THE BED AND THE HUMAN
Hello everyone! Thanks for joining The Purple Journal after that pretty long break.
Here’s the reason why I’ve not been writing:
I’VE BEEN IN BED
I repeat, I’ve been in bed.
Believe me she wasn’t prepared for this. Early on a new October morning, she gently rose up with the pace of dawn. A plain white sheet laid on her wooden table with plans ready to come to life.
She had invested the early hours into appreciatong the new greens outside her house, and fruitfully approaching the month.
She had carried some air from the previous month; the air of hope. A lovely way to start a new phase if you ask me but the rest of the days lacked the resemblance of dawn. It sure was quiet but it was too quiet. Adrenaline was always appreciated…
I surprisingly found myself in a situation where I was always in bed.
Thinking about it now, it obviously was and still is an escape.
FACING THE UNKNOWN
From this experience, I would say facing the unknown requires these properties:
- Self control
- Discipline
- Resilience
- Courage
- Faith, trust, hope.
Love hovers over them all.
Facing an unknown beginning can trigger new habits in us. These habits can be geared toward striving to achieve, following a certain schedule or escaping failed actions.
Sleeping has become one of those habits that helped me escape the after effects of failed actions.
I really had no idea what the problem was but I always felt the need to escape the bad feeling by sleeping. But here’s a little tip:
Bad feelings arise as an alert that we are not really doing the right things or we are generally making wrong decisions.
If we feel too optimistic and try to wave off the bad feeling, the problem remains.
If we find ways to escape the feelings when they come, we will definitely get away from it but not for long.
Maybe the best thing we can do is be courageous (with the knowledge that courage is not the absence of resistance and fear), face the feeling, analyse it, hear what it’s trying to say to us and get on with doing the right things (which turns out to be the core problem)
DOING THE RIGHT THING
Truly we all know the right things to do, how? We already know the wrong things we are doing.
The problem with doing the right thing is how uncomfortable it gets; the uncontrollable resistance and we are humans anyways.
This is why I can support the list above that discipline and self-control are very great and productive attitudes to cultivate and grow when approaching our very life (which is always an unknown).
In the main time, it will feel excruciatingly difficult (if not impossible), but when it’s over you will be more peaceful looking back at the suffering, rather than looking back at all the things you didn’t do.
BED EQUALS SLEEP
When I failed to do the things I was suppose to do, I found my legs moving to the bedroom. In a sunny, hot afternoon, I would cover myself up with my very thick blanket and hope to get away from it all by sleeping. I would put myself to sleep by convincing my gullible self with these words:
“I’ll do it when I wake up, maybe I’ll feel fresh, new and ready to restart the day.”
I was always looking for ways to restart the day, even though it’s 7pm. Sleeping was the best way to help myself realise this stupid intention.
So how do you actually get out of bed and do what you’re suppose to do?
Here’s a quick answer:
Grumble and hate it all while you actually make a decision and attempt to move your body off the bed. Move yourself, feet by feet (still grumbling) and place yourself on the area where you have your work. When you’re done, thank God later.
There is no how. Thing is, we all know how to; We just lack discipline because we hold on to our entitlement to comfort.
We are always choosing (I’ll talk about this in the next topic of this series).
We will feel way better after our suffering than we will feel after our comfort.
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You see, the thing with comfort (laying in bed, scrolling through channels, surfing instagram, munching on junk) is this: it’s just an escape. It doesn’t actually make the problem go away. It just makes you get addicted and dependent on it. It makes you run away from the problem when indeed happiness comes from solving problems.
Get out of bed… Face the feeling.
It’s funny how the best things we desire actually come from doing the very things we want to ignore. It’s ironic how true comfort actually comes from being uncomfortable.
The make up of man is one of the most counter-intuitive system I’ve ever observed.
The best way to get away from uncomfortable feelings is doing the uncomfortable… It is simply doing the right thing, which we all know is hard to do (at first).
I am not saying it’s (that) easy, I’m just saying it’s worth choosing…
Here’s how I got to write this post after a long time of avoidance: I got out of bed and reluctantly sat on my work table. Period.
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