A Life I Used To Have –This Cage Holds Me Tight

My life used to be very different. In terms of a life that resembles my life previously, this life is nothing close to what I used to have. The life I used to have is a distant memory of what I have now. This cage holds me tight in its grip.

When I was growing up, I used to do stuff. I was way more active in my life, both physically, and socially. I grew up riding bicycles doing freestyle and BMX riding.

There were times people were afraid of seeing me ride my bike, what was normal for me, was all too much for them; they objected to riding with both feet on the handle bars while coasting down the street without a helmet or knee pads.

I had a motorcycle that I rode and was pretty good at it. I grew up knowing how to downhill snow ski, and made use of every chance I could get to hit the slopes. I learned to ski at double black diamond levels, and got quite a thrill from skiing like a wild man.

I also took up indoor rock climbing, and found it to be the real challenge both physically, and psychologically. Because to really climb well, it takes a lot of psychological skill to climb and keep your wits about you. Most people would think what I was doing was impossible. It wasn’t, there are people that climb way above me.

I used to go dancing, and was quite good at it. I took to swing dancing, because I thought the music was good, and it was fun to dance with pretty chicks at the Derby. Often several nights a week, I could be found dancing east cost swing, with some good food.

My skills were better back then, my ability to do things that took strength, endurance, and talent that are all required to be able to stay alive. I took up rollerblading, and was very agile on my feet. Really there wasn’t much that didn’t have wheels that I didn’t do, or try.

This all changed twenty years ago. My life took some awful wrong turn that I had no control of. It wasn’t that I did something stupid, nor was it that I got hurt. Well, I did get hurt really, really bad; but it wasn’t anything I had control over.

They said it was a chemical imbalance in my mind, and that I wasn’t to be considered a sane man any longer. Something somewhere had screwed my life up really bad. My life that I knew and loved was gone, in whole; the life I used to have has completely been taken from me. The life I have today; it is nothing compared to the living I was doing twenty years ago. What is more, this life I have now, it’s not really living; it is closer to a living death.

It feels so damn unfair that my life was taken from me. There were things that I enjoyed doing a great deal; none of which I have been able to do or take part of in twenty years. I long for the days I was physically challenging myself to push my limits, to go fast on wheels, and enjoy the rush of adrenaline in my body that made me feel alive.

This existence, it’s not living; it’s a living death. There is no rush from what I can do these days. I’ve tried to get the same feeling from other things that I used to know and enjoy. Nothing compares to what I used to have. There simply isn’t anything I could do today to give me the same feeling. I have no friends, no job, no girlfriend, and it doesn’t look like that situation will ever change in this life.

My life today isn’t fun, it isn’t even interesting. I am confined to my house, only leaving for coffee, or a trip to the store. My life isn’t very enjoyable, because the things that I used to find enjoyable, and challenging; are not options any longer.

It seems ruthless cruel that I have been forced to live like zombie cat shit, being drugged out of my mind to enjoy a living death. I think that they last thing I would ever say is that I have enjoyed this life the last twenty years.

Sure there are other things to get enjoyment from, I still do what I can; but the enjoyments I used to have were far better than what I can do today. It is difficult to get a real thrill from coding html, not that it doesn’t have some rewards, but my family treats my accomplishments these days like they are worthless trash. I would like to see them do what I’ve done the last five years. Yeah, that would be fun.

I’m very good at what I do, its the only way I can get a thrill. Still, I find that I long for the days I was challenging myself physically. My life today while peaceful, is lacking anything that produces the same feelings that being physically skilled and pushing the limits of what I can do. Somehow, a dog walk just doesn’t have the same rush that going thirty miles an hour on rollerblades has.

I long for the times my life was better. I keep saying, “Life has to get better.” However, it seems I’ve come to terms with the fact, in this body; life isn’t going to get better. Pity, this life is a living death. I wanted better. Just a piece of advice, take care of your teeth, they rot out fast once they start to go. Wish I had been better about what I could have done about it; but it is far too late now.

However, their cry’s of my insanity; what I have to say about that is this; they live like zombie house cats. I want to live my life; and better than most ever dream. Most people in this world don’t really live; they just exist. Pity. They will never know what really living is like.

This cage I have now, someday its going to be replaced. Life has to get a lot better, and right quick.

Photo Credit: Photo by Jan Kopřiva on Unsplash

Written by Ctopher Thomas, A Real Misfit

Walking The Line….

It’s Coming

Mondays. We hate them. They are like the fly in your soup. After having asked around for a few weeks about getting a review on my website, and actually offering to pay people to tell me what they thought, (*Gasp*) No one would be willing to tell me what they thought.

So when I did find someone that was willing to tell me about how things looked, I wasn’t surprised that they told me that it wasn’t very good and that my work is roughly equivalent to being total junk that can’t be fixed.

It made my day, I would have sent the guy like fifty bucks. I mean he took the time to look at it. But after the way he made me feel, I just felt like, “Yeah, I’m gonna fix this.” The whole thing has moved to cookie cutters. They want people that fit the box. They want people that waste time the way they have prescribed you wasting your time. And anything different isn’t as cool as doing the whole cookie cutter thing.

Dare

Dare to think for yourself. Dream. Have some ideas. You know if your making a melody that goes with what God is playing than it’s all in harmony. Just don’t play the clashing gongs when you should be playing the flute.

