Sometimes excruciating pain can be hidden by a smile. A lot of times, it's hard to tell when someone is in pain. To me, there are three types of people in this world.
The first type, feels pain and is stopped by it, Whether it is physical or emotional, these people feel pain and stop. They just can't function until the pain goes away. Often times these people won't admit they are in pain, at least not to friends and family, they will just slowly withdraw from life and do the minimum they can to get by The second type of person is the type that feels pain and wants everybody to know that they are hurting. They usually won't come to a dead stop, they will just keep on, but with a reduced capacity. They will go to doctors if the pain is physical, or seek emotional support if the pain is mental. These people will often times find an end to their pain and are likely to have gotten help to fix things. In my mind, they are likely the healthiest of the three types. The third type, are people like me. I am a pain blocker...or at least I try to be. When I get hurt, I acknowledge the pain but then try to put it away some where so that I can go on doing whatever it is I am doing. I do this both with mental and physical pain. In the past, I have walked around with broken ribs, practiced karate during a bout with gout and I have popped a number of my toes back into place after they dislocated. Physically, probably the worst pain that I worked through was when I was a walk in to the intensive care ward at Princeton Hospital. I had caught C-diff and was bleeding internally. The doctor told me he didn't know how I was even standing let alone walking. As a child, I remember playing sports while injured. I played team sports, and I often believed it was better for the team to have me play hurt than to not play. The year I did that, I was the scoring leader for the entire league. Our team went on to win the league championship and we had an undefeated 12 - 0 season. I honestly believe that by playing hurt (sprained ankle) I helped to keep our team undefeated. We had a good team, but our bench was not deep. Later, I played football and soccer the same way. I remember my first knee injury, when I initially cracked the cartilage in my knee. I was taken off the field after the initial injury, but went back into the game a few plays later. While it hurt, I didn't yet know the extent of the damage. I just figured it was badly bruised and I would get over it after a play or two. I played defensive tackle for the rest of the game and also played on the offensive line. After the game, I then went off and played in a soccer game. By the time I came out of that game, my knee had swelled like a soccer ball. X-rays later revealed I had a hairline crack in my cartilage. Over the years, I also got good at hiding mental pain...well, maybe not so good. I drank a lot when I was younger, and some of it was to help me to change my mood. If you asked me back then why I drank, I would say to get fucked up and be social. But those weren't my only reasons. I see that now. I also drank to ease the emotional pain I was going through. I always tried to bury that deep, but it was there none the less. The sad part is that I can't even tell you why I had those feeling. Why I felt sad, or unliked. I had lots of friends and acquaintances, and a family that loved me. Still, my head was filled with self doubts and sadness. Going out with my friends and getting fucked up let me forget for a while. I never seemed sad while at a party, but there was always a part of me that felt I didn't actually fit in, even though I usually seemed to. Our minds can be our own harshest critics. While we can use our minds to block pain, sometimes we also use them to block the realizations that can help us to resolve our pain. My pain stopped when I felt needed. Not wanted, not liked or even loved, but needed. My wife and I fell in love. I needed her in my life, and she needed me. Her need for me to be strong for her and our family took away my pain (at least the pain that had been haunting me...new pains came from our relationship). I look back at my younger years and I see a pain that didn't need to be there. My wife's need filled my heart with love. It healed me of my sadness. Everybody needs to feel needed. To not feel needed, to not feel like your life makes a difference, is a pain much worse than any physical pain you can endure. My wife died two years ago. She still needs me. She needs me to pray for her and light candles (and I do) and she needs me to take care of my two beautiful daughters. My daughters need me...to be there for them and to show them how to live a happy and fulfilled life. I try my best for them. And in return, I need my daughters. I need them to teach me about myself, to remind me of their mom, and to enjoy their company. I love to watch them grow up and to keep filling my head with new memories. I love to have one on one talks with Maddie while we are riding to or from somewhere. Meanwhile Ashleigh is my ray of sunshine! I love to watch the progress she is making while she learns to read, and the leaps of logic that she makes when she recognizes a pattern in what she is doing. Watching the girls learn new things is a thrill for me! Do I still block pain? Sure. My knee is a mess and I have my usual bouts with arthritis. Mentally, I am still coming to grips with my wife's death, but I am seeing more rays of sunshine all of the time! In the end, don't let pain stop you. Mental pain can go away. Fill the empty spaces where it had reigned with happy memories that you create each day. You can create a happy memory each day! Sometimes you just need to look for them. It's the little things that drive happiness. Fill your life with little bits of happiness and you will soon find that the mental pain will recede to the back ground. I hope these thoughts can help some of you out there who may be suffering with something similar. There is already too much sadness in the world. Work at bringing a little bit of happiness into your own world each day, and I think you will soon find that it will be infectious for the people around you. Good night,
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I chose this quote because I think that my dad will like it. Why do I think this? Because one of the most important lessons that my Dad tries to teach my sister and I is to think. To use our heads. To use logic. To be imaginative and curious yet still keep our heads about us. One of the main things my dad hates about the public school system is the fact that you are trained to simply remember information- and then forget it when the test or quiz is over. Not to think about or absorb the information, but just to remember to forget.
