I really do. Living with a spoiled little tyrant inside my head is no fun, believe me. It's a bit like Alice's experience with the Red Queen. You know what that's like. On any given day, at any given time, I'm likely to hear stuff like this:
This is insane thinking of course and thinking like this leads to apathy, or even worse, avolition. I know, it was a new word for me too when my therapist first used it on me. Actually, I misunderstood her to say avocation and thought she was talking about my blogging. To be fair, Princess Amy's comments are what my blog posts are all about so it was an understandable mistake.
Please don't rush off to WebMD looking for a definition. I have it for you here: Avolition is a total lack of motivation that makes it hard to accomplish anything. Apathy can keep me from wanting to write a blog post. Avolition can keep me from getting out of bed in the morning.
Solutions come when you aren't search
Over the years I've found several ways of keeping my head above the clouds when the storms of depression, anxiety, and grief come roaring in from off-shore to assault my mindscape.
Now, you see, you're running as fast as you can and
still you're in the same place. If you really want to get somewhere, you must run twice as fast.
Please don't rush off to WebMD looking for a definition. I have it for you here: Avolition is a total lack of motivation that makes it hard to accomplish anything. Apathy can keep me from wanting to write a blog post. Avolition can keep me from getting out of bed in the morning.
Solutions come when you aren't search
Over the years I've found several ways of keeping my head above the clouds when the storms of depression, anxiety, and grief come roaring in from off-shore to assault my mindscape.
I don't want you to think that I've found any secrets. All my coping tools are well known. They include things like going for a walk in the sunshine; singing along with my favorite recording artists; and enjoying humorous books, movies, and TV.
One thing I particularly like is reading books by authors who share humorous stories about how they cope with their own mental health issues, issues similar to my own. Looking for the giggles in the absurdities of our lives seems to be a common practice for people with mood disorders.
During one of Princess Amy's recent tirades, I remembered a book that I'd started months ago but lost interest because it featured taxidermy in a very distant and unnecessary way.
During one of Princess Amy's recent tirades, I remembered a book that I'd started months ago but lost interest because it featured taxidermy in a very distant and unnecessary way.
Taxidermy is one of the three subjects that I avoid in popular entertainment. The other two are anarchy and the multiple-worlds theory that claims the collapse of a quantum wave function when observing entangled particles requires a second dimension or universe. I know! You and I share the same opinion!
At any rate, I decided it would be worth the risk to give the book a second try. Taxidermy be damned, was my attitude. There was no bookmark (Remember those?) to identify where I'd left off, so I decided to read a little of each chapter until I found something that I hadn't read before.
I began with the introduction because I feel the intro is basic to full appreciation and besides a number of months had passed since reading it and I didn't remember much of it.
I felt a little better about tackling the book when the first chapter lacked any and all references to squirrel weddings. I continued reading the second and following chapters thinking that when I got to the objectionable parts, I'd just skip over them.
When I got to the fifth chapter, I was finally in new territory. I'd found the place where I'd abandoned the story months before. Everything was new and I was enjoying the book immensely. I wondered why I'd stopped reading the book on that first attempt.
Eventually, I came to a funny story near the end of the book that has become my favorite. The author recounted how she routinely watches movies that she thinks she's never seen only to realize when she gets to the big shebang, that she has watched the movie before.
As I read that story, I immediately realized that I'd read that story before. In fact, I'd read the entire book months earlier. Then I realized that I'd experienced exactly the same thing that I was reading about and it happened while I was reading the author's recounting of her experience.
I'll be the Japanese have a name for that. They have a name for everything.
It's all predictable until it isn't
It's that kind of experience, a sort of quantum-jump event, that confirms for me that my life occurs in the interstitial spaces between and outside of, the moments of the space-time continuum that Einstein made such a big fuss over.
I've written about it before. The individual moments of time are round--should I say spherical? Moments are like marbles; when crammed together they only touch at one small point. The thread of time is continuous only where the individual moments touch. There's a lot of empty space surrounding the moments and that empty space is outside time.
Now that I think about it, maybe I should give that multiple-world theory another look. Maybe I have some entangled particles in another dimension. I'll ponder it but I'm not getting anywhere near taxidermy!
"Just accept whatever comes along!" ~~ Rumi
Not a direct quote
It's not the best life but it's mine and as I navigate the quantum fields of whimsy that make up my days, I have no better option than to look for all the laughter I can find in the folly. Buffett said that if we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane.
And so rather than fight Princess Amy and wrestle with avolition, I raise a glass to the laughter that sparkles like sunlight on the sea in those interstitial spaces in the realm of the absurd.
And so, share wid me a cup Jah's sweet mercy, Breden, and we shout down Babylon and sail de ship on home to Zion.
Fierce Qigong! ~~ The Genome