“There is no sense talking about “being true to yourself” until you are sure what voice you are being true to. It takes hard work to differentiate the voices of the unconscious.”
Marion Woodman
“Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one.”
Eleanor Roosevelt
Continue being kind and decent. Continue living life with integrity and you will continue to project this onto other people in the environment that you find yourself in.
Life is filled with challenges and sometimes trepidation and confusion. It is normal to feel scared and frightened sometimes or tension with regards to what we are facing in our lives. It is completely normal and you are not alone. Try to find meaning in life, in your relationships, in a hobby, write, journal, or discover meaning in simple activities. The preparation of a meal, or taking a walk on the beach and try and stay motivated. Smile, there are always going to be people who are in a less fortunate position than yourself and that smile is for you, to be kind to yourself, and for them. To be kind to others is a great gift.
Try to live a meaningful life. Pray. You will regain a sense of normality again in your life. Never fear or rather, don’t fear. Every game comes with its chance of failure as the Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson says. Don’t still your tension. Don’t still it. Just embrace life as it comes and live life on your own terms. It happens to the best of us, that feeling or sensation of tension. It happens to me too, even now. You can think to yourself that it is just a game of life. I don’t know.
What helped me was a YouTube video of Tyler Perry on doing service that I came back to when I felt low. It’s a video on doing service. For me life is much more than a game. It is competitive but I feel only up to a point because we also have to go through improvement, we also have to experience a level of personal development and fulfillment in our life. I will email you the link.
Keep writing and journaling. Spend time in silence and value being alone. There is strength in that. You are still young. There is enough time to gain wisdom and emotional maturity. You are intelligent and poetic in your writings. Look there and you will find meaning and insight staring back at you. Your own insight, your own wisdom, your own emotional maturity and if you look again and acknowledge this without rebelling you will understand that it is your intelligence and experience that is shaping you, that is transforming your intellect and psyche.
Problems in the workplace will come and go. Interpersonal relationships in the family sphere are oftentimes difficult and require acceptance from us. Acceptance that change happens within us and that we are given the role to accept what we are given and that sometimes it is our reactions and justifications that make us the slave in any given situation. Conflict, challenge, obstacle can be both negative and positive. It is up to us if it harms us. Do we accept it, or move on and forgive? Accepting negativity is dangerous.
Accepting depression is dangerous. I speak from experience, from my own life but I also want to tell you that it is normal to feel angry, to feel betrayed by someone that you love, by a family member. I too have felt this deeply. The tension, that spark that you speak of. I have felt that too and so have humanity, so have the human race, millions of individuals. It’s ok. You don’t have to be perfect all the time. Think of Jesus. Think of the disciples in the broader spaces of their existence. Think of what they pursued in their lifetimes, and think of the stressors, the positives, the negatives.
You are strong. At times, we all suffer. We are all prone to experience negativity. We all want to achieve perfection and be the perfect representation of the Christ figure. Be good to the people who are good to you but also be kind to the negative people in your life because they need kindness and not to be brutally punished for their meanness and negativity.
Hurt people hurt others. For your own happiness and peace of mind remember to be kind to yourself as well. Self-love is important. Consider yourself and your future. Be productive and shine in the workplace. You will always find people who do not want you to shine or be brilliant and phenomenal because it makes them aware that they are small, cruel and resentful.
You are the captain of your life. Remember, you make the world a better place for the people in your life. Don’t underestimate yourself. You are a visionary. You are a poet. You are a child of God.
Ask yourself this, what is it that you want out of life? How do you want to achieve happiness, what does the reality of power mean to you, are you embarrassed by loneliness?
It is never too late to journal, to follow the right path, to stand corrected from a wrong, to follow the correct instruction. It is never too late to find yourself, to write a book, a novel, it is never too late to write a poem, to take a solitary walk on the beach. It is never too late to start believing in yourself.
I have tried to comprehend manic depression and it hasn’t been easy. I have written about it. I have talked about my feelings to ministers, to an apostle who anointed me, I’ve spoken to clinical psychologists, talked about it with my father with regards to the fact that I was genetically predisposed to it, written about it in books, and I have diaries to prove its timeline, its continuum. I have needed help in turbulent times and in times of trial and I have lived and survived those seasons and now I can help others weather those storms that I have lived through.
I have been helpless but I have never lost hope, and nor have I lost the message of hope in my writings. I have sought advice. I have read widely. I have sought help in the church. I write to you with this message. Don’t lose hope. Don’t dwell on the past. Don’t dwell on that insult, and that break from your daily reality, from your normal, that wave of negativity from your family. Whether there is order or disorder in your world, you’re your universe, concentrate on your studies, focus on the module in front of you and think where you’ll be five years from now.
Look at the decade ahead of you. Focus on that. Focus on the future. The future is now, and the present is a gift, a moment in time. Let go of the negative feedback in your life that seems to be derailing you and affecting your self-worth. It happens to everyone in this life. The good, the bad and the only things that we can do is to concentrate on what provides us with comfort, to focus on what offers us a comforting perspective. Ryan Holiday speaks of spiritual combat and that’s where we are at this moment in time. Meditation and prayer will carry us through torment and humiliation and the constant struggle of life.
We have to examine our life, focus on the frailties of life, what makes us weak and vulnerable, what makes us strong and excellent and favoured in the eyes of God. Each one of us has a platform, has a responsibility, has a journey, a reach, an influence. Time waits for no man and certainly no woman. It is easy to feel alone in this world, to seek solitude. We can’t determine how cruel people are, says Ryan Holiday. He also speaks of cultivating community in an age of polarization.
Watch good documentaries and YouTube videos on people that you admire and you will discover that more people that you think of have experienced loneliness. For example, Rainer Maria Rilke, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Robert Lowell, Robert Greene, Jordan Peterson, Lewis Howes, Gabor Mate and Vusi Thembekwayo. Seek out educators, philosophers, spiritual teachers, poets, essayists, novelists past and present. Do your work, as Carl Jung said, and I am paraphrasing here, do your work conscientiously and friends will come and find you. We might think that we are alone but we never truly are.
Remember this: youth is only a season. It too shall pass. Think of what your legacy will be to the generation that will come after you. There’s no time like the present.
