hindrance is removed and we think that we are ready to be free and happy, we are more at danger than ever. Just as I was ready to fly, I too have been shot down by the gush of these toxic thoughts. Overcome again by a tidal wave of negativity, I wonder, will I survive?

Choices.

Despite my most recent views on life being solely based on the scientific and sterile nature of our existence, at this moment in time I have taken the opportunity to stray from my deterministic viewpoint and step into the somewhat unfamiliar territory of a perspective based on free will. A logical person, I have always believed that much of what we get is set out for us; our biological make-up determines a considerable amount of our intellect, our personality and, dare-I-say, our attitude.

Eternally jealous I have always been of those who can reject the lemons that life throws at them and demand oranges instead; those whom I believed were “born with” a positive and resilient attitude. And while I trudged along a gloomy path of sadness and despair, I regretted that I was not born with that same strength.

But why should I? Part of me still believes that an element of attitude is pre-determined in our genetic make-up, but why should I be a slave to such bitter dispositions? We should not be passive in the way we think, we should feel empowered. If there is one thing I have finally learnt after 18 years, it is that attitude is everything. And although I spent many a day wishing and waiting for mine to change, I have now decided that enough is enough, and refuse to wait any longer. I was recently told that “we make our own luck” and I think after years of waiting I finally understand what this means.

Life may just be a void of time that we, carbon robots, fill with things to make it seem worthwhile, or maybe it is an opportunity to learn, to love and to live. We have so many options as to how we wish to view the world, and we are given a choice: to reject what lies before us and be miserable, or to take this opportunity, embrace it and be happy. It may not be easy or natural, but in the end, having a positive attitude is the only choice – at times it will be difficult, and at times in may not seem like enough, but ultimately, it must be.

“You have a choice. Live or die. Every breath is a choice. Every minute is a choice. To be or not to be.” ~ Chuck Palahniuk

To those who care,

I have gotten almost everything I wished for in this past month. I can hardly even dare to complain when everything has just landed on my doorstep. But inside, where no one can see, lay and still lies my one eternal wish that I want more than any of this. I could have lived without a high ATAR or getting into physio.. but without happiness, I don't want to live. I cannot and will not be a good captain if I can't even be positive towards myself. I don't know if my heart is in it anymore, because over the past few years I have felt less and less enjoyment from the sport I once loved with all my heart. What does one do when their biggest passion fails them? There no longer is any passion for anything, nor a desire to live like this. It hurts and has hurt for so very, very long - and although you can hear me, no one can take the pain away..

---> ! <---

I can't help but think that if my mother hadn't married my father, things might have been so different. In the unity of both my parents' genes, I have thought for a while that something went horrible wrong in my creation. That, despite being intelligent and compassionate people, by mixing their genes, they not only had a prodigy child but also an emotional and psychological disaster. Maybe two. People think I got it all; of late, I have considered myself very lucky that my intellect is such that i was able to achieve great things, even compared to many who worked much harder than myself. But now I am starting to believe quite the contrary. That perhaps things could have been so very different if those two gene pools hadn't met - that perhaps if I wasn't that 99.60 child that I may have, in fact, been worlds happier. Right now it hurts so very, very much. I do not know where the stress is coming from. I have resigned to the fact that LIFE IS WHAT IT IS and there is literally no way to defy the fact that our existene has no meaning whatsoever, and the only way to cope is to distract ourselves from the fact that it is just and empty void of time. All we can do is try to fill that void with things that make life seem okay, but, in reality, we will never succeed because in a void, things just fall through.

I wanted to escape
Because I didn't want to be the person I had made myself.
I wanted to disappear
Because I didn't want them to see that facade anymore.
I wanted to explore
Because I couldn't stand not knowing who I was.
I wanted to fly
Because I didn't want to go another day without feeling alive.

I wanted to travel
Because I thought it would be the same as vanishing for good.
Only, I realised, it would all happen the wrong way around.

If you walk out of someone's life,
They may cry from your loss,
Yet your pain grows with your existence.

So why is there no option
To let the pain subside
In the absence of tears?

