Life is Strange

Life is strange. It's weird. It's up and down and all around.

Try to escape and you run in circles.
Try to understand it and it evades your grasp.
Try to ignore it and it consumes.

Paths we weave, paths we blaze, future and past - we live our lives. We intermingle with other paths, sometimes crossing, sometimes parallel, sometimes we join up.

But its so dynamic, it is always changing, and what we once think we understood changes on its head, our paths zig zag and loop-de-loop and pull!

When we think we've finally settled, and things are 'normal' at last, a stare into the night sky and a tear down the cheek brings it all back. The sheer meaning, purpose, and existence of anything at all - anything at all. It boggles and contorts our minds.

Some of us brush it under. Some of us hold it high. Some of us battle and fight it, confused as to where to put it.

It just is, and all that is, just is. And we make it and weave it, and are force-fed it and stung by it. It's strange, it's weird, it's odd and even. We can never really get it and we'll never totally be in the dark. It's a place of mystery and wonder.

But if and when you forget, remember, that Life is Strange.

"Too smart to be happy?"

When we are born we are dumb.
We grow, and get shown the world by other people, their perspective.

We take strength in what we're told and what we're shown.

But when we start to read and question and think about whats been handed to us - we find most of it is wrong. Its construed, its backwards, its meaningless.

This makes us sad, for our whole lives seem based on false ideologies and paradigms. 

We begin to question everything. Everyone. Is anyone right? Is there even a 'right' at all?

Once we’ve been tricked and are forced to learn on our own, life seems a bit less happy than what we were told. We have to start over, erase all the falsehoods and fairy tales.

We grow, thinking this place is foolish, filled with fools and stupid people. We alienate and think ourselves different.

We start wondering why other people are happy at all – "ignorance is bliss", we suppose.

But then we come across these genius minds, and they are also happy.

We struggle to understand - maybe they're only smart in one thing, but they are stupid in others?

Maybe they 'just don't get it.' even with all that smart, and all that intelligence, they still just don't get it.

Maybe they have some cognitive dissonance?

We try to talk to them, follow them, or understand and make sure we’re missing something.
But we’re not. 

These are genuinely intelligent people, who know all we know and more.

But they're happy.
How do they do that? How can they get it but still be happy?

And so we grow again, into the next stage. 

Finding that happiness isn't this "ignorant-only" thing.

It may take a smart man to realize flaws in happiness.
But it takes an even greater mind to create it.

Series of Responses to the "Depressed" - What should I do about depression (The real 'cure')

Today someone posted on a website that they were depressed. The phrase "End it all" appeared, and, although I wasn't worried (the one's who write this are the lucky ones), I responded. I'm deciding to put my response here because I think its worthy of some space in "the cloud". 

The thing that immediately clicks in my mind when someone makes a post like this is they are not suicidal, they only think they are. They have come to the conclusion that happiness is something they will never have and fear and depression will be in their future forever. What is the one thing that causes you to get scared/depressed the most?

The future, right? You think
“Oh my god, what if this keeps happening forever?”
“What if when I’m 50 it comes back and its even worse?”
“What if I’m like my mom when she’s 50?”

You know what this is? This is just existentialism, through one lens. You are going through your life contemplating one possibility and one possibility only. When you feel down, you cast that veil upon your future, diminishing ALL your possibilities, all your greatness, all your motivation, inspiration and beauty come to a halt and you FOCUS on this bullshit depression filled paradigm that you are consumed with in that moment.

LIFE is not about the future. Life is about NOW and when you cast yourself in the abyssal slums of depression in the NOW you should keep it there, and dwell within it, and learn from it, so the next time it comes you say “Oh fuck. Here goes another day of shit. I’ll try and make tomorrow better.”

Our minds are cycles, and our lives are not our own. We weave these stories of who we are and what we are from past and present. It is foolish of us to place this into the future. YOU, HEEDTHEM, need to realize this. You need to realize that you will have bad days and you will have good days, but the only way to remove the bad days from the future are to keep them in the now. Your post is plastered with references to the future, and its obvious that this is where your depression is coming from.

Take the negative, depressive, empty feelings and sit in them. Say to yourself ‘I understand this is going to last some time, but I will recover and I can move on.’

If, however, you refrain from this and continue along the lines of “What if I never get better? What if I’m like this when I’m my mom’s age? What if I’m depressed when I have kids” You will continue writing these posts, you will continue looking for escapes, and you will continue to push others away.

