Last night I wasn’t sleepy enough and I watched four Episodes of Louis CK in a row. It reminded me of something author Dr. Deepak Chopra said in a talk about happiness. He said humor is a way to heal. And it is. As my boyfriend knows I will always pick a comedy–especially stand-up comedy–over drama, thrillers, action movies…because humor is a way of healing.
The media tells us there’s a big monster called “bad economy” that’s going to rear its fangs and dishevel us like that poor homeless man who had his face torn off by a “zombie.”*
The media tells us Iran is just a wink away from nuclear weapons.
The media tells us that global warming is going to heat us up like pancakes on a skillet [when I hear "global warming" there's an internal Blake meltdown--and then I keep driving my dog home from the dog park in my car].
The media tells us our employers are going to sneak into our Facebook inbox and see all the disgusting revealing inappropriate messages and we’ll be fired from our jobs [including ones we don't have yet].
The media tells us there are hormones in the water we drink.
The media tells us that X is making us fat [x will be explained after this commercial break].
Commercial break! Buy this big sexy car so all your neighbors will think you’re suave, sexy, controlled and rich.
Newsflash! Drinking water makes you fat–drink Diet Coke!
Newsflash! [insert Global Warming pundits]!
Wait am I supposed to buy the big sexy car or save the environment? Ahhh I’m so confused!!
The media tells us that smart, well-rounded, wise, respectable, normal-sized, flawed, not-for-sale, financially sound, can say no to men who just use her for sex, puts herself first, is not white….women don’t belong on t.v
Now that you’ve had a nice tall refreshing glass of the world is ending, we’re all screwed, build a bomb shelter, store some cash under your mattress and don’t smile at the neighbors…
Go back to your routine, make dinner, do the dishes and iron your clothes for tomorrow.
And pay your Comcast bill so you can do this again next month.
I’m not going to blame the media for my sometimes inclinations to feel panicky, anxious, or just generally disenchanted with life. But I choose not to watch the news because me–(Blake)–running around my apartment anxious and wound up like a pretzel tearing my hair out because the world is ending–is not going to save the world. It just makes me feel like shit.
We all have good days and bad days. I don’t care if you’re Sienna Miller and you’re airbrushed on Vogue.
How You Look Will Not Impact How You Feel About Yourself
No matter how hard the media tries to sell us the idea that when we look a certain way we’ll feel a certain way, we all know better. We feed into these lies because they appear less painful than the truth.
[sidenote: My dear America stop selling this crap to Americans. One third of our children are obese. We as a society are obese. Something is seriously broken.]
Mortality
We feed into these lies because they appear less painful than the truth. The truth is we are mortal beings. Sometimes we feel scared and sometimes we feel alone.
As a society, we don’t talk about mortality and death–because it’s a dark subject. And in our non-buddhist ideology, it sort of sucks. And many of you out there in my gen y generation are not religious. So it’s much easier to eat a snickers bar than to digest that scary reality that we just don’t know what happens when we die. And we also don’t know when that will be.
Newsflash: pretty blonde woman gets a flesh eating virus while zip-lining in her backyard! Don’t let that be you!!
It appears to be much easier to go buy a new lipstick than to look at the pain and feel it. The media is very smart. They bank in on our vulnerability. They keep us at bay.
The thing is we have lost our humanity in pursuit of what we see to be American progress.
Women are hurting in this equation because they’re fed the most contradictory lies–and fed them 24-7. We spend our lives chasing meaningless personaes, when most of us just want to be loved.
While I like to think I’m some kind of enlightened person, the truth is while I’m not of it I’m still in it. So I still want nice things, need validation, need love, worry that I ate too much peanut butter. There are days where just getting internally peaceful takes me most of the day. When I have to go to battle and drown the “voice” inside me with love and kisses until it gets so fed up it goes back in its hole.
Letting Toxic Thoughts Go
Deepak Chopra says that thoughts are not necessarily consciousness. Just because your thoughts are floating around in your mind doesn’t mean you have to accept them as part of you. You can acknowledge them and send them on their way. I do this personally. In my own guided visualization I close my eyes and if a person or idea pops into my head that leaves me feeling icky–I imagine putting each one in an air tight jar and send them/it out to sea on a sailboat. Thank you Anne Lammott for inspiring that.
When you do set the toxic thoughts free you don’t retain negativity. When we let toxic thoughts fester we feel exhausted, we get sick, we feel anxious, insecure, depressed….
If you soak up the negativity of what’s “out there”–the media, the people who drain you in your life, a job that leaves you feeling deflated-you won’t have anything left. You will be hypnotized by the media’s curse.
To be human is to suffer, but to not acknowledge your suffering is to suffer more.
The entire world would be a better place if we all turned off the t.v., went outside for a nice walk, planted something in a garden or closed our eyes for a 5 minute meditation. We’d make healthier decisions for ourselves, our families, our employees and our environment.
Remember, all the answers you need are in <3 here. Remember there is incredible power behind your vulnerability. Go look, I promise you’ll be pleasantly surprised by what you find down there.
*I was really disgusted that the zombie article got so much attention. A tie to the obsession with zombies in television and gaming?