quietlynavigating

real life is gritty. very gritty. if real life were a movie, it wouldn't be something created by Hollywood because the audience would be too niche.

so this brings me onto something i want to talk about, which is emotions. whenever i see a beautiful painting of a woman, and through the window i see a beautiful summer's day with golden cornfields or i see a typical picturesque autumn day with trees and an assortment of red, yellow, orange and brown leaves gliding in the wind; i sense a feeling that i have very rarely (if ever) experienced that feeling the woman is in my life. the one where you feel things are perfect and everything is perfect.

after my initial "AAAHHH how beautiful!" feelng, my mind always moves on to think how unreal that is and the beautiful nude woman half covered under the silk sheets in this painting, very possibly has a whole host of problems and things weighing on her mind, the details of which are not privy to us.

is it possible to feel that way? is it possible for one's life to be that perfect? the answer is very predictable and cliched, life is as perfect as you deem it, in that you can cycle over and over all your problems and stresses, or you can be content and grateful for what you have and consider these issues within your life as minor hurdles,

i suppose the way i look at the aforementioned hypothetical painting tells you (and me) more about me than it does reveal anything about the painting. my viewing of the painting as if i have given up on really pleasant positive emotions and feelings and resorted to cynicism and looking down upon pleasant things and bringing them down to my level.

this idea of being content; being happy with what you have, which is probably made up of an understanding of several things: the fickleness of life and death, the inconsequentiality of it all, being grateful for what you do have, being mindful of what does make you happy and its importance over your problems.

in the end, this idea that real life is gritty is just a point of view. having written this, i think it is as gritty as you make it and it is very possible to coast through even terrible life events by consistently being mindful and with a perspective; but being able to do that just sounds like a mental illness?

also, i find it interesting that when looking at these pictures, it's an assumption i'm making that the woman is happy and everything is perfect, painter may not have even painted her to look happy. this probably also links in some way to how i have always viewed as everyone's life (except the most extreme cases) as better than mine

something i am currently working on is my listening skills.

i have noticed that i have become mentally lazy, not just in the listening department but others too. people notice that i don't listen, i notice that i don't listen, even when i am actually listening. it's because i'm being lazy and i'm not actively listening to what people are talking about, my mind is nowhere and i'm processing information halfheartedly.

so i'm going about my daily life with the mental note that i need to be an active listener and actually focus when someone is talking or even when watching a film and so on. i think it will improve my life in other mental departments too when i start to get the hang of listening.

my original aim was to improve my focus and concentration, but that was too vague and at the heart of the problem was my poor listening skills. i don't know where this paragraph is going.

anyway, i also wanted to note that i missed in the previous post that an additional reason as to why i would like to post much more frequently is so i can practice writing and for some reason, i really want to improve my writing. i find this strange because usually, there seems to be a tangible reason as to why i set out to do things when concerning my own development, but in this case i'm not so sure, maybe i just deem it an extremely useful skill and i'd like to work on it? 

this is taken straight out of http://laradavid.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/difference-between-equity-and-equality.html

i thought it was worth sharing.

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despite the previous post (written moments ago) suggesting the status quo is as dire as it has been for the past three years, this is not the case.

i feel like not writing about it because i may jinx it, or to put it in a more rational manner, i may unintentionally convince myself that the battle's over and i'm eating the greener grass on the other side. i know that my use of the common saying in the previous sentence is possibly used incorrectly but it my mind it fits.

i have been a 'different person' since coming back from Zimbabwe. i'm much more resilient mentally. i don't get as angry as i have been getting in the previous three years. i no longer have a switch where i go from zero to insane. i no longer pity myself, well, maybe a little teeny weeny bit. i am much more grateful for the things i have in my life. i am much more aware of my finiteness on this planet. and i understand what is required to move forward, and i am moving forward, and it is hard, but i will make it. also, Zimbabwe didn't just 'transform' me, it was largely the psychologist i was seeing months prior and going to  Zim somehow provided me with the environment to work on my anxiety and negative outlooks and therefore 'discover myself'.

there's also been a subtler improvement in my life. see, i've had these two personalities, one is extremely extroverted and the other extremely introverted, and for the first time i no longer have these two personalities where i feel like a different person depending on the situation i'm in. a more elegant way of putting this, and i think this is the reason as to why this has happened, for once i recognise some of the things that make me happy and i want in my life. coming back from Zimbabwe, i've discovered that i value relationships more than i do anything else. people make me happy. talking to people, learning about people, and the greater difference, the happier i am usually.

there have been other improvements, in relation to having re-developed 'interests' in things, which isn't video games or spending inordinate amounts of time on reddit. i don't want to talk about it because talking about it here and finalising these interests in pixels indicates the battle's over, when in reality it's just begun.  

i've discovered my written English is absolutely dreadful and i'd like to work on improving this, and i'm unsure whether this goes han-in-hand but i want to also learn to articulate myself better. it's frustrating to realise how dreadful i think my written English is, i think spoken English too to be honest. 

i went for a walk. i like walking since it provides me with an opportunity to think about things and it's a good way to feel good. walking feels good.

whilst walking, i was thinking about the things that interested me, and my relationship with these things since i'm not very driven to pursue things. this has been changing for the past couple of months, but the drive still isn't where it needs to be.

whilst thinking about these things, my subjective outlook on life changed, albeit only for a certain duration of the walk. let me first explain to you what i mean by my 'outlook on life'. whenever you go outside of your house or apartment, and you walk somewhere and just look at things, there is a certain feeling associated with that - the way you see everyday life. there is a feeling associated with that, but i get the impression that most people may not realize this because they feel this all the time. my arrogance in saying some people may not realize this comes from the fact that whilst i knew this, it wasn't the same as feeling it the way i did today.

so where was i, my outlook on life changed for a duration of my walk.

the time this happened was when i was thinking deeply about the things i was curious about, all the different things that fascinated me about everything and how i wasn't pursuing those interests.

so after about 10 minutes of walking and really thinking about these things as well as how and why i wasn't pursuing any of these interests, the way i looked at things changed.

i can't really describe the feeling very well, specially because it's a feeling, but i can go someway to describing it.

so when i looked up, my usual thoughts of viewing life and society as a projection of my thoughts towards myself, such as: hopelessness, distress and something uniformly grey was no longer there. 

i felt very bright and happy and this veil of grey with which i saw life was no longer there. when i saw the woman in her car with a green raincoat and her daughter, i didn't feel 'oh it's sunday, she's going to go home and do the things everyone else do and prepare to go to work tomorrow', i felt, 'fuck, i've been (involuntarily and helplessly) looking at life just one way, and there are many feelings and ways to look at things' (note: this is how i felt, not what i said, i didn't say anything to myself). and even though what i said about her going home and and doing whatever everyone else does may be true, the significance of what i felt was in that there are vastly different ways of looking at life, not in a describable way, but in a subjective feelings kind of way. something which i think can be changed by changing my life, in the same way that surrounding yourself with negative people and some of which will rub on to you.

sure, i knew that there were different ways of looking (meaning feeling) about life, and i'd felt what i felt today quite a few times before. i thought that it having happened today was critical in the the time that i occurred. a moment where i'm trying very hard to change my life and trying to find some direction in the way of 'how do i go about doing all these things i want to do?' and the ever elusive independence day.