A Shiny, Resilient Hold

I want to try and tackle a complex subject that touches in a lot of areas of our lives. Most of us have seen something related to this regarding either vaccines, or diet, or exercise, or sleep patterns, or even romance--I call it the "my dumb body" myth. It is, simply put, the idea that our bodies are too "dumb," or un-evolved, to handle our present environment. Coupled with that is the idea that the intentions we place behind treatments or practices make the idea at hand more or less effective. Let's discuss! First, the idea that our bodies are un-evolved. Now what I mean by this is, for example, the idea that our colons don't clean themselves, and that we have to cleanse our colons of toxins in order to live healthy, happy lives. The reasoning behind this one is that there are a lot of processed food and non-food items being put in our bodies these days, and that maybe our bodies can't clear these things out for themselves. One trigger word we...

I've had a few conversations with friends lately that have circled the question: How do we become confident? Our ideas of confidence start pretty early on, and I think that most of us probably trip up in our teenage years. See, we associate confidence with the way that people view and respond to us. So naturally we believe that our personal level of confidence is a reflection of how attractive we are, how successful we are, how many friends we have…we don't look at the process, but rather think, gosh, if I looked like her, people would like me more, and then I'd be more confident.  "Yeah but you don't get it because you can sleep with whoever you want, so of course you're confident, because people already find you attractive." Ladies and gentlemen, as flattering as it is that several of you think this about me, I have to tell you, my ability to make someone want me has yet to ever genuinely change my confidence levels, and this is because: 1)...

Out and having dinner last night (a Carvery, my first!), I heard a lovely summation of an itch I’ve been turning back to for the past few weeks: living a life with bravery.  There are a lot of things set out there that will hold us back, but on the top of the list is our very own concept of self. If we perceive ourselves as people who cannot take risks within our own lives, and additionally, perceive ourselves as people without the possibility of community, then we end up living on a road that we never really planned; one that we just keep following until our old age, when we look back and say, where was my control? Where was my influence? The aspect with which I struggle the most is the risk of relying on created community. We are surrounded by different levels of community in our day to day: family community, customer community, city community, friendships, even similar interests. Over the past year, I am reminded of some of my feelings of isolation, being so far from a com...

I used to think of the “self” as a sort of blob of dough (poetic, I know). I saw myself as this mouldable, knead-able, cut-able thing--every action shaped me in some way, and I’d imagine it affecting the way the dough would rise, get punched down, rise...The deeper issues of life, like death or mental illness or injury, I experienced as chunks of dough being removed. The idea was that the pain of those incidents was severe enough to take a chunk out. Then the form as a whole would have to be reshaped again to become whole, and I saw this as a healing process.  The thing that I like about this image of a person is that it FEELS right. Every harsh event in our lives feels like we are being broken irreparably. After my first friend died, I remember thinking that my life had shrunk permanently. A piece had been taken out of me, and I was...less. I was less without this person as a character in my story.  The thing that sucks about that image, however, is that if you follow i...

So I’ve been thinking a lot about Nietszche’s concept of the ubermensch lately (a process about as geeky as I’m sure you’re picturing it to be). This concept, introduced to us in a torrent of German, basically boils down to the idea that there is this ultimate image of self dangling just in front of us at all times; there is a person there that is our ever forming “who I will become”. The personality carrot.   I think we first develop this personality carrot when we engage those older than us and think “that’s who I want to be.” When we’re seven, the ten year olds a few years ahead of us in school are incredibly “grown up”; they are the image of good behaviour. Intelligent, experienced in relationships, and clearly having figured the world out, we look at them and see the person we want to be.  Now of course, as adults we find this idea comical. Those are kids, right? And we see them as such. Fifth graders don’t know everything there is to know about relationships (...

“Mind if we join you, old-timer?” “Join me, m’son. Join me.” “You work for the railroad, grandpa?” “I work for no man.” -O Brother Where Art Thou What is an oracle? Our histories, our cultures, our families, have centred around this mysterious figure for centuries. Somewhere in our collective thought, there exists a person we all seek. They are the voice of our own introspection; that “gut instinct,” the urge to move forward in our lives and seek resonance with someone and something other than ourselves. We cling to them as a guide. What I find interesting about the oracles in our lives is that 1) we consistently attribute them to outside forces (they are our friends, our ancestors, our books) and 2) we so fervently believe in our capacity for futures that we have created an archetype for individual inspiration.  The oracle as an outside force, I believe, says something about our need for other people in our lives to act as enrichers. Isolation is devastating, a...

I was a child raised by terrible thoughts. When I was about ten years old, they started leaking into my head like a slow poison, making everything I tried to do in my everyday life slightly more difficult. They worked so gradually that by the time they’d established themselves, it felt like they’d always been there. And worse, they were absurd enough that they made me feel wrong. They made me feel broken. I couldn’t share them due to their absurdity.  I would find out, twelve years later, that these terrorising and isolating thoughts were due to a mental issue, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. As the doctor explained it, the thoughts that plagued me were the out of place thoughts that everyone has once in a while. The issue was that my brain couldn’t shut the gateway that created the thoughts, so they’d just recycle over and over. I’d walk by a light switch. My brain would fire out, “if you don’t turn off that light, you’ll get cancer.” Totally and completely absurd. And most p...