Life and Other Passions
I indulged myself in several hours of Mozart.
It was the therapy I needed to get me in the right mood for Christmas.
There is something so joyful and playful, and yet soothing about Mozart. It is not heavy stuff, but neither is it fluff.
If only I could play the flute like that! Sounds that are so smooth and sometimes flirty.
I won’t ever get beyond Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, but I am amazed I can even play that!
Okay, I am going to be tough about this subject. Brutal.
I have in my life been depressed and had suicidal thoughts, but never to the point of planning my own demise.
But I have been the victim of others suicide and I mean, VICTIM. The innocent person who suffered the repercussions of others death wish.
Let me tell any of you that are planning such an act, why it is the most stupid, selfish, uncaring thing to do to others, and, to YOURSELF!
If you think suicide solves any problems, you are wrong, wrong, wrong.
If you think you are a burden to friends and family while you are alive, it ain’t NOTHING compared to when you take your own life. You burden not only all the people who loved and cared for you, but complete strangers. It is like you are pebble thrown into an infinity pond. You sink and are gone, but the ripple effects are wide and far reaching and extremely destructive, and last FOREVER. Forever is a long f’in time for those still living, as in, for the rest of their entire lives.
Not only is your death a shock, it is expensive. You burden your family with unexpected costs of funeral, and other surprise payments, such as paying back any benefits you received after your death, like GST. You may have taken away a much needed source of income and leave your family destitute. There are travel costs. Bills and debts to pay. Even if you have the best laid plans, with an up to date will and power of attorney, there is a hell of a mess to go through. The will has to be probated. Lawyers paid. You would not believe what and who come out of the woodwork after you are gone.
Beyond the financial hell, the lawyers, the funeral directors and a whole host of others you never knew existed, there is the shock, the PTSD to deal with. And deal with it, your friends and family and complete strangers will, EVERY single damn day of their lives. You will break friendships. Your relatives will have to explain your demise over and over. They will try to make sense of what you did. They will blame themselves and others will blame them! And they will never come to terms with it, never find closure. And sometimes, the grief will cause others to take their own lives. What about those who find your body? All the persons who have to clean you up? You cannot unsee those things, ever.
And what if you live and are disabled? Think about that!
The ONLY time I support suicide is if a person is facing a terminal illness with a bleak future in store, or is currently suffering a terminal illness, is in extreme physical pain with no hope of recovery, and because of that has no joy in living. Then I agree with assisted suicide. This gives everyone involved a chance to say goodbye, to get things in order. To have closure. To celebrate a persons life instead of being angry because they were never given any input into the decision.
Taking your own life is giving those around you the bird. It is the big F you. I’m in pain and to hell with the rest of you.
Don’t freeze people out of your life if you are suffering. Suicide is a long term and certainly not the best solution to problems. We are given obstacles to overcome, not to succumb to. It gives us resilience. It makes our lives and those we love so much better when we embrace our troubles and make the most of the hand we are given. Then we are an inspiration.
If you are religious then consider: I have set before you life and death. Choose life.
You think there is nothing to live for? Not your children? Your spouse? Your brother or sister or relatives? Your dog? Your best friend? Your houseplants? Your collections? Your stuff? Your guitar lessons? Cookies?
Take stock of what brings you joy. Imagine how much future you are going to miss by not being there.
There is a great deal of nothing for you after death. You cease to exist. Think about what that means exactly. You never get to experience anything, ever again. Anything. And living is about experiencing things. There is so much to do in this world, in this life!
I know that when you are caught in suicidal thoughts you become very self centered and it is hard to think outside of yourself. BUT YOU MUST. These thoughts WILL pass. Get help. When you are gone it is FOREVER. There is no coming back. There is no nothing for you any more.
Turn your thoughts to something you love and how much you would miss that. My cats always brought me back from bad thoughts. I’ll never pet them again. Hear their purr. Enjoy their funny personalities and quirks. And most terrifying of all – What would happen to them after I am gone?
