As a member of a 12 step-program that advocates living life one day at a time, I recently found myself refining that down to living one second at a time. I was in what some might call a funk. In literary terms … I was in a brown study … and not just because my name is Brown.
This period of black doggedness came on in midwinter and lasted for some time. It was ushered in by the most upsetting experience of being nauseous for three weeks straight. I constantly felt like I was on an ocean liner unable to find the railing. Never throw into the wind, they say. I sought solace in the usual places - the New Testament, the acupuncturist’s table, the psychiatrists couch and in the incense-rich inner sanctum of my clairvoyant. There was some solace in all this but not quite enough. So I just plodded on, putting one foot in front of the other with the words of a mentor ringing in my ears saying “This too shall pass” and “Feelings aren’t facts.” These simple sayings help me because when one is melancholic and suffering it can feel like eternity with no end. (That doesn’t actually make sense, does it? Because by its very nature eternity has no end, right?) As for feelings well, if one is inclined to be blue the head can do strange things … when the carnival between the ears is in full swing and your internal sideshow alley is doing a roaring trade. So putting days together, one after the other, these turned, as they inevitably do, into weeks and then slowly, things began to turn around, as they inevitably must. To everything there is a season and my winter of discontent turned into glorious spring, eventually, somewhat imperceptibly. Good things began to happen as I believe they do for those that hangeth in there. Yea verily and all that. I thanked God that I got through, with help from above, or within, or wherever and the forbearance of my wife and son. These things do indeed pass and we do get through and every cloud does have a silver lining, even though at times we are tempted to think that there’s a tunnel at the end of the light, rather than the other way around. Now, the glass seems half full again and summer is nigh. Yippee.
As a journalist I mostly write on the arts & entertainment.
Read my weekly journalism in Brisbane News.
As an author I write about myself and, if that sounds self-indulgent,
you don't know the half of it. Mind you if you read either of my memoirs - Travels with My Angst or Any Guru Will Do, all will be revealed.
Available as Speaker - humorist focusing on problems associated with existential angst and life's journey.
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