Brief Guide to Life

 Here is a brief set of rules to live by from Zen Habits to attain some more peace in our lives: 

Image- Elena Kalis

less TV, more reading
less shopping, more outdoors
less clutter, more space
less rush, more slowness
less consuming, more creating
less junk, more real food
less busywork, more impact
less driving, more walking
less noise, more solitude
less focus on the future, more on the present 
less work, more play 
less worry, more smiles
breathe

Memory Joggers and Reminders

Memory joggers have become a way of life for me. Without them I'd more than likely forget to do a number of things some of which may be really important.

I'm Sooooo Tired.....zzzzzzzzzzz

I like it at work but I'm so tired today and want to go home and sleep....blissful sleep.

Image by Photobucket -El Filipo

I Need to Slow Read

Image: Steven Errico/Corbis

Being a non reader of books (you know…the old paper ones) I joined a local library book club with the express purpose of forcing myself to front up every month and face public humiliation if I hadn’t read the ‘book of the month’. It was hard…really.. really hard.

And it still is! I mean why am I here blogging instead of reading ‘the Running Man” by Michael Gerard Bauer? The first month of ‘book club’ I got a third of the way through the chosen book( a weird murder mystery about sheep detectives-get my drift?), the second month’s book was good but I only read a few chapters. I secretly returned the book and slipped out before book club meeting started. What a coward !! I have but one week to finish ‘the Running Man’ and man will I be running to finish it!

I've just been reading Sarah Wilson's Sunday Life blog on the pleasures of slow reading. The trouble is that part of our brain just loves digital technology…..all that fast reading, browsing, scanning, linking, blogging and twittering. Traveling the information superhighway is like speeding along a ‘real’ motorway with no speed restrictions, sometimes taking the exit to another motorway and then another and so on without even having to slow down except to grab some fast food.Then it’s back on the motorway.

Image ownership being sought

The trap is this: We all know that If you went on a holiday to Britain for example without leaving a motorway except to take a link to other motorways and read about the towns fleeting by in your glovebox copy of Frommer’s ‘Quick Guide to Britain’, you will never experience the ‘real’ Britain, the villages, the quaint pubs, the stately homes, the people. 

Now with high speed broadband (and better motorway coverage!) we can get you there even quicker….but get you where?…. Yes, if you’re on a business trip or need to get somewhere quickly fast broadband and motorways are both great inventions. But to really live our life we need to take that exit to the little village with the teahouse occasionally…. and even get out of the car and take a stroll to the riverbank and put our feet in the water. Now there’s a nice thought! Readability is a wonderful tool for focusing on what you are reading online



I just get tired of reading after 15 minutes and doze off or lose concentration.

Reading….I mean REAL concentrated reading is a big effort for us scanners.

But when I do manage to sit down and read a REAL PAPER BOOK the rest of the world stops for me. It becomes my ‘ feet in the water’ time …just like meditation….and that’s another story!

Andante

Can Illness be Addictive? (Part 2- What's in it for me?)

Image:Tumbler.com

Could I be subconsciously using illness to escape something I don't want to confront or do?

Has being 'unwell' become a habit, an addiction, a delusion  so convincing I fail to see what others see? Have I ever asked myself why I am so anxious and others are not? Have I convinced myself  that if I lost my illness I would not cope, not be able to live the life I live? Do I find some sort of twisted comfort in being sick? Like someone with an eating disorder who finds avoiding food and controlling the way they look as something within their power...that they can control?

Is the thought of myself not being that guy who's always sleepy, moody, funny, vague, naive, a loner, sensitive and difficult too much for me to deal with? 

Image Ownership being sought

What am I getting out of being the loner, the one who needs to lie down, the one who always says 'no' he's too busy or says 'yes' but never delivers?

Could it be that my illness has in fact become an  addiction? Because addiction includes rewards. In my case could I be using illness as an excuse to avoid things I don't like doing, to spend more time at home doing things I like?

Am I addicted to the close physical sensations of being unwell that somehow  act as a substitute for intimacy with other human beings?

Image Ownership being sought

It is possible that I have have come to think of the feelings as 'me' ....as 'normal'? To suddenly be free of anxiety and depression (a version of sadness) is a little frightening, as a prisoner might experience on his first day out of  gaol . 

Released prisoners often talk of wanting to return to the safety they felt behind bars. I admit I've had similar thoughts that if ever I was given a long gaol sentence for something it would provide a relief from the daily decision making problems of ADD (in fact a large proportion of prison population has ADD). The routine would be comforting and inescapable, giving me plenty of time to hyperfocus on writing my memoirs. 

But seriously.....have I been deluding myself all these years as an excuse to feel 'emotional', eccentric, different, special?

I've said it many times...that I would hate to be 'ordinary.'...

