on feeling blue - an excerpt from a commentary by ko

hm,
blue is my favourite colour
i think i grew up
as a serious kid
and blue
especially dark blue
and most especially
the deep dark infinite blue of the early night sky
was something that always felt like "me"
that being said,
my personality
often tended towards
the melancholic side of life
and so,
blue days
were a normal thing for me

i think one of the biggest things about it was
i wasn't happy being me
or with me
i KNEW i was here to do something "Great"
for some higher purpose
but if God or the universe was going to let me know
what exactly that purpose was/is
they sure didn't seem very clear on it
that being said
without that knowledge
that inner purpose
and only the barest idea
that there should be SOMETHING out there
life was blue and blue again

one ends up searching for answers
in what others do
and such comparisons
are a bit of a trap...
because what others do
may be absolutely meaningless
to you
and if you think otherwise
then one day in the future
you'll be sitting there thinking
why the heck
did i "waste" all my time
doing all of this stuff
when in the end
i am not happy?
so when i started realizing this
i spent alot of time
thinking alone
talking to myself,
with myself
(or selves... yup all of them)
and had many a heated discussion
on how i should rule the world...
*grin*
in the end though
we figured out
that some of the stuff
that we discussed
was pretty whack
(cRaZy!)
and the real problem was
i couldn't get along
with my selves
you see,
i didn't like me
(or all of me -
some of me was ok :P )
and i didn't love me
thus
i did not accept myself
and that made everything difficult

as for questions about career...
how about life?
from age 11
i began to introspect
alot.
to the point
where certain people
were worried about my behaviour
(parents, teachers, psychologists, etc)
and it wasn't
thinking so much about everyone else moving ahead
as,
i hadn't a clue
what i wanted to do
(heavy thoughts for an 11 year old
but they persisted for a decade and a half)
i found myself in university
studying things i didn't really like
volunteering for all sorts of things
and discovering
all the things that i didn't want to do in life
which left me
still with no clue about what i wanted

people went to work for companies
or became doctors or lawyers
life seemed to be moving forward for them
and all i knew was
i had no idea what i was going to do

i knew that i could do well
in whatever i wanted to do
i just didn't know what.
made life a bit "grey"
as in bleak and sad
or foggy
without direction
i've never really had a particular career
but i've done many different types of work
and there was a point in my life
where i thought to myself
i've done so much
and yet it means so little
because after all these years
i still haven't a clue
as to what i want to do
and all the skills i've learned
are useless
because they only confirm
things i do not want to do
sucks to be me eh?
thing is though,
even tho i'd feel a bit of "pressure"
from what i call society
(the people and world around me?)
it never stuck long...
it didn't matter
what others were doing and achieving
because when i truly thought about it
and put myself in their shoes
i realized i didn't care
to have and live
their lives
it would be just as meaningful
as doing nothing at all
and so i searched on

what i've kind of learned now
is to not really spend alot of time
thinking about the future
instead of thinking where i should be
i look at where i am at
what i want Now
what i care about Now
what means something to me Now
...i pay attention to the present moment
now,
this is not to say
i do not consider the future
and what my current actions may bring
i DO consider the future
but i keep an open mind
to change
to flow
to the fact that even the best of plans
never turn out quite exactly as you intend
i've learned to be flexible and adaptive
to the situation,
to the person,
to the moment
to the Now
and now i find myself
less melancholic
than i've ever been in my life
less serious
than i used to be
if i was born old
i have now grown up to be
young
:)
it's a happier place

i deal with stuff that is happening in me
when i am depressed,
i spend some time
quiet time
with myself
and try to understand why
try to ask myself what is making me sad, angry, irritable
and if i can't figure out
any meaningful answer
i try to find a place and just chill
movie theatres are one of my favourite places
;)
thing is,
i've gotten pretty open with myself
honest with "me"
and i find
i can talk to myself fairly easily now
i can admit to
things i am ashamed of
things i am embarrassed about
and it makes life a heck of a lot easier

i've always been... a passionate person
when i do things
people call me a perfectionist
or a workaholic
but i think they misunderstand...
i'm incredibly lazy
and unfocused
unless
it's something i really care about
and when i was younger
i found i cared about a lot of things
i got involved very easily
and very emotionally
in different things
with different things
i got fired up pretty easy :P
my friends told me i was
"very intense"
but i never had a sense
that i was establishing a career
i was very much
following my heart
in what i felt
was right
was worthwhile
and with every summer that passed
i felt like i had aged 10 years
i learned alot
but maybe it was too fast and too hard
and i found myself
growing so much older
than all the people around me

i could understand my friends
and often helped them out
listening to their stories
and offering advice
but i felt so alone
because no one could really
understand me
or help me

being alone
being lonely
was a fact of life
and i think
i really didn't like it
made me sad
made me think a lot
the more i did
the more jaded i became
i became pessimistic and cynical
because
the world of reality
never matched
the world in my dreams
i was... idealistic
too idealistic perhaps

time passed and certain events in my life
came to a climax
and it became a choice
to live
or to die
i realized that i wanted to live...
and so i set about
fixing things in my life
and i started with me
i can't say that there was any one moment
where i suddenly understood this
maybe a scattering
of some little events
after i made my decision
to live
to deal with life

i remember
driving in my car
passing through the university one day
seeing the sun hit the leaves
of the trees shading the road
and i felt happy
i felt joy
simple uncomplicated
like nothing i'd ever
experienced before
it was ... amazing

the whole thing with the eyes
came a couple years after
and you know,
i'd spent
most of my childhood
feeling persecuted
feeling like a victim
of society
of the world around me
of fate, God and the universe
and i realized
i didn't want to be a victim any more
so when i lost my sight
i guess my perspective underwent a huge shift
i saw in my heart
that i had 2 choices:

