Welcome: The First Blog Post
“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
Alas, the first blog post.
Just to be upfront, this blog is going to be more for myself than anyone else, so it’s going to be a little sporadic and varied in content.
To be honest though, I’m looking forward to having a blog—I’ve never actually had one before, and I’ve been listening to a lot of really fascinating podcasts lately, so this will be a nice place for me to comb through new information and ideas that I find fascinating. Especially since I’m taking a little break from social media for awhile (inspired by an episode of Sahara Rose’s podcast, The Highest Self… also, finals). Inevitably, my feelings will make an appearance. Feel free to share yours as well—this is a safe space.
Moving right along. You can find out pretty much anything you could want to know about me on my About page, you can read all about my adventures in poethood on my Poetry page, and you can even see some moody self-portraits I made for my senior year art show on my Visual Art page. Here, then, I shall focus on musing.
Thanksgiving was yesterday. My husband and I have spent most of today lounging around the house watching Frozen with our girls, and feeling generally lackluster from our oddly-timed binges yesterday (sidebar: being sober for several years now, I find it amusing how truly sensitive our bodies are to the things we ingest—I used to eat shrooms before work just to spice things up a bit, and now I can’t even ingest carbs after 7pm without feeling hungover in the morning).
I truly was inspired with feelings of gratitude yesterday. I grew up with mainly just my mom—life was pretty quiet and even solitary most of my childhood. The holidays often felt misplaced in our too-quiet home and I grew to dislike the season in general, especially after my father died. Today, my family has grown: my sister is married with three boys, my Nana has become a big part of our lives over the last few years, and I have two girls of my own. Moreover, the family that I married into is big and loud and undeniably spunky. Every Christmas, we spend two weeks in Texas with my in-laws. The days are full of lights and delicious food and warm moments and an unnecessary degree of generosity, and I look forward to the holidays now more than ever—because what I have today, that deep human connection of a community to share love and gratitude with, is something that my life was missing before.
Virginia Satir, an often-quoted family therapist, once said: “We need 4 hugs a day for survival. We need 8 hugs a day for maintenance. We need 12 hugs a day for growth.”
The Greecian island of Ikaria boasts a life expectancy rate notably higher than most any other place in the world. Residents of this island credit their longevity to a Mediterranean diet, active sex lives, and nearly constant social engagement with other people living on the island.
The 1960’s series of “Rat Park” experiments shifted academic mentality towards the treatment of addiction in humans, after qualitatively determining the importance—even for rats—of belonging to a community.
If being in communion—and arguably even direct physical contact—with others is so detrimental to our well-being, then why have we insisted on individualizing to the point which we find ourselves today? The goal for many seems to be living alone, not having to compromise with anyone, and being entirely self-sufficient. However, I don’t think that people truly realize what the psychological and interpersonal effects of such a lifestyle are. Half of the US population is on antidepressants, and we are in the middle of a full-blown opiate epidemic. Naturally, I do not wish to come across as being so ignorantly reductive—of course both of these issues are incredibly multi-faceted and legitimately deserving of varied considerations—I just believe that being actively ingrained in a social network (a real one, not a virtual one) has the potential to enact positive benefits far beyond current consideration. As someone who lived by myself for three years—while it undeniably had its perks—I can tell you that there were an uncomfortable amount of hours where I stared at a wall in complete silence (sidebar #2: this scene reminds me of the film Cashback, which is lovely) and emerged from my apartment feeling like a non-entity. Which, if you ask me, just doesn’t even out with the intermittent glory of not having to wear pants. (sidebar #3: most humans can agree that pants are unnecessary, especially inside the home—so let’s just all get comfortable with our bodies, do away with latent Victorian modesties, and cosign one another’s comfort, shall we?)
Why, then, is the utmost value placed on not needing others? If anything, we should be putting forth effort into nurturing (healthily) co-dependent relationships with friends, family, and members of our community. Seriously guys, let’s all move into respective communes, farm animals, revert to barter and trade, and garden in the nude. Can you imagine how many hugs there would be in a day?! Everyone would achieve self-actualization in like a week. It would be glorious.
*stows away this argument in an artfully carved wooden box for safekeeping, until the next time one of my friends is going through a break-up and I try to lure her into living with me and my family*
Well, anyhow—thank you for coming to my TedTalk on gratitude and goat farming, and let me know if you know of any good communes. I was going to focus on the concept of Black Friday in this post—but the underpinnings of consumerism are already a bit conspicuous, aren’t they? I suppose I can touch on that another time (sidebar #4: the book “Everything that Remains” by the Minimalists is fantastic—think Marie Kondo vibes, but more cerebral and self-examining). I have included links to academically legitimate versions of some of the sentiments I have expressed here—feel free to indulge! The “Rat Park” experiments were oddly poignant—to me, anyway.
I hope y’all have a peaceful and restorative long weekend, and that you each have oodles to be grateful for.
Rat Park article: http://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/9728/
Greek island: https://www.hindawi.com/journals/crp/2011/679187/