Month: December 2019

Good evening ladies and gentleman

We spend approximately one third of our lifetime asleep. If you live until the age of 75, that means you would have spent 25 years asleep. The vast majority of your brain is out for the count, just the parts keeping you alive remain full of the sparks of life.

As we sleep, we rest and recover from the day, or night that preceded it- or thats at least what we intend i suppose. Yet the pursuit of sleep is often littered with problems and obstacles. When all you need to hit the reset is a few hours sleep, the joy of your bed can sometimes seem like nothing more than a figment of your imagination.

When you can’t sleep it feels as if your entire DNA is being re-structured because you don’t feel like you. In sleeplessness issues can be bought so far forward it can be impossible to ignore.

The rougher periods generally come from something different. Sometimes we can choose not to sleep, occupy our minds with something that we feel is necessary to drive us forward and other times we just have no choice.

It’s a confusing thought to wander what the point of going to sleep is. I’ve had this thought pass through my mind more times than i care to count, like I’m trying to delay the inevitable passage of time to delay tomorrow as much as i can. Eventually you have to concede and go to bed for the sun will soon rise again, to only lie there under the soft white sheets, wandering why you are alive, what is the meaning of life, what did you do with today and what did you learn. I find myself thinking sometimes in quite a profound way and other times i feel so totally blank- tired of thinking so much but still not sleeping.

What follows comes the realisation you failed in your pursuit of blissful sleep. In its place nothing more than a persistent curiosity of where you went so wrong or what you’ve been thinking about to get to this point of poor or sometimes no sleep. Which ironically, makes sleep even more difficult.

When you are open to life and every feeling that comes with that, it gives you an acutely different perception of the world. But take away the majesty of sleep, its as if you’re handing over the reigns of your life to someone you’d barely trust to tie your fucking shoes- something that can often be a struggle. Sleep deprivation, or insomnia in some cases is taking away the one thing you need more than anything else in the world and taking that away is a danger like few others.

What happens to your mind when you don’t sleep? To me, it’s the capacity for emotional context and balance, which is the one thing that gives you the perspective on your life, what you are and who you are, the part of you that sees you that you’re special, different, unique, capable and even loved.

Born of no sleep is the issues of overthinking- which can be a fairly constant battle to manage. I’m generally always thinking about something, considering some form of theory on old school philosophy, modern takes on old ideas and questioning the very social hierarchy that emotions seem to place upon people. I think about how easy it could be to accept the world “just as it is” and how i must fight against it for what i believe in. In periods of no sleep, that voice that screams to give up- to not be okay with “not being okay,” to “submit” is so much louder. So much harder to ignore.

It’s a difficult to sensation to explain when you find yourself beyond exhausted. I think its a misconception to assume to be tired simply as a result of not sleeping, i can sleep for hours and still feel so much worse than i do having “rested.” Lack of bliss is a powerful force for you have slept, but not rested. Nightmares plague your soul, your unconscious mind filling your dreaming body with every possible fear it could bring on, the tossing, turning, fears of what may or may not happen, the fear of loneliness while wanting so badly to just be left alone.

When you don’t rest, its as if your soul remains asleep. I wander how we go about dealing with this inability to find that blissful sleep we all strive for. The way i see it, its your mind telling you something in your life isn’t sitting right with you. Whatever it is your entire system are out of balance and until you figure out what it is, the pursuit will be nothing more than that, a chase for sleep you are always going to struggle with.

Jim Carrey said that depression is your minds way of telling you that is tired of playing a character for the benefit of society and i feel like this thought could be used to deal with the issue of sleep. The way i look at it there is some form of internal struggle or conflict making the pursuit of blissful sleep a near herculean distance to run. Your mind is telling you that something is wrong, the question is how open you can be with yourself to look deep into your reflection and try and understand what’s going on.

Now i say this like it’s easy. I know its not- sometimes it feels a near impossible task in which genuine sleep feels nothing more than a distant blissful memory. I can spend hours lying in the dark staring into space, feel absolutely nothing when lost deep in a music playlist seemably never ending. When you’re there, in your way, you fear you may never be able to pull yourself out.

Worse still- you aren’t sure that you want to.

But what if we tried? I’m not saying it’s going to help immediately, in a week a month or even a year. I hope as you read this as part of the bleary eyed life we all seem to live these days you connect with these words and give yourself that chance. Talk to your people, people who see you truly, not as the character you play. Even your dog, it doesn’t matter.

Write it down, write a song, write a poem. Take a photo, create a work of art. Cry. Cry floods and floods of tears until you see it. I know it’s scary, it feels impossible. Find your way to let it all out. Doesn’t matter what it is. Please try. Please.

Then maybe, someway, somehow..

The Pursuit of Blissful Sleep will be successful for us all.

