The Eternal Optimist vs The US Healthcare System

What better scene than a studio in a house with light filtering through the windows, illuminating a sturdy old chair with velvet cushions, white roses on the shelf next to the armchair. The books of the past placed on the bookshelf. What better scene than this armchair in sunlight in this house to reveal to us what light academia is. 

What a happy time it is for light academia. Gone are the dinosaurs who insist it is for the white and privileged minority. In this moment, light academia is for everyone. Dressing nicely is for everyone. Reading is for everyone. 

I am happy to have developed my own understanding of myself to recognize that most of the time I am a light academic. Even when others try to drag me into the darkness, for unknown and personal reasons, I am still as much resting, sunlight shining down on me, in a recliner in a room with wide windows, as I ever was. I enjoy resting and I am actually a kind person. I realize when others are in pain and I don't hold it against them that sometimes they "drag me down."

Optimism may not always be the perfect solution, but it allows us to see the world through rose-tinted glasses. Sometimes rose-tinted glasses are all we need to allow ourselves to get through viewing some sore realities around us.

The happiest times of my life have been when I have been able to ignore the glaring imperfection inseparable from my daily life's adventures. Do you kill the dreary silence or ignore it? Boredom flits through our minds like a songbird teetering on a fencepost until it falls off and suddenly decides it is a flying machine. Our minds catch a drift and move onto another topic. Shambles of boredom remain. Sometimes I think that our mind's boredom is like the rolling barrels in funhouses. Never stable, always challenging us to develop ourselves and make it through the tunnel of boredom to the light on the other side.

Perhaps the correct question comes down to our behaviors and habits in our day to day life. What is the difference between someone with too much free time and someone with a grudge. Maybe a single thin line separates us from becoming someone with too much free time and then someone with a grudge. Luigi Mangione had a grudge that became action. Someone with too much free time would not do such a thing? Luigi did such a thing due to his grudge against UHC. What is the difference between boredom and bloodlust? Maybe Luigi was bored one day when he thought up his crime. The grudge may just be his own mind's proclivities that found root in a common enemy, but boredom, the need for something more than what he has in the present moment. In his case perhaps a boredom born of deep pain, led him to his crime.

Luigi Mangione revealed to us his deep seated belief that healthcare should be for everyone. Many people were forced to acknowledge the ephemeral nature of being a healthcare dinosaur in a time when the American people are slowly developing a semblance of acceptance toward healthcare not being entirely privatized. The reality may shock us, that dissatisfaction and the need to escape our current reality are pivotal components of change. Pain is a symptom of a larger issue and boredom is a symptom of our inability to stay present in a happy reality. Both can eat away at our lives until we are just miserable. Somehow, it all comes full circle. Like Light Academia once belonged to the privileged few, and then equality was socially distributed, healthcare will one day be for all. At least, we can hope so. 

Wishing You Kung Fu Panda Mindfulness 🐢🐼

Oftentimes we find ourselves in the darkness. 

I worked so hard, I truly chose the path less traveled for the glimmer, the mere spec of myself. I think the path less traveled is less glamorous and beautiful than the one most traveled. If we can catch even a glimpse of our true selves, the journey will have been well worth it. Like the turtle in kung fu panda showed Po, the secret to success and one's journey isn't external to oneself. It is in yourself. 

I hope all this makes sense. Sometimes I wonder if our mental illnesses and distortions are simply growing pains. For only when one notices the absence of something does someone know what that something is. 

I think as children we are mindful, as children are for the most part, present beings. But as we grow and change, we realize the absence of our youthful joy and presence. Only when we notice this absence of generous wellness do we realize that we desperately crave the presence of the past.

When I was meditating in the hospital, I found that my mental health symptoms made me grateful for the times when I didn't have the symptoms. I was avoiding reality back when I was a child but I found that my own presence helped me cope with the difficulties of my childhood. This presence would later become instrumental in helping me cope with my mental illness. In an optimistic way, I think that my mental illness allowed me to develop my own mindfulness to the point where I was able to cope with regular life in a much healthier way. External things can help, but at the end of the day you need to train your brain to be in control of your own destiny. 

It's this mindfulness that allows the mental control of one's own destiny. I appreciate my own mindfulness for the benefits it reaps and, in a much more personal way, for the person I become when I am meditating. I become a person who is calm, balanced, and always ready to give someone affirmation. I love being myself. I feel like I am only truly myself when I meditate. 

This doesn't mean that it is easy to meditate. Many times I have struggled with meditation... If not struggling with the perceived judgement of others, or my own fear of triggering my psychosis with my meditation, many things make me to this day terrified of meditation. I work hard, however, to do it anyways. In some ways it's the most terrifying rollercoaster ride you can go on. But, it's the most important thing for my own health. I find that when I am meditating, I am much healthier and come back from my meditation feeling refreshed and peaceful. 

I have been meditating since I was a child, and I know that many were not as precocious as I was in learning to meditate at an early age. I was lucky enough to be involved in the treatment of someone I love who chose meditation as part of their therapy. I was blessed to have this experience of finding meditation so early. I knew then as I know now, that I was going to become very good at this art. 

I think it can be really helpful to learn to meditate for mental health and spiritual reasons. I hope you receive the same blessings I have received from my practice. Love to you and everyone!🐢

Does Cement Make Me Sad?

A lot of times people don't see the path forward until they've taken steps to clear the path ahead. In my garden, the weeds I needed to whack were the inauspicious proclivities that took the place of my pursuit of a substantial soul. 

I think that we are all roses growing through cement, however, the cement is different for each of us. Some people see the cement and balk and run away. The cement is "impermeable and gross." Some folks see the cement and dive into it. The cement is "malleable and thick." Some folks see the cement and complain.  The cement is definitely the vestiges of "ancient time and energy." In the now, the concrete usually becomes nothing other than our shadow-self's constant dreadful proclivities, our tendencies of thought and ruminations. The delimitator of our soul-dreams and yearnings tends to be ourselves. 

I hope that this message reaches you in peace. Long gone are the days of the past when we were only worried about test scores and peers perceptions of us. Now are the days of long nights toiling over the uncertainties, both professional and personal, that prove most burdensome. We wear our unbecoming proclivities on our faces in the form of grim frowns, a stern eyebrow furrow, or worse, dark circles under our eyes. We worry about a future that may or may not come. But it will definitely not eclipse a worthwhile life, well lived and spoken as clearly and succinctly as a bird's song. Someday the bird will stop singing and another one will take its place. The world will not end when one bird stops singing. Microcosmic birdsongs end and begin every minute of every morning. This does not change the trajectory of the broader scheme of things. In the end, I invoke readers to marvel at the cosmic relativity of our own relatively small existence. Take this meager and humble existence and do with it what you deign worthwhile.

Long are the days and nights for one who sees the cement as impermeable, callous, dark cement. Perhaps we can take the rose out of the cement and replant it in soil? Even if the soil is not what we wanted in the end, it is better and less final for our presence than cement.

Keep your gardens watered 💚