Kevin's Watch

Posted: **Thu Jul 14, 2011 6:52 pm**

sgt.null wrote:
Menolly wrote:
DukkhaWaynhim wrote: I'm determined to make to the nxt one.
Considering it will be the last one for the chrons, everyone better make the next one.
we will meet aqain after that, no?

Oh, I am sure.
It is an unknown if we'll have an elohimfest with SRD in attendance though, nu?

Posted: **Thu Jul 14, 2011 7:02 pm**

Menolly wrote:
sgt.null wrote:
Menolly wrote: Considering it will be the last one for the chrons, everyone better make the next one.
we will meet aqain after that, no?
Oh, I am sure.
It is an unknown if we'll have an elohimfest with SRD in attendance though, nu?

But surely it could...heh...we could trick him by re-branding, call it "The Man-fest" [cuz he's got at least one more to write in that series...right?].

Posted: **Thu Jul 14, 2011 7:10 pm**

BrewFest!

Posted: **Thu Jul 14, 2011 7:15 pm**

BrewFest -- I like it.

But I don't want Cambo's excellent post to get away.

Cambo wrote:Existing within the moment is not necessarily passive. There is space for goal oriented behaviour (despite there being no future. Ah, paradoxes ). Within the moment, you can adopt a state of journey-towards-something, which will eventually result in the state of having arrived. This may sound like mumbo jumbo, and it may be easier just to say "once I have a new job, once my family affairs are sorted, I will be happy."

But the positive present tense form is "I am moving towards getting a new job, I am working on my family affairs. Thus, I am happy." Whereas what you seem to be saying is "I am trying to find a new job, and failing. I am attempting to manage my family life, and it is difficult. I am unhappy." But the actual state of affairs in the former and the latter is exactly the same. It's just that one focusses on how good it is to be making positive actions in your life, the other is frustrated at the efficiency of those actions. This is what I mean by "the quality of the moment." You can be proactive in getting a new job and your family life. But the attainment of those goals is dependent on factors beyond your control. What is absolutely within your control is how you feel about it right now. In the moment.

It must be stated that I am at times the worst at following this way of life, which I wholeheartedly believe in. Else I wouldn't be in this thread .

This is great stuff. Thank you for posting it.

(And yeah, I'm not so good at looking at life this way either. It's a constant struggle...)

Posted: **Thu Jul 14, 2011 7:29 pm**

aliantha wrote:But I don't want Cambo's excellent post to get away.

Cambo wrote:Existing within the moment is not necessarily passive. There is space for goal oriented behaviour (despite there being no future. Ah, paradoxes ). Within the moment, you can adopt a state of journey-towards-something, which will eventually result in the state of having arrived. This may sound like mumbo jumbo, and it may be easier just to say "once I have a new job, once my family affairs are sorted, I will be happy."

But the positive present tense form is "I am moving towards getting a new job, I am working on my family affairs. Thus, I am happy." Whereas what you seem to be saying is "I am trying to find a new job, and failing. I am attempting to manage my family life, and it is difficult. I am unhappy." But the actual state of affairs in the former and the latter is exactly the same. It's just that one focusses on how good it is to be making positive actions in your life, the other is frustrated at the efficiency of those actions. This is what I mean by "the quality of the moment." You can be proactive in getting a new job and your family life. But the attainment of those goals is dependent on factors beyond your control. What is absolutely within your control is how you feel about it right now. In the moment.

It must be stated that I am at times the worst at following this way of life, which I wholeheartedly believe in. Else I wouldn't be in this thread .
This is great stuff. Thank you for posting it. (And yeah, I'm not so good at looking at life this way either. It's a constant struggle...)

And again...

^what she said^
Although I do think I tend to look at life in the way Cambo is describing most of the time. Definitely not always.
But most of the time.

Posted: **Fri Jul 15, 2011 5:36 am**

Cambo wrote:...it may be easier just to say "once I have a new job, once my family affairs are sorted, I will be happy."

Except you won't. Nobody ever is. Expecting circumstances or environments or anything external to "make" you happy is a surefire way to disappoint yourself.

