First, please keep in mind everything you're about to read is simply my opinion. It's not necessarily true. You get to choose whether any of it's true for you or not. Second, thank you for taking time to show up here to read and carefully consider this blog post. If you arrived here because you followed the link from GP's Facebook post coinciding with this blog you may have watched the documentary Every Brilliant Thing. If you haven't seen it, I hope you go to GP's Facebook page, follow the links, track the documentary down, and take the time to watch it. If you've already watched it, I hope it got you thinking about all the brilliant things in your own life. We are brilliant and we are no thing. Did you know that the root words per & son means through sound? One of the unique things about being a person is our ability to use our voice to make meaning with words... and that we do. All the time, every day, out loud. Sometimes we use our words to create and sometimes we use our words to destroy.
The topics in Every Brilliant Thing are suicide and depression- two things that unfortunately seem to be more prevalent in our world. Perhaps you've been impacted by suicide or depression somehow. Maybe you're feeling down right now. Maybe it's exactly where you need to be. It's important to feel grief and sadness. It's important to express grief and sadness. It's important to stay in whatever emotional place we need to for however long it serves us. Whatever we resist can persist, so emote and express away.
I believe life is about invitations and choices. I believe that music and deep contemplation are great ways to help us possibly navigate those times when we're feeling down and we don't want to feel down anymore. I don't know anyone who has never felt down here on earth. Let's face it- gravity sucks! When we find we're down and it's not where we want to be it could be we are inadvertently (unconsciously) creating that reality. Perhaps with thoughts alone. We don't have to say what we're thinking. It comes out in other ways. Also, how we think about what we're doing effects how we do it or whether we do it or not. I have this posted on my elliptical!
Here's are a couple invitations. When you find yourself feeling down and you are truly done with the feeling because staying there keeps you from living the life you'd rather live-
Granted, not all of us can dance like James Brown, but we can all dance in some way. We verbally dance with or around things all the time with our thoughts that can turn into our stories that can turn into our actions that can turn into our character or state of being. Our thoughts, stories, and actions can connect or disconnect us to our self, each other, and our environment.
It can be helpful to "get up off of that thing"- whatever that thing is for you. Whether it's a thought, a story, an action, or a character trait, get up off of the things that no longer serve you. If you choose up over down, there are many ways you can "dance"- even if your body's in a wheel chair, even if you weigh 500 pounds, even if you were born with no arms and no legs, even if a terminal illness is part of your life, even if your spouse of 60 years died, even if you feel all alone, even if someone called you the worst names you can think of, even if...(fill in the blank). The list is infinite. Hopefully you get the point. I appreciate questions and dialog way more than a monoblog, so feel free to contact me with questions if you don't see the point I'm attempting to make here.
If the thing you want to get up off of is a story you're telling about what's got you down and your story is not based in fact, I hope you'll "dance" with that story. It could be your story is so powerful it even has those around you who love you feeling down because they don't know the story or don't know how to help you navigate it yet. Make it a practice not to believe everything you think. Challenge stories you create, kinda like Joe Friday challenging someone he suspects is lying to him or when he's looking for the facts in a case-
Get Dragnet on that story. Go all kinds of Joe Friday on that story! Seek and find the facts. Challenge your interpretations (how you made meaning of the facts) of whatever happened before you became down. If your story wasn't factual, take full responsibility for the story you created. Take full responsibility for any actions you took because of the story you told. Make amends to your self and to others for any damage due to telling or acting out of the story. Be unreasonable. Don't have any reason to stay down when you don't want to stay down.