That stuff we feed our minds..
My first written piece to get published was called “What are we feeding our minds?”. It was published in a University Newspaper called “The Link”. It was a rant essentially, criticizing Fox News coverage of the war in Iraq. I was in Montreal on an exchange semester then. I remember seeing my words in print and cheerfully hoarded multiple copies for my friends. It was a high I had never experienced before. Though safe to say that I am not necessarily known to be an experimenter with stuff made outside of FDA approved laboratories, but whatever that feeling was, it was AWESOME!
A combination of feeling exhilarated, saying exactly what I meant (though the thirty-something me would probably make a few adjustments if I am to re-write that piece now), and having hope that despite all the wrong, the right would come. So long as I believed in it.
Happy days they were. Days of innocence, days of optimism and days when we were kind to ourselves. Not physically though; the all-nighters, Tuesday trips to Winny’s, and the relentless trips to Eaton mall with my best friend. Spending the money we barely had, either on crepes, clothes, carbs and cabs (not necessarily in that order)!
What I meant with kindness was the words we spoke to our subconscious selves. Bomb a midterm? Well, pop wake-ups for the finals. Your first love is kind of a douche? Well, let your best friend do your eye-liner next time you go out. Spent all your money? Become a tele-marketer for a shady downtown business. Whatever the problem, in our deluded sense of invincibility, we always believed , and in fact, figured a way out! And that belief alone was the finest form of kindness we fed our own minds.
But, great things are great because they have a shorter shelf life. I mean compare packaged kababs to that home-made biryani with potatoes, and you’ll know exactly what I mean! And just like that, your family gets wind of your riveting social life (otherwise interrupted by term papers) and off you go back. First you fix your GPA, get a job, pay-off your student debts and become the model citizen destined to pay taxes, a mortgage (or two), indulge in a marriage (or two), do your 9 to 5, and actually start believing in the conspiracy theories broadcast by Fox news.
Guess somethings don’t change-clearly, my rants haven’t. Things are not always as bleak as I am making them out to be, but no matter what you say, real life does, in fact, happen. There is work, there are responsibilities, and there are set-backs. The scariest of all is that our actions have real implications. Sometimes good, sometimes unimaginably horrible. Modern day memes are inundated with the perils of “adulting”, in case my description here doesn’t suffice.
However, wearing my lens of gratitude, adulting isn’t such a bad thing after all. Exhausting? Yes. Disappointing sometimes? Yes again. Patience testing? ALL THE TIME. But bad? Never. Worth living? HELL YEAH!
Perhaps an ageist thing to say, but come to think of it, we truly are at the prime of our lives, our best forms.
So, how do we make adulting fun without bringing in the FDA approved and/or non-approved stimulants? How do we get that mojo we lose after a challenging life event? That spark we abandon after a series of setbacks? Well, it goes back to what we feed our subconscious minds.
It’s essentially the dialogue we have with ourselves. It’s what’s we say to ourselves when things go wrong. It’s about building a firewall against elements that goad us to give up on hope. It’s about being adamant in believing and building ourselves. It’s about being mildly naïve to believe in miracles. It’s being courageous enough to believe in a bit of our own magic. So long as we continue to believe, the wrongs will ultimately lead to the right.