I've known plenty of people who say "I'll be happy when..." and there's always something else that needs to happen after the goal is met.

If you have to move, even one inch, from where you are now in order to be happy, you probably never will be.

That's one of my favourite quotes. Don't remember who said it.

--A

Posted: **Tue Aug 02, 2011 3:18 pm**

Just going to blab about some of the stuff that's been on my mind (gonna go all "putting distance between me and my depression by intellectualizing it," of course!)

I think a lot of my depression is triggered by interpersonal conflict.

I think a lot of people's depression happens because of the mess of interpersonal conflict because:

* we're frustrated because there are things we want to change but we really can't control them.
* there ARE things we can control, but we lack the wisdom to know what is the most effective way to use the power we DO have
* we don't want to USE the power we DO HAVE because of the risks inherent (harming others, having to see what is wrong with us when we fail; which we inevitably do sometimes.)
* it puts us back in the feeling of the old, powerless state we were in as children when parents raged at us

Someday I hope I shall write a book called "Passive-Aggressive" or "The Passive-Aggressive Soul."

Also, does anyone else feel like whatever emotional state you're in right -NOW- seems like it's "the only way things are"... like you can't remember what it was like to be depressed when you are happy, etc.?

Posted: **Tue Aug 02, 2011 5:39 pm**

Yes -- with my ex-wife, I called it etch-a-sketch syndrome -- when she was in the doldrums of her depression (she is bipolar), it was like everything else she ever knew about herself and the things she did disappeared with a few shakes, leaving room to draw complicated structures of morbid thoughts and feelings about herself, forgetting everything else, including the capacity for happy, or even neutral. Combined with her tendency to dwell on everything, good or bad, this did not produce encouraging situations.

And as an emotionally-invested bystander, I can tell you this was *extremely* frustrating, as I was near-totally powerless to change it.

She is more aware of this problem now than then, and that is a good thing.

Now that we are merely friends, and she lives several states away, its easier for me to be supportive -- mostly because I don't have to put up with every single twist and turn of the emotional and behavioral rollercoaster that is manic-depression. I know it is exhausting to be the loved one of someone with it -- so I can imagine how exhausting it must be to actually be the one with it.

dw

Posted: **Tue Aug 02, 2011 7:31 pm**

So sorry, dw. (do you accept grouphugs? haha.)
That sounds pretty painful as well; I'm -not- actually sure which would be worse; having to walk in your shoes or having to walk in mine.

Well, you've actually blessed me with a hope-prompting reminder there:
My choices really do matter.
Getting out of the fog depression really does matter.
...Because it really does affect the people around me.

(these things should be obvious, but yeah...)

Posted: **Tue Aug 02, 2011 10:56 pm**

Linna Heartlistener wrote:Also, does anyone else feel like whatever emotional state you're in right -NOW- seems like it's "the only way things are"... like you can't remember what it was like to be depressed when you are happy, etc.?

Not for a long time now. Nowadays, even when I'm happy I'm aware of what it's like to be depressed, and when I'm depressed I never forget happiness.

But when I was much younger, I forgot about happiness for three years. I only remembered because someone reminded me.

Posted: **Wed Aug 03, 2011 1:40 am**

I remember happiness like I remember pictures of me laughing as a child...glad for the picture showing I was happy.
I remember depression like a choke chain. I feel it on my neck, it's just that no one is yanking the leash right now.

Posted: **Wed Aug 03, 2011 2:20 am**

Vraith wrote:I remember happiness like I remember pictures of me laughing as a child...glad for the picture showing I was happy.
I remember depression like a choke chain. I feel it on my neck, it's just that no one is yanking the leash right now.

Ouch on the latter. Are you my dog? Well, I seem to remember trying to be gentle with the choke chain most of the time...and now it's off entirely, given your blindness and your age.

Happiness is something felt consciously as I write on Kevin's Watch and other places, but I'm starting to realize that Kevin's Watch may be the best place for it since the people posting here are mature in a way I would like to be mature...I think...most of the time...It may be an illusion, since KW posters may well be utterly bored with me!

