Patterns

Go back 6 years. What were you doing today, at this hour, 6 years ago. No, I don’t expect you to remember that. It was just a tricky introduction, just to alert your mind a little, to get those rusty neurons working. Anyway… I do want you to remember how your life was 6 years ago. Were you satisfied with your accomplishments? Did you have any plans for the future? Long term? Short term? Now, jump ahead about three years. Did you, three years ago, accomplish what you had in mind six years ago? Well… You get the picture. What I’m trying to point out here is that life has some patterns that keep showing up. We are not aware of them most of the time. We don’t want to admit that sometimes we make the same choice that got us into trouble.

People have a tendency to stick to the pattern, whether they are aware of it or not. Some of you don’t agree. That’s fine. There are documents to prove you have the right to disagree. But if you search in the vastness if your mind you will find them. Routine may be considered a pattern too. And I’m not talking about that pointless daily routine (get up, brush, comb, keys, office…). That is something you often discover an even do something to get out if it. The routine I am referring to is the big one. You switch jobs, and every time you end up hating the new one. You change girlfriends/boyfriends but you discover that the new partner has the same flaws as the ex. You dream about a new car/house/stereo system but there is always something else that needs your attention and your money. The list goes on. Just try it. Look for them. Scan your life and you’ll find at least one annoying patter that you can’t seem to get out of.

Can we escape them? I’m sure we can. First detect them. Then, come up with a battle plan (you know, with little sketches and lists and whatever helps you divide an conquer). You don’t need to buy all those self-improvement book or psychology studies. Find what what you’ve done so far and just…stop doing it!! I’ve tried it, and it works. I used to spend huge amounts of money on small, useless stuff. Now I only spend money on big, useless stuff.

Are you alive?

There are moments in your life when you stop to analyze your situation, to see where you are, how you stand. The most awful thing you can discover is that you wasted your life big time. You can not recuperate the time you’ve lost. You can not “turn back time” . The song says it, the movies say it, you know it. The first question that should come to your 10% functioning brain is how exactly do you know you’ve wasted your life. Well…there is no good, proper answer to that question. The average man will say that a well spent life is the one that has the basic needs fulfilled. An alright job, a family, picnics with friends once a month, a house with a garden for kids to play in, maybe even a dog. But, that is the average man, the man that has his life planned out since his first kiss. I’m not saying that’s wrong. I have only respect and partial envy for that kind of man. He or she knows what they want and they put the right amount of effort in achieving all those things. You may jump at my throat like a hungry beastie and argue that everyone knows how their life should be, how they want it to turn up and that not everyone succeeds in fulfilling their plans, no matter the amount of effort they put into it. That is also true. But you have not let me finish my introduction.

You know you’ve wasted your life if, when you take the most vivid memory and play it in your head over and over again, it loses it’s meaning and remains just a memory. I think I’ve led you to a confusing pit and now you’re thinking I’m just a person that has a pee for a brain. Let me put it in simpler, shorter sentences.  You had a moment in your past which brought you happiness or sorrow. Recall it. Replay it. Try to visualize it with your eyes wide open (the effect is stronger this way). Remember every detail, every thought you had in that scene. How was the weather? What were you wearing? What were the other people around you wearing? Reproduce the conversation if there was one, the gestures, the reactions (yours especially). Done? How’s your state of mind right now? How’s your pulse? How big is the smile on your face? How about tears? Have they reclaimed their freedom of speech? If not, try another memory, and another.  Our body is supposed to contain a thing called soul. That’s where they say emotions are stored (we all know it’s all in the brain, but let’s not disappoint all the poetic spirits out there). If a man did not exploit the infinite chart if feelings, he has not lived. If you have not felt the horrifying pain that makes you rip your heart (or brain…) out, if you haven’t loved with every inch of your mind and body, if you never felt your heart beat so fast that almost broke your chest open, then, my dear cyber friend, you have not lived. Of course, if you re not 90 years old and prepared for the final stage of living, then you still have a chance to pump some oil into that heart/brain of yours and start living. And lets throw a tiny cliché at the end of this philosophical life lesson: better late than never.

Illusions

Parts of our lives are pure illusions. Seconds lost, which seemed unreal, minutes of mind blackout from which we awake confussed but forget they happened. But what about the hours, days or maybe longer periods of time that are too good or too bad to seem real? What are those? Have you ever felt so happy, so fullfilled that you stopped for a moment to think, to make shure it is real? Personally, I don’t know the feeling. But I’ve heard others talking about these moments and in most of the cases they say the same thing: everything was like a illusion. I ask you now about the moments that situate themselves at the opposite pole. The moments when the situation gets so bad and so impossible to resolve that you find yourseves unsure of everything. Maybe a day that started out like every other day, or a routine situation that should have had a routine ending. And at some point something clicked. A wrong move, a poor choice of words, a missinterpretation of a gesture, a small accident. And everything switched to disaster. In these type of moments you can’t even focuse on what happened. Your mind has a hard time trying to adjust to the situation, to explain things that look out of place and out of context.

It’s late and you want to get home because your tired. You increase the speed a little. What harm can it do? Or maybe you get off early from work and buy your whife a big bouquet of white roses and want to surprise her. But what if you forgot to buy something and you walk into the store, and  before you take knowledge of what is around you, a gunshot noise pierces your ears. A guy is standing in front of you, with a 45 pointed at your stomach. What would you call this moment?

To be continued.