When the brain is tired.

Just finished Alan Watt’s The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety. Though the book veers towards the religious in it’s last third, the first two-thirds have some excellent insight into psychological security and how our need for it exacerbates our anxiety and depression.

I found this passage beautiful and helpful in describing the way some court suicide. For someone who is healthy and strong, it might not make much sense, this can help in trying to understand:

For when the body is worn out and the brain is tired, the whole organism welcomes death. But it is difficult to understands how death can be welcome when you are young and strong, so that you come to regard it as a dreaded and terrible event. For the brain, in its immaterial way, looks into the future and conceives it a good to go on and on and on forever - not realizing that its own material would at last find the process intolerably tiresome. Not taking this into account, the brain fails to see that, being itself material and subject to change, its desires will change, and a time will come when death will be good. On a bright morning after a good night’s rest, you do not want to go to sleep. But after a hard day’s work the sensation of dropping into unconsciousness is extraordinarily pleasant. (67)

That last two sentences really hit the nail on the head for me. There are some days that feel like I’m pulling myself through such drudgery. Breathing hurts. My cells are itching with something unbearable and microcosmic. On days like this I am so sensitive from exhaustion that dropping into the unconscious sounds like heaven. The unconscious here sounds like escaping your life. It rings of release and quiet. It's a siren call promising serenity and nothingness. 

Nothingness might sounds terrible to you. But when the alternative to nothingness is the unbearable weight of depression and/or the torment of the constant agitation of anxiety believe me when I say it sounds divine. It sounds like a beautiful spring day after a long, hard winter. 

Deepak Chopra on The Wisdom of Insecurity.

Deepak Chopra writes the introduction to Alan Watts’ The Wisdom of Insecurity. In it, he speaks highly of the book, and has a few descriptions I've found helpful and would like to reference here.

"The ego-self constantly pushes reality away. It constructs a future out of empty expectations and a past out of regretful memories." (2)

This has been a major issue for me. Specifically regretful memories. I have such a way of getting stuck on moments I'm ashamed or embarrassed about. As if these times cannot be excused or explained - but instead hold me to be permanently shameful.

I have dreams about these past people, these past experiences, and I wake up feeling like shit about it. Why do I still dream about these people? Why do I still dream about the way they gave me pleasure or caused me pain? Logically I could explain to myself that they are points of reference for my ego - but this does not wash away the same that I continue to feel, amplified by the time it’s been since these original sins.

I can go further, and extrapolate that because these are the original sins, and because I've had little to no sin since then, that these devils remain my only points of reference. They are my only memories.

I’ll gladly call myself out on using the term “sin.” I don’t mean it in a religious sense - nor do I affix judgement to these experiences logically. I just feel haunted by them, and feel that my shame creates a mythic ghost of these people and situations.

I use this language poetically. I also use it instead of specifically addressing the details of it all.

It’s now what I did that bothers me so much. It’s that it bothers me. It’s these regretful memories, and the ghosts that quite literally haunt my dreams.

"... words can point in the right direction; they can highlight overlooked flashes of insight; they can ignite the flame of discontent." (6)

I still don’t know what role this blog is taking in my life. I try to write when I can, especially when there’s something on my mind - but it’s difficult to get in front of a computer when I'm in the middle of a moment. I try and give myself notes or sources I can refer to later - expand on when the time and clarity of mind is there.

I absolutely do appreciate the power of language and the written word. I always have. But lately as I've been reading several books a month, and leaning towards memoirs and essays, I see the way in which personal experience and narrative can touch someone. I've felt this. Initially while reading The Chronology of Water and recently reading Nobody Is Ever Missing, Not That Kind of Girl and Men Explain Things to Me.

I hope I can keep exploring writing as a new creative tool, and maybe more so as a tool in working through my issues and expressing myself. Putting things down on paper, getting things out and away from me. This could be a way to externalize what’s so tightly wound around my insides.

What I love about this Deepak quote is his pin-pointing “overlooked flashes of insight” which happens daily. These moments of brilliance we’re too late to grab hold of or dismiss prematurely. I’d like to try and stay in these moments and expand on them here.

Forward!

On Batman and psychological security.

I watched the last two Batman films last night. The Christopher Nolan trilogy is beyond compare to everything that came before them so they're the only Batman films I’ll ever reference. Unless of course I ever need to talk about how much Danny DeVito’s penguin scared the shit out of me as a child.

The movies brought up a ton. I started thinking about self-sacrifice and determination, the ways in which Christian Bale and Tom Hardy gained like 75 pounds of muscle for their roles. Sure, it’s most likely steroids or human growth hormone, but it still happened. Anne Hathaway said she mainly ate kale for months getting in shape and losing weight for her role.

How is it discipline is so easy for some and is so disastrous for others?

Watching Heath Ledger was a fucking bummer. What was his relationship with discipline like? He must have had his weak spots. Don't we all? He lost his life to his struggle. I wonder if he lived with depression. It isn't hard to imaging turning to drugs. I've thought about it many times.

I get these moments where I'm able to float outside of myself. Out there I think objectively about how on any given day things can change. Not in a magical way. I could wake up tomorrow and be a hard-line vegan and lose weight and improve my health. I could get hit by a car and lose my legs and spend the rest of my life in a completely different struggle. A completely different story with which to feel sorry for myself.

I'm currently reading The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts. Though I'm only about a third of the way through the book, I've already found a lot of value in Watts’ writing:

This book is an exploration of this law in relation to man’s quest for psychological security, and to his efforts to find spiritual and intellectual certainty in religion and philosophy. It is written in the conviction that no theme could be more appropriate in a time when human life seems to be so peculiarly insecure and uncertain. It maintains that this insecurity is the result of trying to be secure, and that, contrariwise, salvation and sanity consist of the most radical recognition that we have no way of savings ourselves.

I am sure to some that would sound dark. To me it's a deep exhalation. Disney's made a gazillion dollars preaching “let it go,” because we all need to let go of something. Watts description of our desire for certainty speaks to both religion and the everyday ways in which I seek order and amenity.

So much of my stress comes from worrying about money, and my future. My ability to take care of myself. The abuse and hatred of my body is both fed by my existential dread and soothes the mind that points to it.

No doubt over the next few days I will be pulling quotes from Watts’ book and speaking to them. My brain is such a jumble it can be difficult to pin-point one topic or pull one thread from all the others it touches.