But I never considered the rewards... 

that being 'ordinary' may also mean healthy, happy and content.

Andante

Can Illness be Addictive? (Part 1- A Fable of Courage, Addiction and Shame)

A scene from the BBC TV Series 'The Street'
Image Courtesy BBC

I recently watched an episode of 'The Street', an excellent and intelligent  British drama series about the lives of people living in the modern urban poverty of Manchester, an industrial city in England.

In this episode a betting shop employee, Shay (Stephen Graham) is forced to reassess his life and his alcoholism when he meets Otto, his 16-year-old son with Down's Syndrome, (played by Leon Harrop) for the first time.

Central to the episode was a violent robbery in the local betting shop. Shay ran the shop and worked behind the counter. He was a bit of sad character  and  loner who liked a  drink and a bet and recited Dylan Thomas when he was drunk. 

The other chap, Nick (Jonas Armstrong) was a soldier recently returned from the war in Iraq sporting a facial disfigurement from injuries received in a suicide bomb attack. We knew from previous episodes that his war experiences, his loss of self esteem from his unattractive  facial scarring and the prejudice of the local community since he returned  had left him psychologically  damaged  and  emotionally isolated from other people. He was in the betting shop when the robbery occurred and took cover along with everyone else.

The storyline then followed the life of Shay. When his ex wife arrives at his doorstep and introduces him his intellectually disabled teenage son Otto, whom he had never known about, he initially refuses to acknowledge the lad,  preferring instead to continue spending  his days drinking and betting and thinking only of his own problems.

Although he eventually begins to respond to Otto's persistent and unconditional admiration for him his life becomes more and more dysfunctional as he struggles with feelings of guilt and failure over his inability to cope with fatherhood. Despite a number of attempts to  give up the drink he cannot prevent his descent into alcoholism. 

A defining scene occurs when Otto's mother declares to her son in front of  his father that  "your father loves the grog more than he loves you!"....and Shay says nothing implying his helplessness in the face of addiction.


It was frustrating to witness his daily battle with the warm destructive temptation of grog and watch his good intentions continually overwhelmed by its power. He loses his job after 'borrowing' money from the till and ends up homeless. He is  eventually spotted living under an overpass by the younger sister of Nick ,who, as you will recall, was with him at the betting shop robbery. 

Being a close knit community Nick's mum takes him for a while to help him get his life back together. One night after he began to recover from his addiction they were discussing the nature of bravery and courage. The alcoholic blamed his descent into alcohol addiction on the trauma he experienced during the betting shop robbery. He drank heavily after the incident to hide his fear. Moreover he  attributed  Nick's seemingly better ability to cope with the robbery trauma to his  desensitization following his war experiences.

But the ex soldier denied that he was desensitized and, pointing to the burn scars on his face uttered: 

"The bravest thing I ever did wasn't facing the trauma of war. ........It was  to come back home and walk into the local pub again for the first time with a face like this" 

He continued:

"Bravery isn't measured by how you cope with the initial trauma but by how well you cope with ordinary life afterward"

His response puts into perspective the role of personal choice in how one responds to a traumatic event in their life. Is it possible that such events may subconsciously provide the excuse some people have been waiting for to turn what once might have been an enjoyable but relatively harmless controlled  pastime (such as having a few social drinks or taking a midday nap) into a full- on self indulgent addiction (such as alcoholism or wanting to spend  all day in bed)  that overrides their long held core beliefs and every aspect of their life.

Does this suggest a behavioral abnormality or genetic component?

They may find comfort and normalcy in their drug of choice be it alcohol, heroin, attention seeking behavior, co-dependency sympathy, obsessive love or sex.

It became apparent to Shay that he was showing a lack of courage in 'choosing' his love of grog (the addiction) over his love for his son Otto and family despite his constant attempts to dislodge himself from it. Every day he felt a rush of anticipation of the pleasure he would get from the first exquisite warm sip ignoring thoughts of tomorrow. The dopamine  rush is 'buy now...pay later'...designed to make you immediately happy and not to remind you of the high interest repayments later.

It was likely it was his sense of intense 'shame' at hitting rock bottom that turned him to listen to the voice of recovery. 

'Shame' can be a weapon against self annihilation in that it is a valid and natural human emotion that can challenge one to correct the injustice and hurt that may be behind it.

A sense  of 'shame' urged Shay to finally 'take action' to regain his pride .

'Shame' is often the last lifeline that reconnects us to humanity and  saves  us from the oblivion of self destruction.

'Shame'  creates a  space for honesty and eventually forgiveness.

It eventually became apparent to Shay that his intellectually disabled son  worshipped and loved him more that anything else in the world and that  his  love was unconditional. He was accepted by Otto despite letting him down time and time again.  It was not until his drinking habit almost killed his son that he woke up to the implications of his habit. 