It is due to the power of being able to actually think that I remember so many small little tidbits. Nothing is coming to my mind as of right now, but- if you mention a subject I know about... I can still talk relatively fluently about it, even if I learned about it years ago. I thank my Dad for this- he is very open and easy to talk to, so should I ever need help (especially with philosophy- MAN our philosophy talks are the best) he is more than willing to talk with me until I fully understand what's going on, or what needs work. He has taught me to KNOW and contemplate what I am reading and to think out the truth for myself; not just based on what I am told. He is the reason I am such a conspiracist; and such an over-thinker. I think about EVERYTHING. Him being an analyst, he has taught me to scrutinize everything and take everything I hear with a grain of salt ON TOP of teaching me to think: a dangerous combo that has given me the ability to see through just about any lie that is told to me. I pride myself on this ability and use it to its full extent. Alright... I think this rant is over... I just highly agree with the quote. Too many people (and I fully blame the public school system for this) read, remember, and forget... but never think about what they are told. They aimlessly follow orders like little worker bees, never thinking for themselves. Very few think. Don't follow the crowd. Be yourself. And think for yourself. Maddie Oh my goshhhh. I think this quote is something that everyone in the world needs to hear. No matter who you are or what your situation is, we've all had something happen in life that we need to move on from or get over and some of us have a hard time doing it. I understand the struggle of doing it completely- my mom died 2 years ago and I'm still depressed about it right now. The pain of something like that... it never leaves. Ever. A little piece of that is going to be with you for the rest of your life, just as the person is, and there is nothing you can do to escape that.
However, that doesn't mean you should let sadness dominate your life forever. Yes, while things are initially going on, you're going to be upset... but you need to move on. I've managed to move on from my mom's death (for the most part) and I'd like to share the advice I followed myself that helped me a lot. This advice can be applied to most situations. Only a few are directed towards people who are dealing solely with the pain of losing someone.
I hope this post helped you... or anyone you may know. Maddie "The mind is your greatest weapon"...don't turn it against yourself! Too many people have self doubts. Too many people don't love themselves. Too many people are their own worst critics. And it's sad. While it is healthy to question yourself sometimes, it can hurt you if you do it too much.
It all comes down to the fact that words have power...including the words you say to yourself. If you constantly tell yourself you are not worthy of love, then you will never truly receive it, except from your family members. Then, too, if you constantly tell yourself you are ugly, fat, stupid (fill in the blank), then you are going to begin to feel that way AND act that way. Life is hard enough without a poor self image! What we think of ourselves is a habit. Begin today to change your own self image so that eventually you will habitually think of yourself in a different light. Use your greatest weapon (your mind, if you haven't been paying attention) to help change your self perception. So how do you do it? Good question! And the answer depends on what you want to change. Do you think you are too fat to feel good about yourself? Then come up with a plan to lose weight! Picture what you would have to do to lose weight and then start doing it! As you do, create a new internal dialog for yourself...I am a person who eats healthily and avoids processed foods and snacks. Each day, wake up and think, I enjoy eating healthy foods, and then do so! Think about what a person who eats healthily would want to eat...and then eat it! The more you actually do what you think about, the more your self image will change! It's hard to look at yourself as fat if you are eating healthily every day and exercising...but it takes time. Doing it once in a while won't change your mind. You need to own the habit. Eat healthy foods, avoid unhealthy things and control your portions. Start a work out routine...and stick to it! After a while, these habits will become a part of you, and you will become toned and lose weight. The more you believe that you are a healthy individual, the less you will "feel" like you are a fat slob. Words have power! That is just one example. Usually, our self image has more than just one negative aspect to it. And they all work together to cripple your self image. Each day, work to improve those negative aspects of your self image just a little bit. Just saying that those negative traits don't exist is not enough! You need to take actions to prove to yourself that those things are not true. Work at it. Try for just a 1% improvement each day on your negative traits and in four months you will have a 100% change in your self image. Your mind will accept the change, if you actually take the steps necessary to change your self image. If you only think about it, and you don't take action, then your mind will never believe the story you are telling it. Take the steps necessary to make the changes, so that your mind knows that it is holding a false picture. Fail to take action, and your mind will fail to see a difference. There is no free lunch in this world. Change your actions to change your mind. It is that simple! Although you may think that you are surrounded by idiots, there are plenty of smart people out there! One thing I like to do when I have a few minutes and I am bored is to read quotes. Oftentimes the quotes make me look at things in a different light. Whether I believe what the person said or not, the quotes that people take the time to put up will always make me think.