Misery: n. a feeling of intense unhappiness.

I am alone and feel so very, very ill. I have not felt anything in a week. Rather than a new year and the successful completion of a diploma being a motivation to start afresh, a feel more stagnant than ever. I was once told that we are guaranteed of one thing in life: change. But in the past 5 years of my life, it has become increasingly apparent that we are not even guaranteed of this. Exactly what life is does not change. In a physical sense, it is merely time that we pass with any range of occupations. There is no spirtual meaning, for how could there be? We are products of science - mere mortals made up of tiny, little atoms. Life starts when we are born, and then proceeds as a ticking timer thats rings with our death as we are burnt to ashes and returned to the earth. I find myself, once again, toying with the thought of letting my timer ring early and putting myself out of this undue misery; unfortunately though, I am not even in control of this.

The passing of the beloved mother of my friend suddenly thrust the reality of death in my face. To lose someone so suddenly, so unexpectedly and so tragically made me realise I could never, ever inflict that sort of pain upon anyone that I love. I have expended so many tears in the past few days, for the pain of her death, for the numbness of my life, and above anything, the utter hopelessness of the fact that I have no choice but to stay here.

What life is doesn't change. An unmoved attitude after 5 years offers little prosperity. I am trapped right where I am. Will I honestly be miserable forever?

The higher you fly, the harder you fall.

There isn't any meaning and there never will be. It is that goddamn simple. Life is just time filled with things: things we enjoy and things we hate; emotions that make us, and emotions that ruin us; people who give us the delusion that we are not alone living a meaningless existence, and people who remind us that we don't have any reason to be here. There is nothing here. There is no reason that we are here nor is there a reason to stay here. We are an accumulation of particles occupying time and space - nothing more. Emotion and feeling are caused by chemicals in one's brain and our differences are not in our thoughts or behaviours, but our mere biology. We are so very complex, but in the end, we are, at the core of our existence, a product of science. Biology, physics and chemistry combine to make us: manufactured carbon robots. We see things and feel things, but nothing will change the fact that the period between our birth and death is insignificant, meaningless and will have no impact on the world. I will never truly be happy, nor will I make anyone truly happy. Perhaps some of us can justify our existence with a feeling of contentment, yet I am certain that I am eternally devoid of this delusional virtue.

Motivation: n. that which gives purpose and direction to behavior

I wonder if anyone has ever been surprised by me. It is no doubt that I regard myself as one of the most boring people on the planet -- I cannot stand me, so I highly doubt that anyone else could. No one has ever said, "Wow! I didn't know you were awesome at _______!" No one has ever said, "Wow! I didn't know you had really good taste in _______!" No one has ever been surprised by my ability to do anything. I have friends who paint and sing and write and play instruments and photograph and listen to great music and are loved by any animal they meet. I don't think I have anything like that. I am good at school, and "well done, me!", I get lots of academic awards every year. But 1) Why couldn't I keep that up in the only year that counts?, 2) What sort of worthwhile skill is "being good at school"? And 3) It is neither exciting nor surprising. I set myself a precedent, and the only way I could surprise people was by failing the great expectation that they and I had placed upon myself.

I am so tired of living the life of a cliche. I am a cliche of myself. Even if I haven't, I feel like during high school I became a stereotype of myself, hence, to be "M." seemed to hold some mythical sort of meaning. And whether I am the only person that sees that, or feels like that, it doesn't really matter, because this image has influenced my life beyond belief.

It is difficult these days to even know what I want to do, because I cannot tell whether my motive is my own desire, or my desire to destroy this image. Why do I get drunk - because I want to have fun or because people expected better from me? Why do I want to travel next year - because I want to see the world or because people expect that I would go to uni? Why do I want to get a tattoo - because I want to remember something or because it would shock people? I don't even know my own motives anymore, because I am expending so much energy trying to break down something that I created, held onto, and now, desperately want to destroy.

OK.