From that point on his sense of 'guilt' or 'shame' finally become a stronger addiction than alcohol and he turned his life around.

BBC 'The Street'

Read Part 2 Here

How to be Alone

Tanya Davis, Poet/Singer/Songwriter

This is a wonderful little video by filmmaker, Andrea Dorfman and poet/singer/songwriter Tanya Davis that will make you giggle to yourself if indeed you are alone.

It has reminded  me to look at single living with different a perspective.

Davis wrote the beautiful poem and performed in the video which Dorfman directed, shot, animated by hand and edited. The video was shot in Halifax, Nova Scotia and was produced by  Bravo! FACT

I have included a link to the video here and in my sidebar.

You can find a written version of Andrea's poem in Andante's Poetry Blog

Film Review - I Am Love (Io Sono L'amore)

Image Courtesy Magnolia Pictures

I love foreign films mainly European.

Just for something a little lighter I thought I'd post a really short movie review occasionally starting with my thoughts about a film I saw tonight:

I Am Love (Io Sono L'amore) by Italian Director Luca Guadagninor.

This film attracted widely varying opinions. It is about a rich Italian business dynasty which begins to disintegrate when a tragedy unfolds within the family. The  Russian born family matriarch Emma (played by Tilda Swinton) is drawn away from her life of tradition and wealth when she falls shamelessly in love with her son's friend.

At first I thought the film to be a little boring but as it developed I became more and more intrigued by the subtlety and contrasts within the film in the settings and musical score. A film truly in the modern Italian genre.

Like 'Stealing Beauty' the film used landscape, art, sounds and food to paint an truly thoughtful and highly intelligent film of modern Italy.

It was a film of such strange contradictions it took great skill to weave together this tapestry of history, love, longing, landscape, grief and family into an impressionistic whole.

I was puzzled by the dark shadowy scene during the credits.

Let yourself languish in this exquisite piece of Italian Cinema.
Here is a link to a teaser:
I am Love (io Sono L'amore) teaser

Andante

On Loneliness

Here is another video from Ashley Carey posted on Youtube.
For someone so young  Ashley (who incidently has a great sense of parody) gives surprisingly wise counsel to a young lad suffering from loneliness. Her advice is empathic but at the same time realistic. This is in fact the sort of advice I would have immensely benefited from when I was in a low state a few months back.

Overcoming Loneliness

High Sugar Days

I don't think I've mentioned my Diabetes much but occasionally it makes life a little more difficult.....like today when my Blood sugar levels are through the ceiling and I don't really know why and I can't have breakfast until they drop and in the meantime I really miss breakfast and if I don't eat something I will only get tireder and weaker.

Another legacy of a life of not managing anxiety, stress and worry.

How do you Think Other People Perceive You?

I attended one of those little discussion groups last night....you know....the ones where you sit around in a small cosy group in a comfy room with scented candles and a warm fire and talk about feelings and emotions and do role plays and games.

This workshop was with a group of new friends whom I met during a recent course, which  not surprisingly was also about getting more enjoyment out of  life. A small group of us continued to stay in touch and had got to know each other a little better during that time.

ADD is Real

Here is a video I came across on http://www.adderworld.com/blog1/ which describes the life of a young person by the name of Ashley Carey.(BrokeTheInterweb) She has quite a following on 'youtube' with over 68 video postings. She seems to have opinions on lots of subjects, is weirdly witty and imaginative, talks a real lot and....you've got it!... She has Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD)!  Her heartfelt description of living with the condition on a daily basis speaks for itself. It is of particular relevance to students  with ADD trying to study.

                          Ashley Carey - ADD is Real

Mad Hatter's Birthday

Well another birthday over as the years tick away

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Albert Einstein on Delusion

Here is a extract from the 'Tibetan Book of Living and Dying' by Sogyal Rinpoche, a teacher of Buddhist meditation, quoting the great scientist Albert Einstein. It is one of those rare and refreshing glimpses of 'science' embracing unquantifiable and indefinable concepts of 'compassion' and 'beauty':

"A human being is part of a whole, called by us "the Universe", a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself,  his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us , restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in it's beauty."

Originally from Albert Einstein, 'Ideas and Opinions', translated by Sonja Bargmann (NY Crown publishers, 1954) quoted in Sogyal Rinpoche, 'The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying'  Pg 99 (Pub Harper 2002)

Andante

Enjoying my new Solitary Life

I have felt an obvious shift in my energy and calmness since I have been living on my own.

I know its only been two weeks  but I also notice a synergy of events around me now that makes me feel more 'connected' to people and life.

Good Weekend

I had a very satisfying weekend including meeting friends Saturday night and family on Sunday.
Andante