Depression is the feeling that there is something there for me to solve that isn't my own problem but someone else's, something capable of solving if I tried, but that I don't know where to begin because of the interconnection of humanity and the world.

Posted: **Wed Aug 03, 2011 4:57 am**

I tend to remember everything in the abstract. I remember it as a fact, not as a recurrence of the experience.

I suspect it's what makes it fairly easy for me to get over the past.

--A

Posted: **Wed Aug 03, 2011 6:17 am**

a friend posted this on one of her photos on fb and i thought it was wonderful and so true, so i am posting it here and in the how are you feeling today thread, just to make sure all that might need to see it see it.

Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it. You must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it."
— Elizabeth Gilbert

Posted: **Wed Aug 03, 2011 9:59 am**

I like that quote. To sum it up - happy is a 'do' thing, not a 'be' thing.

dw

Posted: **Wed Aug 03, 2011 11:29 am**

Oof, but what if happiness is in part an internet addiction which, materially, seems to be interfering with my progress in maintaining myself fully (for example, once I am done with some personal business I should really start looking for a job to keep my body maintained independently of my parents).

I am good at ignoring the internet in favor of nearly anything else I get the chance to do, but I think it's fair to say I have an internet addiction.

(This would probably be called an application of the Maslowe hierarchy of needs to the quote you gave)

I tend to remember everything in the abstract. I remember it as a fact, not as a recurrence of the experience.

I suspect it's what makes it fairly easy for me to get over the past.

--A

Right, I think I can do that OK too in my personal life at this point to some degree, but I can't really do it with world events. At the same time, I feel incompetent to actually deal with world events. Yet people seem to request of me or of the group from time to time - and I feel unfairly - that I pay attention to and engage with these world events and be active.

Posted: **Wed Aug 03, 2011 2:54 pm**

Holsety wrote:It may be an illusion, since KW posters may well be utterly bored with me!

Naaah. A lot of your posts on different threads just are things that it's hard to respond to w/out sidetracking the thread. But in a good way, they are pieces of a consistent pattern.

I think you may be at a really important place in life, and a part of you is determined to wrestle with some really important things.

Also, I'd just been thinking of asking you about something you'd posted on this thread years ago! You mind?

Depression is the feeling that there is something there for me to solve that isn't my own problem but someone else's, something capable of solving if I tried, but that I don't know where to begin because of the interconnection of humanity and the world.

This... is a great way of saying this. SO relevant. And frustrating.

Posted: **Thu Aug 04, 2011 4:40 am**

DukkhaWaynhim wrote:I like that quote. To sum it up - happy is a 'do' thing, not a 'be' thing.

dw

I'm not sure I agree.

I don't know...I don't have an intellectual grasp of the process maybe. I'm pretty happy. I don't "work" at it, I just am. Things are what they are...you can't let stuff get you down.

But the idea of "working" at being happy...that sounds a little too much like "I'll be happy if...I can just do this thing...I can get that thing...if I can live over there...etc. That never-ending quest for something that will make you happy. Nothing will make you happy. Except for you.

--A

Posted: **Thu Aug 04, 2011 10:05 am**

I suspect we agree on this, but I do think there is a big difference between the two states. Being an active participant in your own happiness, versus postponing your decision to be happy until *this* happens, then *that* happens...
One is simple acceptance of the responsibility that you have a major part in affecting change in your own life for the things that you control, coupled with being grateful for what you have (whether it is much or little), coupled with surrounding yourself with people that add to your energy instead of depleting it, coupled with the realization that there are things and people simply beyond your control, coupled with the knowing yourself well enough to recognize what truly gives you joy, coupled with the freedom to pursue it.
The other is simply an abdication of control over your own state, until someone or something 'makes' you happy. For people that believe the grass is always greener somewhere else, its because they keep killing it where they stand.

Posted: **Thu Aug 04, 2011 12:40 pm**

A friend of mine who's a social worker posted this story on her Facebook page a couple of days ago:

esciencenews.com/articles/2011/07/30/restoring.happiness.people.with.depression

For mild levels of depression, one solution (according to this study) is to focus on the positives in your life.

It doesn't replace meds for more severe cases of depression, of course.