I have only just come to realise the significance of two letters in the alphabet, which, when put together, side by side, form one of the most commonly used responses in the English language. OK. Although at first I saw this simply as a throw away line when mum would ask how school was or someone was explaining a concept that was not remotely interesting, as I have stopped to think about what it actually means and how many times it has appeared in my thoughts during my deepest and most desperate moments, it would seem that these two letters may have more serious connotations. For what does it mean to be OK? Okay means that we are coping; it means that even if things aren't at their most ideal, we are handling it and accepting it. Okay, to me, suggests a sense of deeper contemplation, and provides a satisfying answer often accompanied by a breath of relief. Okay suggests the worst is over.

For a perfectionist, however, okay is also a fine and delicate point that lies between order and catastrophe. After all, if something is not okay, then that is exactly what it is -- not okay. One cannot escape, one cannot breathe, one cannot be content with the current state of affairs. Hence, the incessant statements that appear in my mind -- I am okay, I am not okay, life is okay, life is not okay, things are okay, things are not okay -- have greater implications than the flippancy in which we use such an adjective would suggest. With this word balanced on such a fine line and being so closely related to one's ability to cope with a given situation, it feels on occasions, that simply being okay is the line that separates life and death. Am I being too dramatic? I have found myself saying lately that, even when bad things happen, all you can really do about it is find it within yourself to "be okay"; to find a way to deal with it. And that is it, because in the end, being "okay" is the only way we will ever get through all this. It is the only way we will stay alive through all this because we have to find a way to convince ourselves that it is all worth it, that we have a reason to keep going and that we can keep going.

For now, all I can do is take each day as it comes. As for today, today I am okay.

Flying.

I always find myself asking the question: Don't you wish the world would just stop? Well travel wil do that to a fair extent, won't it? I won't be on anyone else's terms or preoccupied with any real troubles. It will be an opportunity to enjoy myself, find myself and learn something that no uni degree will teach me. I hope more than anything that I will finally, FINALLY be free.

Finished: An afterthought.

I don't know how to write this. I don't know why I would bother writing this again, as I have written these words and made these complaints over a hundred times before. Only this time, one thing is different. This time, I have reached the other side and nothing has changed. I could complain all I liked before I finished school about the stress and how none of it was worth it, and all anyone could tell me was that things would be different when school was over. A week and two days after my final exam nothing has changed. I am still feeling this.

I cannot help feeling alone. In the company of close friends, in the company of more distant friends, I feel no sense of connection. I have spent a week being surrounded by people, yet much of the time all I wished was to be alone because at least then it would be normal for me to feel so lonely. I am so disconnected and isolated and I don't feel close to anyone. Yes, we all feel like this sometimes, but not now. This is not how I want to feel now, because it is exactly as I have felt for the past however many years of my life, and now all that is certain is that even on the other side of this long and arduous challenge, the grass is no greener. I have been holding out for a long time to feel good about myself, to feel good about life, to feel fucking good. Full stop.

I feel myself making plans to change my life and be a different person. But I know I will struggle to put these into action. I have no energy and I am so drained and after what has only been a week of freedom, I still feel like complete and utter shit. I don't know what I want to do next year, what I want to do in the future. I don't know anything. I have written lists of all the books I want to read and all the things I want to do: learn to surf, go horseriding, go skydiving, skinny dipping, camping, play soccer, cook, make clothes, do yoga, have a picnic, go iceskating, dancing, bowling, paintballing, go karting, shopping, go on a road trip, travel the world. But what if these are all empty aspirations? I am supposed to be in control, but I feel like I am not because I have lost hope for any prosperity or happiness in my life.

I don't know who I want to be, all I know is that I don't want to be me. I don't want to be who I am now. I can't be or I will just die. I want to start again, but I feel like it is too late. I am too rooted in these cognitions and in these bad habits that have overtaken and ruined my life. I just want to cry and die, I just want to feel something. I am so empty and just do not know what to do. I want to hurt myself and destroy myself, so I can break down everything that I have become - in my mind and in reality - and just rebuild. Restart, all over again.

