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Thank you Shadow, for your years with us. Mahler’s Adagietto says so much more than words ever could. You shall ever be missed, and ever remembered.
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We are a social species, seeking qualified help from another person, professional or otherwise, is almost always a good plan. Mary Lundorff says this about grief:
“People experiencing complicated grief often avoid people, situations or objects that remind them of the permanence of their loss, so some version of exposure is often used. Exposure might include retelling the story of the loss or identifying particularly disturbing memories that the person tends to avoid, and then gradually revisiting these memories within and between treatment sessions. The final stages of therapy are often future-focused, working towards resumption of life without the deceased. This element emphasises establishing and maintaining a healthy bond to the deceased, including an acceptance that life continues, and targeted help to reengage in meaningful relationships.
The saying ‘time heals all wounds’ is only partially correct because, for severely inflamed wounds, time is not the solution. It is necessary to see a doctor and receive specialised treatment to aid the healing process. Bereaved individuals experiencing complications in their grief process often describe their situation as extremely numbing, overwhelming and debilitating. As shown in the case of Amy, one’s social network is a crucial factor. While an understanding and supportive network can act as a protective factor against prolonged grief disorder, withdrawal from friends and family can create social isolation and increase feelings of meaninglessness, contributing to the development of prolonged grief disorder. It is essential to know that professional help is available. If you read this and recognise the symptoms of prolonged grief disorder in someone you know – or perhaps in yourself – seek out professional support because time does not heal all grief.”
In the famous words of George Carlin:
“There’s a reason education sucks and it’s the same reason that it will never, ever, ever be fixed. It’s never going to get any better, don’t look for it, be happy with what you’ve got. Because the owners of this country don’t want that. I’m talking about the REAL owners, now. The real owners, the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions — forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land, they own and control the corporations; they’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the State houses, the City Halls; they’ve got the judges in their back pockets, and they own all the big media companies so they control just about all the news and information you get to hear.”
“They gotcha by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying — lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want — they want more for themselves and less for everybody else. But I’ll tell you what they don’t want. They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that, that doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests. That’s right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they’re getting f***ed by the system that threw them overboard 30 f***ing years ago. They don’t want that.”
“You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime, and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. …All day long, beating you over the in their media telling you what to believe — what to think — and what to buy. The table is tilted, folks. The game is rigged. And nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care.”
“…They don’t give a fuck about you, they don’t…They don’t care about you – at all. At all, At all. At all. At all. And nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care … that’s what the owners count on, the fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue d**k that’s being jammed up their assholes every day. Because the owners of this country know the truth — it’s called the American Dream … ‘cuz you have to be asleep to believe it.”
“The problem with Carlin’s brilliant rant is of course it’s extreme, well, cynicism. Millions upon millions of Americans do notice and do care. They aren’t asleep. They are capable of critical thinking. They very much want to un-rig the game, level the table, and change the system – make a people’s democratic revolution and save humanity. I run into and talk to and try to energize and learn and get energy from these people regularly. They haven’t surrendered to the American authoritarian-sexist-racist-nativist-nationalist-fascist nightmare yet.
I share with many of these people a basic underlying spiritual sense that giving up and letting the owners – our financial and political owners, yes – win is irrational and indeed morally corrupt. Let’s say the chances of collapsing the nation’s un-elected and interrelated dictatorships of money, empire, white-supremacism, and patriarchy are just 3 or 2 or even 1 in 10 (I think the real odds may be much higher). Why bring them down to zero by giving in to fatalism – to “it’s never going to change?” It makes no sense to give up: you lose nothing by believing in the possibility of democratic transformation and revolutionary change; you lose everything by not believing. Try some radical existentialism!”
Sometimes a little life advice is in order. I’ve read Ruiz’s book and it seems to be quite sensible. So here are the four agreements and the Psychology Today handy explanation below.
- Be impeccable with your word.
- Don’t take anything personally.
- Don’t make assumptions.
- Always do your best.
1. Be impeccable with your word. In a sense, social constructivists are correct about words creating reality. We act on what we tell ourselves is real. Albert Ellis encouraged us to screen our self-talk for negative, irrational chatter. What kinds of words do you use when you describe reality? Do you lie and say hurtful and poisonous things about yourself and others? (Not healthy.) To be impeccable with your word is to be truthful and to say things that have a positive influence on yourself and others.
2. Don’t take anything personally. The first agreement suggests that we avoid treating others hurtfully. The second agreement provides us with a way of dealing with potentially hurtful treatment from others. Because each person sees the world in a unique way, the way that others treat us says as much about them as it does about us. Not taking anything personally is to acknowledge the unique identities of other people. We respect their subjective realities, realizing that their views do not necessarily describe us accurately.
3. Don’t make assumptions. Assuming that you know what other people are thinking or feeling about you is a limiting thought that Aaron Beck called Mind Reading. Obviously, none of us can read minds. When we try to engage in mind reading we will often be wrong, leading to undesirable consequences. The antidote to mind reading is to ask for evidence before concluding what people are thinking.
4. Always do your best. One obvious reason for doing your best is that we cannot achieve our goals by being lazy. If you do your best, not only are you are more likely to achieve goals, but you will also avoid criticism from what Ruiz calls your internal Judge. There are also more subtle issues about doing “your best.” One is that you should not try to do better than your best. Pushing yourself too hard can cause pain, injury, and mistakes. More subtle still is the recognition that our “best” will vary from moment to moment, that, in a sense, you are always doing your best. Realize this, and your inner Judge can take a permanent vacation.
It’s been a rough couple of months, and sometimes refreshing some core tenets of being is way to restart and attempt to regain some purchase in life.
… It is estimated that there was 5 to 12 tons of manure a day on the Ark. Now there was a window on top of that Ark that could be opened — it actually was on the side, not the top, it’s on the side — where they could throw it out if they needed to, so it doesn’t necessarily mean it piled piled piled, they had a way getting rid of it, no doubt.
To reiterate: He’s saying Noah’s family — all eight of them — managed to clear away up to 12 tons of animal shit on a daily basis.
If you’ve ever wondered how so many people could believe a fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible, it’s because they never stop to think about what that means. They just accept without questioning. It’s a horrible way to go through life.
It takes the fun out of the Disservice if they do *all* the work. :/
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