I’d never get to see a sunset again. Or do gardening. Take a walk. Talk to my friends. Do art. Read. Make noise with my flute!
Look at what brings you life, then live it. Bad things are temporary. Believe me. I have lived through many bad things that I thought would never stop. How could you not want to experience another sunset. Another walk on the beach. Another kiss from your lover. Another new book to read.
Things look bad in the moment but –
My Mother always said, “Things will look different in the morning.”
Words to LIVE by.
Amen to that!
I only have a few words to say about the Freedom Convoy trial.
If these shit disturbers who did a hostile takeover of our capital city do not face any criminal charges for the violence and disruption they caused us law abiding citizens, it is a SLAP in the face to all of us who endured the non-action of police and government at the hand of a few thugs.
No so called protest should be a siege of an entire city and bring everyone to their knees over an issue that was really, in my opinion, a non issue.
There has to be some justice for all those who endured those terrifying weeks. Some justice for the victims of this crime. Some accounting for a police force that aided and abetted a terrorist group. Some question about those businesses that supported the takeover.
Otherwise, it is a disgrace.
I know someone who brags about all the good she has done. She wears every good deed like another notch in her belt.
She is the first one to jump into a crisis to offer help. She will sacrifice her time and money and energy to help someone in need.
But, it in the end, it is all for her.
I don’t think she realizes it, she is totally unaware of why people sour on her. She never understands why I will never take any offer of help from her, no matter what the situation.
I don’t want to be another notch in her belt.
When you do good, keep it to yourself. Sure, a good deed also makes you feel good. But it is not for bragging rights. It is not about you.
One of my favourite movies is The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. So I borrow this title for my post, with a minor modification, because I am not going to write about the movie, but about life.
Life is the good, the bad, the BEAUTIFUL and the ugly.
We forget the beautiful part.
We also forget that life is ALL of the above. You cannot live without experiencing all it has to offer. If you focus only on one of the the four, your life will suffer.
Life is the whole package and it does not play any favourites.
But you can get through the bad and the ugly by remembering the good, and mostly, the beautiful.
You may come to realize, surprise, surprise, that the bad and the ugly are also beautiful.
In fact, all of life is beautiful.
The bad and the ugly will teach you that.
Every day there is always something interesting.
Maybe nothing grand, usually it is nothing grand, and often it is something common or ordinary, or just weird.
Like the sun on my face. A storm rolling in. Wet leaves plastered to the sidewalk. A tree burdened with crabapples. Starlings chattering as I walk by. The wind tugging at my jacket, tossing my hat, giving me a merry chase!
I marvel at cracks in the sidewalk and the persistent, amazing weeds that insist on growing there.
I scoop the litterbox and wonder at the way the litter clumps, like miniature hoodoos. I am amazed at how much shit my cat has in him!
I find a spot I haven’t vacuumed in a while and behold! Enough cat hair to make mittens!
I savour a forbidden chocolate bar while no one is looking. Or chip wagon french fries (with lots of no you can’t have this salt).
I hopscotch on faded chalk squares, delight in children’s laughter.
I laugh when I can’t fold my laundry. I spill toothpaste on my new shirt. When I do something stupid (so I laugh a lot).
The list is endless.
Every morning as I go through my usual mundane routines, I ask myself, how could you not want this? How you could you no longer desire to experience the weirdness of life?
I was having an unruly mood, walking and talking to myself, kicking stones.
But then I spotted a cat watching me from a window.
Ah, look at the little kitty!
Cats are mood busters. I see it all the time. The hardest of hearts turn to mush when they spot a cat. Ah, look at the little kitty! Here kitty kitty. Oh aren’t you a pretty kitty…
All cats have a cuteness gene, I swear it!
I am forever grateful for the strangest, most magical of beasts, the common house cat.
I’ve been reading about the 46 year old man who plans to live forever.