I do not understand how some days I can have so much hope, and other days things just fall apart. Others may deny it, but, as I have said before, I believe the only way to be happy is to distract yourself from the fact that our lives our absolutely meaningless. Hence the list of extravagant things to do - there has to be something that I can do to make something out of my life, to use my life and to at least feel alive. But you know what? Even if I ever did achieve all these things - the big and small - I can see myself finally sitting down on the couch at the end of it all and feeling exactly as I do now.

Someone once told me that we are guaranteed of one thing in life - change. Well I hate to say it, but experience has proved quite the contrary. Indeed, I have learnt that some things never change. And if this is the case, then when do we say enough is enough?

An empty euphemism.

No one passes away.
Do not describe such grief and sadness
Like it just passes us by without
The deepest sense of loss.
We have all felt it,
And no combination of words could soften the blow.
Death knocks on all our doors and
Wakes us from a slumber devoid of consciousness.
For what was I preoccupied with?
Where sums, equations, studies and concepts
Once filled my brain, I am now
Empty.
None of it seems to matter anymore.
Eight years a friend, yet one minute you were here,
And the next you were gone.
Such parting, so untimely - you are gone too soon.
If I could see you one more time;
To hear you say "Honey" just once more
And just to say goodbye.

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

~William Shakespeare, The Tempest

Food for thought.

“If you are born into the subculture of poverty, what do you inherit? Well, you inherit an economic condition, and you inherit a social and psychological condition... [One] inheritance is his inability to control impulse: he is present-time orientated and seldom defers gratification, never plans for the future, and endures his here and now with resignation and frustration…

"Now, I don’t want to idealise or romanticise the culture of poverty… But there are some positive aspects which we cannot overlook completely. Present-oriented living, for example, may sharpen one’s attitude for spontaneity and for excitement, for the appreciation of the sensual, for the indulgence of impulse; and these aptitudes are often blunted or muted in people like us who are middle-class and future-oriented…

"They have, in fact, no future. They have only today.”

~ Dodds, The Freedom of the City (Brian Friel)

I realise that we live in a society where it is essential to plan ahead to some extent. It may be considered advantageous to know what you would like to do with your life (even though I don't), to have goals and aspirations and to choose courses of action that will positively impact your future. But I hope that I have finally come to realise that to live in the present is more important than all of this; to live and be in the present is life. We cannot change what has happened. We do not own the future. Much of the future we have little control over. Dodds speaks of a culture of poverty and the life of the pauper - "they only have today" - but really, these words apply to all of us. We only have today.

Do not distress over what has been. Do not feel disappointed over things that have not yet happened. Do not be excited for an end that has not arrived yet. When I was told to "Focus on my current job" I now see why - because focussing on what has been and what is coming is a waste of where I am now. Do not mourn what has happened. Do not celebrate what has not. Just be - right here and right now.

“As we stood on the Guildhall steps, two thoughts raced through my mind: how seriously they took us, and how unpardonably casual we were about them”

~ Skinner, The Freedom of the City (Brian Friel)

A person who has always been quite practical, logical and mature, I would have generally considered myself as a serious person. Despite a vital and jovial side to me, I often found myself supressing this whilst in company and putting on that familiar, safe mask of composure. A friend of mine quoted this statement from our English text as we began our Year 12 exams, and she could not have been any more correct. Although I think she was referring to how seriously the exams were and how unprepared many of us felt for them (herself not included!), I have come to consider this quotation to reflect how seriously everyone around me views the results of these exams, and how impartial I have become towards them.

I used to laugh when someone called them the "November tests"; it seemed a little casual for my once perceived importance of them. But as someone who gave these exams more importance, focus and meaning than most people in my entire school, I think I have now come to view them with greater flippancy than many others - parents, teachers and fellow classmates.

Perhaps it's easier to downplay the importance of something when you haven't been as successful as you would have hoped, but even if this is the case, in a way I think I should be incredibly thankful that these November tests didn't go nearly as perfectly as I'd planned. Once again, living in the future had me stumped, and although I may not quite be sitting in the present at the moment, I am definitely getting there.

Initially the worst experience of my life, these exams have proved one of the greatest learning curves and most insightful lessons I could have ever learned.