Yours, with love as always.
DR x

Good evening ladies and gentleman

I have found recently that the way i write, or get ideas for how to write has been undergoing a sort of evolution. I think of the most off the cuff ideas generally at the lower points of my mentality, or when boredom has been running through my rife through my mind, as if i was hungover after a heavy night out. Its almost like when your body craves fluid- my mind begs me for some form of idea, something to make your heart beat and soul truly sing.

It’s during one of these “hangovers” that i got to thinking about what it means to live in “reality.” The word in itself gives connotations to ideas of “how you feel the world should be” and there being “nothing i can do- its just how it is.”

Its a word we use at the end of a debate, when your out of ideas and your conversational armoury has run dry- this is the time when “reality” takes a hold. It’s very pessimistic in the emotional thoughts and feelings that are connected to even saying that word, like admitting defeat. I wander how much we know about reality, about how the world tries so hard to be real, yet so often seems such a hoax and how this compares to our own personal reality.

I’ve written enough already about the obsessive desire it feels like society tries to convince us “their” way is the only way. How it seems like our only purpose in life is to fit into the ideologies and beliefs of a wider audience, to gain followings and gain this so called “ideological reality.” This is something that connects to our personal reality i think, because i feel there have been times in deep misery or longing when we tend to stray from the morals of uniqueness, personal knowledge and ideals and wander, to just for a second…in whimsical curiosity- look to the other side.

A look across to the other side and the grass always seems a little greener over there- so you wander. You think “i bet that grass tastes amazing!” even though it’s just another way to lose another aspect of your reality, forging a path to eventually become nothing more than a reflection of your former self.

Through all this revolves the argument that we are born of the circumstances presented to us throughout numerous stages of our lives. Its a powerful argument and its something i’ve considered to be true for a number of years, but theres more to it, that you as a human being are so beautifully complex its near impossible to define who you are or who you want to be through your past, your present or even your idealised future.

I find we as people, in 2019, will take the easy way out of an emotional problem so as to not deal with it. Now, take this as you will- I’m not saying the potentially massively terrible actions or events that have happened to people aren’t playing a part in their emotional existence and how ones personality is evolving from that point, but what worries me is what is being lost as a result of this event.

Its like i said- we are being defined by our circumstances because we are being told that’s what is supposed to happen and what you’re supposed to do in reaction to it. We are all guilty of it i think because it’s been drilled into us in such a way to not even notice what we are doing. Its like we are so unsure what to do- so you end up listening to people who will never see the world like you do- to then end up living through their ideal of your situation. Ignoring the overall issue that nobody else has ever felt what you’ve felt or been through what you’ve been through in the way you’ve done it.

The way you react to an event is always unique to you.

We fear repetitions of the circumstances that caused so much anguish the first time round, so we wrap ourselves up so much to avoid it happening so it never will, but at the same time ignoring a part of you that makes you feel special, that makes you feel alive. Say a racing driver has a terrible crash, should they quit and never race again- or should he keep going because of the way it makes them feel?

Obviously a fairly acute example but its almost like we are all constructing mental museums- a nod to the person we once were, while lost in the fear of what we could be. The end result is inevitable, because it’s nothing. No way to go back to the pain of before, but no way forward to the potential of what the future could hold for you, depending on what you choose to do.

We walk around our Museum of Reflections, seeing how you felt about yourself, the things you loved to do, people you once cared about, people you loved- through nothing more than glass screens and reflections. It’s easy to become so lost behind things that have happened, feelings you have experienced and people you have lost. It’s an emotional scapegoat we have all been using for years and i feel like we’re all losing out on ourselves as we try and stare at the world through a mere reflection of who we used to be.

Just because something happens you shouldn’t lose something, but it should add something to you- this is the difference between change and evolution.

The alternative is we risk putting up more and more glass cases, more and more parts of us lost to the land of maybe in reflections of who we used to be- to the point where one day you wake up yo someone you don’t even recognise in the mirror. Our personalities as people have become so fragile its as if one little tap could shatter us all into a million pieces.

I say let it. Let yourself be broken, let yourself feel the pain you don’t want to feel, feel everything that scares you. Embrace the fear and accept the pain for what it is if it doesn’t go how you hoped. There is no failure only learning and no change just evolution. See the reflections of yourself and what you once were, windows into memories which have caused you to build walls higher and higher, not to get away from everyone else, but to get away from yourself, in some hope this way you could believe society may actually accept you.

And remember – they will never accept you. Not unless you bend or twist to their ways, becoming a carbon copy of the rest of the world, while nothing more than a reflection in a window of what you once were. Be yourself and don’t worry about everyone else, they are generally too busy worrying about what you’re thinking to worry about what you’re doing.

If we don’t we risk becoming nothing more than a Reflection of our Reality.

Yours, with love as always.
DR x