Which brings up another point. In order to bring good into your life – you have to GIVE. You need to give the love that you have. You need to hug to be hugged and you need to kiss to be kissed.

Be done with this b.s. fear-shit. Be done with the grim future. Be done with the “what ifs” and the doubts. Start giving, and receiving. Start loving. Start remembering the now, and keeping the future for another day.

There was a year in my life where I contemplated buying a gun. Every day seemed to be exactly the same. I would wake up and my FIRST thought would be “Fuck this. I feel like shit again. Why am I even here.” Every day for 3 months. Every day.

I lost all emotional ties to my parents. My friends became manikins that I rode around with, life was useless. The future was meaningless. I was just existing out of pure apathy of not wanting to go through the hassle of buying a weapon to end my life quickly. I just rode the waves of depression.

But I realized, as I stated above, that all that shit, all the negativity was from condemning my own future. OF casting that pitch-black veil on my later years. I was destroying any chance I had before I even had it. I was killing myself in the days to come. I was the culprit, nothing else, and there can be no other reason for depression except yourself.

Its bullshit to call ‘imbalances’ or ‘genetics’ as well, and I don’t even want to / or have the time to go into this, but its total BS. Those millions of people with depression? Self-fulfilling prophecy. We don’t have genes to make us depressed, thats just silly. We are ACTIVELY turning on those genes, and the more they tell us its ‘just how we are’ the more we accept it, the more those genes get comfortable with being on.

So fuck ALL that shit. Fuck all the crap they tell you, and realize that you, and I, and all of us, are really beautiful people. We can give so much to everyone, and our futures can be brighter than we can possibly imagine. Take THIS kind of talk and plaster it on your kid’s future. Take this motivational, inspirational wonderful stuff and paint your future with it. Rip down the bleak meaninglessness and begin filling the future with bright clarity and understanding.

In response to feeling dissociated, and that the above "doesn't work for me."

First – the dissociation feeling is a by-product of being ‘depressed’. Dissociation is what happens to you after you’ve been in depression repeatedly or for any serious duration. Its your brain’s way of saying “holy fuck I need to cut some ties” so it starts diluting everything its taking in. Dissociation goes away when depression goes away. At one point I was so dissociated, I remember on multiple occasions (possibly a dozen) where I couldn’t remember if what had happened during the day was reality or a dream. I had conversations with my parents where I couldn’t remember if we had actually talked or if I was imagining things into existence. I would wake up some days and completely forget the previous day. It was an odd experience in my life.

Second, the reason that you aren’t getting from “What if?” to “Fuck yeah” is because you don’t believe its possible. This is the biggest misconception about human consciousness I know of. Happiness is a choice, and we actually don’t want to accept this. It seems fake if it were such an easy thing, right? I mean real happiness has substance – I have to be a happy person to feel happiness.

But its quite the inverse. In order to be a happy person, you need to create happiness. And sometimes the best way to do that is to literally make it out of thin air. Make happiness from nothing. You may want to repeat my happiness trials from my dead blog some time ago.

I was long since passed my depression when I wrote it, but I wanted to experiment. I was having a very ‘bleak’, that is, very neutral gray attitude towards everything. Stuff was just happening. Not really happy not really sad, just chilling. So I decided fuck me, why not try to be happy? Why not ‘fake it till I make it’?

I woke up everyday, and I smiled. I faked it but really tried to make it real (you can feel these waves of forcing it and then actual happiness happen – its rather interesting). I would drive to work, very tired, but smiling. I would smile at shitty drivers, I would smile at the cloudy sky. I would smile at the thought of sitting at my desk all day. Most of the time it was like “No, Jon… not gonna happen.” But about 10% of the time when I started I would actually feel happy. I would feel like it was a summer day, bright and sunny, cool breeze. I would imagine myself in my favorite spot.

Now I do the same exercise and within a minute I become ecstatic. Its ridiculous. At times I feel like a mad man, as I sit in my back yard laughing hysterically at NOTHING. I’ve conjured happiness from thin air.

You don’t have to try this, and actually – it may be healthier with your neighbor-relations if you don’t (they probably think I’m nuts now). But what I’m saying is there is this misconception that happiness happens to us. And although this can be true, we also have the ability to create happiness.

Anyway, you’re future is bright. I know this and I think deep down you might as well. If you keep on this track, and quit with the pre-determining of your future as some bleak blob, you’ll catch wind in your sail and be who you want to be. I hope I’ve demonstrated that “I’ve been there” and that I got the fuck out.