Something really slapped me in the face in these few weeks and said, "If you're going to base the whole value of your education, your level of intellect and your self-worth on 4 digits and a decimal point, your a fucking idiot."

To be nobody but yourself
in a world which is doing its best,
night and day,
to make you like everybody else
means to fight the hardest battle
which any human being can fight,
and never stop fighting.
~ E.E. Cummings

Books to read.

The exams finish on November 18 and the wisdom teeth come out on December 16. No more needs to be said - apart from catching up on a year worth of socialising - there is a long list of movies to watch, TV shows to catch up on and books to read.

Shall I begin?

Candide (Voltaire)
The Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath)
South (Ernest Shackleton)
The Feminine Mystique (Betty Friedman)
The Graduate (Charles Webb)
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (Dee Brown)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)
Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
Animal Farm (George Orwell)
Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
Only Forward (Michael Marshall Smith)
The Catcher and the Rye (J. D. Salinger)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Ken Kesey)
Great Expectations (Charles Dickens)
The War of the Worlds (H. G. Wells)
American Psycho (Bret Easton Ellis)
The Lord of the Rings (J. R. R Tolkien)
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Around the World in 80 Days (Jules Verne)
Through the Looking Glass & What Alic Found There (Lewis Carroll)
Memoirs of a Geisha
The Penelopiad (Margaret Atwood)
The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinback)
A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway)
Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse)
The Importance of Being Earnest (Oscar Wilde)

A hint of realism.

Over halfway, woohoo! English was shithouse - today and yesterday.. But I think I'm okay with that. In the end I think you kind of just have to laugh at the shit essay topics you get given, the stupid meanings you interpret from a poem and the fact that some people are so bold as to tell you how well they went when they know you did shit. In the end I think you just have to find a way to be okay with it.

It is frustrating that I know I have written some brilliant practice commentaries and essays in the past 2 weeks, and 2 years for that matter - some of my best - which feel like they have all gone to waste. But I guess that they themselves are something to be proud of - I guess I can just come away from that knowing that I can write - well - but today, that exam, just wasn't my day. They're all just variables that you can't control. And as I've been told - that's just the way the shitty education system is. In the end, it is what it is, and you just have to find a way to deal with it. Whether that is by trying to do what I am doing now and downplay the significance of it all or some other way, I don't think it matters. You've just got to learn to be okay with it, regardless.

Perhaps doing shit (at least in my eyes) will be a blessing because I will finally learn to appreciate myself for who I am, not what I achieve, and not worry about what others think of me. I have a quote written up on my wall that says, "Your reputation is what you're perceived to be. Your character is who you really are" and maybe this - just like the previous disappointments this year - will finally engrain these ideals into my head.

Honestly, I can't even beat myself up that much with the "not doing enough study excuse" in the past few days, because really, much of what I have stuffed up were things out of my control - I didn't really understand the poem, I cracked under pressure in maths, and I didn't pay attention to the one tiny sentence in the Enviro textbook that said how the destruction of ozone layer was an example of positive feedback. I can't change anything, and I am in control of very little. And everything that has already happened - that, I have no control over.

Perhaps I am making excuses for myself, but I think at least this is bringing me closer to having a more objective and realistic view on what I can take out of these exams and what the results really say about me as a person. And realistically, that is very little, apart from the fact that at the end of all this, those results will say that I made it through these two years and came out on the other side.

Without trying to be too ambitious, maybe this lense of warped perception is fading faster than I had initially imagined.. :)

You can spend, minutes, hours, days, weeks or even months over-analyzing a situation - trying to put the pieces together, justifying what could've, would've happened - or you can just leave the pieces on the floor and move the fuck on.

You'll never change what's been and gone...

Hold up... hold on... don't be scared
You'll never change what's been and gone
May your smile... Shine on... Don't be scared
Your destiny may keep you warm.

Cos all of the stars are fading away
Just try not to worry you'll see them some day
Take what you need and be on your way
And stop crying your heart out

Get up... Come on... why you scared
You'll never change what been and gone

~Oasis