I’m bored. No one is reading. I’m hoping this world gets what it really needs the most. I have found there are problems with humans value system that don’t add up and make no sense at all. Yet people seem to be following the cookie cutter patterns of thinking without questioning anything at all. Maybe we should let AI think for you. That might make your life better with just one form of uniformity in the world. It might be really something that makes you happier in the long run. The good news is everyone will finally be the same.

The bad news is you won’t care about what you don’t have.

Self Reliance, New beginnings, and old worn out excuses.

Self Reliance

It’s important to be self reliant. It’s also important to have groups of like minded people that work together to help everyone within the group. When people in a group are scattered and not allowed to be with like minded people, it causes a problem in society. There starts to be holes and gaps in life that doesn’t work for everyone.

When someone asks someone in a different group for help, and that group is unwilling to help the other group, then you have a case of discrimination. The question is do we respect differences of individuality and self expression? Maybe within our own groups we accept the small differences, and really there is nothing wrong with being like minded.

To each their own. Groups form. Groups break apart. New groups form and replace the old groups that went away. Voids are bad and can be fatal if not worked to be corrected.

Should there be only one form of uniformity?

If I were to ask you for help, and you didn’t want to help me because I have blue hair, would that be fair? What if everyone had blue hair, and someone else had blonde hair? Would you help them and not yourselves? Or would you only help yourselves and leave the other person to die a horrible death? Would you even care?

The real issue isn’t about what color their hair is. The question is whether you would give a damn? In today’s stoic society, most people don’t give a damn if you walk down the street bleeding to death and die on the sidewalk. It’s not their son or daughter, and to be honest no one gives a shit.

People only help you when it’s in their best interest to help you. When people feel threatened or abused, they go into fight or flight responses. So because no one will help me, and they expect me to pick myself up from my bootstraps, because helping me isn’t in their best interest, and because every-time I try to help myself get better, someone comes along and sabotages my efforts and treats them as worthless. They won’t let me form a group of like minded people that would help me, and they keep me isolated and alone, so that they can ensure my failure. And their success.

Why does it have to be win/lose? Why is it that the situation can not be win / win? do they really have to break someone and put someone down to make themselves feel better? Then the next question is why do they have to put me down to make themselves feel better?

What makes you happy?

If as humans they only measure their success based on how happy they feel, then they can be drug addicts, drunks, and sit as mindless zombies while stoned. That’s the ultimate happiness is how they feel and not having problems to deal with.

My efforts to make life a better place, to be kinder, more understanding, and more loving has been ignored; Maybe I should only help myself and my kind.

Maybe we should stop making old worn out excuses, and start helping everyone equally?

Update:

The point I’m trying to make was made by Darius Foroux in his article “Always be Useful.” You can read his very carefully prepared version here on Medium.

Always Be Useful

How to go from having thoughts to thinking

HowTo:

How to go from having thoughts to actually controlling your thoughts. Instead of having thoughts, it’s better if you can make a logical line of reason to follow through a course.

Since emotions can be tied to thoughts, someone that can evoke a thought can make you have an emotional response to that thought.

The reasoning of animals, insects, and people today is group think. Group feelings. Everyone feels good about feeling bad about feeling good about having done something wrong.

By keeping people so emotionally wrapped up that they can not sort out their thoughts, it keeps people from getting more intelligent. The whole process is to keep people stupid.

Get Smarter

The problems with today’s world is that the media is controlling people’s thinking, which is controlling their emotions. People are being manipulated into feeling the way our whole society is feeling.

The only way to think strait is to take your emotions out of the equation. The only real emotion you should have is compassion and un-conditional love. They stir your emotions to keep you from thinking strait.

If you limit your input to stimuli than you can begin to control your thoughts in ways that allow you to control your emotions. Which in turn will allow you to sort your thoughts out and become a reasonable human being that goes from having thoughts to thinking. This allows you greater self mastery and control of your own being that isn’t being mass hypnotized by the media into believing that something is a certain way.

You have to develop the strength to have self mastery of your emotions, your thinking, and your physical abilities. Think about what self mastery means to you.

We can not always control the situations around us, we can however control our response to them. If your thoughts trigger an emotional response then your not in control of yourself as much as you would like to be. It’s important to be in control of one’s own self to the likes that nothing is going to bother you. This however doesn’t mean that one allows themselves to be pushed around, bullied, or taken advantage of.

The differences between having thoughts and thinking is that you have awareness and mindfulness of your thoughts. Thoughts come and go, beware of holding onto any thought for too long. This is especially true of thoughts that make you have emotions. Because then the whole cycle starts back up again.

Do Better

Perhaps the only way to limit these things is to control your social circle and limit the media’s influence upon your mind.

There is no success or failure. Those two imposters will both take you for a ride you don’t want. There is only the moment, in living life and being present. How you make other people feel is important and matters, you don’t want to be the person that abuses and takes advantage of others, and at the same time you don’t want to be abused and taken advantage of.

This requires that one doesn’t want beyond what is practical in life. To be content with a little and happy when their is abundance. But a truly intelligent society makes all it’s inhabitants equal. With everyone having something that they are good at. And many can be good at much. A wise society is one that cares for all it’s people in ways that no one feels left behind, forgotten, or alienated from society.

A wise society is one that has no poor in it’s midst, especially when all can have plenty. If your human, than that unites you with your fellow man, being that your all human. Beware of divisions that make you feel that someone isn’t good enough. Time and situations make all humans fall from high.