How do you help someone to see what is blindingly obvious to everyone else? Can you even make someone see something that the should see but might not want to? I don't think you can. I think the best thing that anyone can do for anyone is to be patient with them and let them come to their own conclusions.
But that path is just so frustrating! It's hard to see something bad happening and have to wait because you can't do anything. It's frustrating having no power to dive in and save someone you know is at risk of drowning. Even worse when you throw them a life raft and they don't take it because they don't even see that they are at risk. But then you can't be all things to all people and sometimes people need to hit the bottom to be able to come back to the top. I just hate seeing people in pain, it hurts me seeing people I care about hurting. It breaks my heart to see their heart breaking.
And the only thing I can do is wait...
Wednesday, 30 May 2007
Tuesday, 22 May 2007
Teetering on the edge...
I spent last weekend feeling like I was teetering on the edge of insanity. It felt like there was a black abyss just waiting for me to falter and fall, never to be seen again. My brain was a whirlpool of Derrida, Lacan and Barthes; fear of failure and what seemed to be a general lack of communication from anyone I knew. It was a seriously dissociative experience of feeling totally disconnected from the real world. Not fun, not fun at all.
Anyways, I managed to claw my way back and reconnect. But it made me think. Maybe sanity is only a shadow away from ourselves. Maybe it lurks, unseen, under the crevices of our mind. Maybe insanity is just a condition that everyone and anyone flicks in and out of from time to time. Or was it just me? Who knows.
Anyways, I managed to claw my way back and reconnect. But it made me think. Maybe sanity is only a shadow away from ourselves. Maybe it lurks, unseen, under the crevices of our mind. Maybe insanity is just a condition that everyone and anyone flicks in and out of from time to time. Or was it just me? Who knows.
Tuesday, 1 May 2007
Scattered thoughts...
There's been a lot on my mind recently, so I haven't written on here in the hope that I would soon clear my mind and I would be able to write more clearly.
Didn't happen.
Never mind I'll just write anyways! So there's been a lot of death around recently. And it's gotten me thinking about death, mourning, memory and other cultural rituals that surround the end of a person's life. My lecturer for one of the papers I am taking this year pointed out to me that in Western Culture, it seems like we are getting less and less able to deal with death. It's becoming more and more professionalised and happening further and further away from the domestic sphere.
And when you think about it, that's scarily true. Someone dies, and a medical professional is required to verify that they are dead. Then a certificate of death is issued. Then the body is taken away by people in the profession of undertaking to be cleaned up and made presentable for the funeral, again, presided over by a professional. Then the body is either buried or cremated. Yep, you got it, again by professionals. Man, death is a big industry. And it's never going to lack clientele.
But why has death needed to be sanitised so much? Why can't we all deal with the gritty reality of what will eventually happen to each and every one of us? Yes, this is a morbid topic but why do people have such a hard time reading it? Are we all in a state of denial? I think I am. Less so about my own death, even though I can barely acknowledge that. I'm definitely in a state of denial about the deaths of those people around me that I love. I straight out cannot think about that without some kind of minor panic attack, the thought is just so horrific. Especially as I know the absolute finality of death that you will only ever understand once you have lost someone. There's no come back, no reprieve, no second chance. That's why I always obsessively tell everyone I care about that I love them or to take care of themselves whenever I say goodbye. Yeah, I have a complex, but at least I admit it!!
In any case, this is a topic too depressing to dwell on for too long. Maybe that's a reason we have professionals that can deal with it better than the majority of the population. But then again, maybe having to deal with death and face it on a day to day basis would make us all a bit stronger, a bit nicer to each other and a bit more appreciative of life as it is around us.
Cos I'm sure we'll all miss our lives once they're taken away from us.
Didn't happen.
Never mind I'll just write anyways! So there's been a lot of death around recently. And it's gotten me thinking about death, mourning, memory and other cultural rituals that surround the end of a person's life. My lecturer for one of the papers I am taking this year pointed out to me that in Western Culture, it seems like we are getting less and less able to deal with death. It's becoming more and more professionalised and happening further and further away from the domestic sphere.
And when you think about it, that's scarily true. Someone dies, and a medical professional is required to verify that they are dead. Then a certificate of death is issued. Then the body is taken away by people in the profession of undertaking to be cleaned up and made presentable for the funeral, again, presided over by a professional. Then the body is either buried or cremated. Yep, you got it, again by professionals. Man, death is a big industry. And it's never going to lack clientele.
But why has death needed to be sanitised so much? Why can't we all deal with the gritty reality of what will eventually happen to each and every one of us? Yes, this is a morbid topic but why do people have such a hard time reading it? Are we all in a state of denial? I think I am. Less so about my own death, even though I can barely acknowledge that. I'm definitely in a state of denial about the deaths of those people around me that I love. I straight out cannot think about that without some kind of minor panic attack, the thought is just so horrific. Especially as I know the absolute finality of death that you will only ever understand once you have lost someone. There's no come back, no reprieve, no second chance. That's why I always obsessively tell everyone I care about that I love them or to take care of themselves whenever I say goodbye. Yeah, I have a complex, but at least I admit it!!
In any case, this is a topic too depressing to dwell on for too long. Maybe that's a reason we have professionals that can deal with it better than the majority of the population. But then again, maybe having to deal with death and face it on a day to day basis would make us all a bit stronger, a bit nicer to each other and a bit more appreciative of life as it is around us.
Cos I'm sure we'll all miss our lives once they're taken away from us.
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