I pity the fools who don't make it a habit to think about things. Not just about things in the world around them but, things happening in their own lives as well. Edgar Allen Poe once said "Years of love have been forgot in the hatred of a minute." And he's right. I have seen friendships destroyed by an insensitive remark or action. Anger, fear, resentment, frustration, carelessness or a plethora of other words could replace "hatred" in that quote and it would still be dead on. If you truly love someone (or, if it is a friendship, like someone), isn't it a pity to let years of good times and good memories be destroyed in an instant? Sometimes, unhealthy relationships need to be severed (I understand), but can't they be done with kindness? Does everyone involved have to suffer the hurt? I think not. This is about as far as I want to go with this particular thought, though, just something to think about. Another brilliant writer, George Bernard Shaw, once said: "Life does not cease to be funny when people die, anymore than it ceases to be serious when people laugh." I have never taken Shaw as a humorous kind of guy. More than likely, he threw that quote off as a verbal body blow, hitting someone while they were down. Even so, there is wisdom in that statement. Life does go on after a great loss. You will laugh again, and you will always have bills to pay etc., etc. Walking around miserable after a great loss dos no one any good. The quicker you can see humor in the things around you again, the better. We all enter the doldrums from time to time. The death of someone close to you will certainly bring on moments of sorrow. Still, the world does go on, and laughter does help to clear the mind. Thus, I will use this thought to segue into the next quote I'd like to talk about, which is similar in meaning. Kurt Vonnegut (yes, another writer) once said: "Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion (stress, too, I might add). I myself prefer to laugh since there is less cleaning up afterward." To me, this is a nicer way of saying the same thing. From what I have read about Vonnegut, he was less of a curmudgeon, than Shaw. Don't get me wrong, by the way, I like Shaw! It's just that some of his quotes were a bit acidic. Given I don't know the context behind many of his quotes, I am only going on my gut feeling here, anyway. That said, laughter is the best medicine if you can swing it. I have seen enough tears in my own life to know that I would certainly prefer to laugh rather than cry...So make me laugh people! Okay, I was writing this post to get you thinking, not depressed so I'll move away from somber quotes! Instead, here is a quote from Lewis Carroll found in Alice In Wonderland. This one is a little long, but it has a simple message" "One day, Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. "Which road do I take?" asked Alice. "Where do you want to go?" was his response. "I don't know," Alice answered. "Then" said the cat, "it doesn't matter." Sadly, although Carroll wrote it in a witty, teasing manner, I think it is safe to say that many go through life not knowing where they are going. Many never stop to ponder the meaning of life, or, more importantly, the meaning of their own lives. You can see it in how they act and/or what they talk about. Thank goodness this isn't everyone! I know a number of people whose actions speak louder than any words they say that they are thinking about their lives and where they are going in their journey. These people are refreshing to be around. The vibe that they sometimes give off can be infectious! The beauty of it is that all of these people have chosen different paths for their lives. None of them have the same profession or the same attitudes. Their thinking comes out in their actions! What road is your life taking? Have you thought about it? I hope so! For my final quote of the day, I'll leave you with another metaphysical body punch from George Bernard Shaw (See, I told you I like him!). "The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those who have not got it." Hit them where it hurts George! Am I a cynic? Sometimes. I am an analyst by trade, and I was trained to look for the holes in a story. Reading between the lines is second nature to me. At the same time, I was also trained to look for the good! Over the years, I have put out just as many buy recommendations as I have short ideas. I have been both the bull and the bear! Sometimes, my posts may seem a little morose. I apologize for that. My aim is to make my readers think...not slit their wrists. Of course, what I have gone through over the past few years has shaped my thinking a bit. I am strong though, and my thoughts here are to help others think about what may be bothering them. Think people! And after thinking, act! Nothing improves without action. (If you have a blog of your own, leave a link in the comments section. I will post a link to your site if the material is appropriate for general consumption. |
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