1. be a victim and be blind

2. see what i could do, decide what i wanted to do, and do it

i chose number 2
and while that hasn't stopped me
from slipping into fits of depression
and even anger
i find myself in general
happy now
:)
so all that has happened with my eyes
i see as a gift
a chance to do things very differently
and see the whole world in a completely new way
as i told a friend once,
it was only after i lost my vision
that i truly learned to see clearly

so... career...
my career is about learning
is about growing
is about understanding
my career is about life
and if you accept my definition of career
then i guess that makes me a career person
:)
sometimes i find
we get so caught up with words,
in words
and we miss
the true meaning of things.
we seek to define every thing
career, love, health, friends, family, wealth
when in the end
we are only trying to define ourselves
to discover what we are and who we are
i don't worry too much about career
or about all those other things
i can "speak" about them
but they are exactly subjective
and thus can change as life goes on

when one understands
what one is all about
everything is the same
it's a bit hard to explain...
it has to do with flow
it has to do with just Being
it all comes together
one and the same:)

is being a geek a bad thing?
do you regret
studying like mad in high school?
do you regret
putting in all the work towards your goals?
and afterwards
do you feel
you should have gotten something more
for all the effort you've put in?

can you work
just for money?
to build up some personal finances or assets?
can you do any training
that will increase your knowledge and skills
in a way that is meaningful to you?
do you want to be what you think you are?
or is what you are
simply something
you feel "stuck" with now
now that you've dedicated so much of your time,
your energy
and your life
into it?

knowing what you want in life
is the hardest thing about life
often times
you think you know what you want
but when you get it
you're still not happy
or it turns out
that what you wanted
is different from
what you expected

expectations are the insanity of the mortal mind
they are what holds us in a world
that is not real
they can make us happy
they can make us sad
and if we shift our expectations
change them or reverse them
happy, sad
good and bad
can be reversed in an instant
crazy eh!

i find
i have less and less expectations
of myself
and of the people around me...
of the world around me
i try to see things
as they are
not as i want them to be
or wish and hope them to be
it makes life... simpler
that doesn't mean
that i can do this all the time
but when i do discover
that i am sad or upset
i realize
that i have an expectation
and
that it is something i've created
within myself
a denial of how things are
and a wish
for how things "should" be
it's an illusion in the end:)

do you feel pressure
from the people in your life?
do you wish
you had what they had?
a new job?
a partner in life?
a baby?
if you truly want something
that's a gift of life
from God
or from the universe
however you want to look at it
because it's something
that allows you
to define yourself
the trick is
to not delude yourself
into thinking you want something
when you really don't
and this is something
many of us do all the time

about all those other people
"everyone else"
do you feel
that their lives are full?
are exciting and meaningful?
that they are "going somewhere"?
and are "accomplishing something"?
often times
it is very hard to see
the troubles that go along
with what one has, does or achieves
maybe they wish,
or will wish
that they could be free
of work
of spouse
of children
maybe they regret
that they didn't spend more time
exploring
when they had the time
and now they have too many responsibilities
to even consider doing
what YOU are doing
maybe they wish
they could just chill on a beach
and dive on a whim
with amazing creatures
do you see,
why i say
it's all an illusion?
the reality is Now
where you are
and what you are doing
the past
the future
things not here in the present moment
are all unreal
you cannot change them
you cannot affect them
they are meaningless
and have no substance
but what you can do
is affect and change
what is happening
exactly Now
how you think
and how you see things
how much attention you pay
how passionately you live
Now
not before,
not in the future,
NOW! :)

about me,
people think
it's impossible
to be a workaholic and chill
well they don't understand
what it truly is
to be ... me :)
one can chill
with an intensity in the moment
i mean,
really just CHILL!
vividly, passionately
i cannot think of a suitable word
it sounds paradoxical
but it's not
if i decide to slack off
i become a perfectionist at slacking off
or chilling
and i'll worry about other stuff later
when i decide to not chill
and when i decide to "work" again
when that mindset sinks in
everything can be about play
work is play
play is work
being laid back is intense
and being intense is relaxing
because there's no added stress
to the soul
does that make any sense?
i feel like i'm almost sermonizing here
i hope it doesn't come across that way
i'm just sharing
my um... philosophy of life?
that sounds too grand and archaic
how about
the shit i contemplate every day ;)
much better!
*grin*
i'll finish off my ramblings with this thought
we are the only reason
we are unhappy
think about it
*wink*

i hope i've not totally freaked you out
sometimes i get
carried away
when i start "talking"
:)
i guess i'm a geek
and i don't mind at all :)
thing is though
i'm not only a geek...
labels are silly things
they make us conform
they close our minds
i am a geek,
a jock,
a scholar,
a peasant,
a visionary,
a warrior,
a pacifist,
a leader,
a follower,
a lover,
a fighter,
a seeker,
a hero,
a coward.
i am life
i am death
i am mortal
and immortal
i finally realized
i am that i am
and there is no i

and that's as simple as it gets...
freaky eh?
*wink*
one would almost expect
glowing lights
and the universe coming to an end...
if this were the climax of a some abstract movie
hehehehee
:)