He’s been subjecting himself to all the latest and greatest in medicines, diet and exercise, with a little voodoo in there by injecting himself with his sons blood – ewwww.
He looks great and no doubt he feels terrific. I can attest, my 40’s was by far the best decade of my life too – uh, without all the latest and greatest and millions to burn. I was fit and happy and…
Well, what can I say dear fellow.
I have some bad news for you.
You will get sick. And, you will eventually die.
So sorry. But that is how biology works.
No matter what kind of great shape you are in, entropy is gonna find you, because despite our best intentions, and sometimes because of them, our bodies and minds wear out.
It is called old age.
I did too much exercise (warning to all you extreme fitness freaks) and now I can’t do very much. I had only a few serious overuse injuries in my life but oh boy, do they come back to haunt you and severely limit you. Even without that, our bodies cannot and will not do what they could when they were young. You will find this out. I can assure you, it is a FACT!
I have discovered that there is little difference in life span between those who took care of themselves and those who were a little more lenient.
So just a heads up on this. You can overdo good intentions and shorten your life. Ah, life is a trickster! So don’t be too smug about your health. In an instant you can lose it.
Your life is never on hold. Just enjoy what you have today. Tomorrow never comes, and neither will biological immortality.
Do something that is so wonderful you leave a legacy of goodness in this world instead of concentrating so hard on your own self interests. If you have millions to spend on yourself, you’d do better to help someone who has nothing, or someone really struggling to survive. That is the best way to live forever, and the only way.
I should like to apologize to all the people I have knowingly shamed in my life, and there are many of you. I am so sorry.
I was shamed by others most of my life and you’d think I would know the horrible consequences of that enough to not inflict it on others.
But alas, I did not.
Isn’t that a sad testimony, considering how long I have lived?
All these years I have believed that everyone else was okay, and I had a lot of bad in me that was inexcusable. I caused others to feel this way too.
In the movie, The Mission, slave trader Mendoza attempts penance for his wrongdoings by dragging a big heavy bag of his metal armour and swords everywhere he goes. As if he, and he alone has done wrong in his life. He is eventually set free from this by the very people he once enslaved.
This is what shame and guilt is. That big bag.
But here is the reality of it. Everyone has done wrong. Realizing that was like that indigenous man cutting Mendoza loose from his bag of shame. That man knew the truth. No one should carry all the weight of shame. We have all done the inexcusable at some time in our lives. No one is exempt.
And I’ve learned that those who shame and guilt another the most, are often the ones who have a lot to be ashamed of themselves! The ones who subdued me the most, for what I now see as being petty crimes, were the ones with the blackest of hearts, who did much wrong in their lives.
I am definitely not saying forgive, or even forget. I don’t believe in that. You can’t forgive and forget pain. But you can see the truth about humans.
This is not an excuse. I knowingly shamed others. I am offering an apology and a way for you to be free from a burden that is not exclusively yours to carry.
I find that Covid accelerated a bad trend in society.
Things are so much more different now.
It’s not just the products we can no longer get.
It’s the respect we no longer enjoy.
There were always unwritten ‘laws’ to social behaviour, that enabled us to have a civilized society, and to get along with our fellow humans.
But all that has been tossed out. People are lawless. They have no respect for unwritten codes of behaviour, like being polite and apologetic. They snub their noses at written laws because if you have enough money you can buy yourself out of trouble. The attitude is, Yeah, what you gonna do about it sucker?
We have lots of self entitled Princesses (Karens) and Kings who think nothing of killing someone because they accidently backed into their laneway, or they didn’t give them a pack of ketchup with their fries.
There is no more compromise, of cutting someone some slack, just because it is a nice gesture. Of doing favours. Of being, NICE. Just because it is nice to be nice. To have even an ounce of compassion and forgiveness. To give someone the benefit of the doubt. Because, Lord knows, we ALL f**k up at times, and are far from perfect. Seems like no one remembers their own misdeeds.