Have Faith in Yourself

You - yes, you, the individual reading this...

Especially if you are an individual who is struggling,

tired and worn down,

at this point in time and life on the face of the Earth

as a result of your circumstance...

 Have faith in yourself.  You deserve no less.

It what you endeavor to do with the life that you have

is from a place of heart that desires what must be,

it will be entirely worth it ultimately, in the end,

For you to continue to persevere with such a faith in yourself more than you know.

Please, trust yourself, and trust in your ability to exceed what you would commonly expect of yourself, as you view yourself as 'just another ordinary human being.'

Yes, I am aware...

Our cultures, our societies, our broken communities

across the vast expanse of this world

are struggling...

The worsening of our lives is a reality that we will have to face,

sooner rather than later...

And, those who are born beyond our lives need to be able to survive - and thrive -

rather than endure the pain we have had to endure...

Yes, I am aware,

of the hollow, hopelessness-breeding feeling within so many, many people,

that challenges many, too many, of us at every turn in our efforts to keep ourselves alive

and suggests that we leave behind our perseverance and discard our efforts as being in vain...

Yes, I know,

In multitudinous, horrendous forms,

the weight, the burden of living

in a world that struggles with the awareness

of how much humans have done

and, how little they seem to be doing...

This is hard to realize.  However, in spite of all this, remember:

Every joy that you have felt is human.

every happiness, every feeling from every benevolent laugh and chuckle and tremor,

every single taste of grace, every moment of happily-shed tears,

every place of peace, every sincerely worthwhile surprise,

every sigh of relief as you let go of any heavy burden, tangible or not,

and, every empathetic emotion that you have felt

is an echo of what it means to be human.

And, 'perhaps,' every one of these things is transcendent of being human, in a way, too - 

A hint at what we have not done, yet, but can do,

if we put our absolute best to it,
putting aside our individualistic, self-focused trappings and troubles with persistence
enough so as to help manifest greater things, better reality, and more meaningful experiences
into existence.

You have really no idea just how much you are capable of doing, of being, of achieving, of defying, and of changing.

And if you can do great things, so, too others can, too.

Just remember that you need to have faith in yourself in order do them --

-- and that the greatest you is always bigger, more, and greater than your individual self.

You can do great things;
things that are worthwhile,
things that can change more than you are aware of,
things that can reach in their scope further than any one person knows...

With all of these,
these valuable, important, good, great, helpful, kind, compassionate, brave, courageous actions of
yours...
Have faith in yourself --
-- and one day, as a result of the work you have done,
realize that it is grounded in the experiences of others who have been impacted by you.

...And, then,
when it strikes you how much of an impact you have had,
and the realization of how much of a difference you make is clear through others' testimony...

Have faith in their words, so as to empower and transform your self-faith
into Self-Confidence.

A Thought on Anxiety

Trigger Warning: This writing mentions anxiety as well as a brief mention of the topic of suicide.  While I write about these from the perspective of someone processing the emotions and topics related to these subjects, and while I encourage others who can read this to do so, there's also no pressure from me for anyone who can't, for any reason at any particular moment read this, to do so.  Gauge that for yourself, and don't feel you need to finish this if you begin to read it in the same sitting, at all, etc.

 -----Thoughts on Anxiety -----

For me, anxiety is difficult in a number of different ways:

1) Anxiety is difficult to predict.

2) Anxiety is difficult to weather through.

3) Anxiety is difficult to discard, to dispose of, to uproot and toss away.

4) Anxiety is difficult to heal from.

5) Anxiety is difficult to prevent.

Yet most of all...

6) Anxiety is difficult to accept - and I refuse to passively accept it as if its over-saturated presence in today's world is normal, as long as it is as common as it is in my life.  No, I cannot realistically fight it off; no, I cannot do away with it entirely without first learning how that can be done, and I don't know that process or method or saving grace well enough yet, if at all - if there is one thing, or more, that can be such a saving grace.  I believe that such solutions exist, though - but I haven't perfected and lived any such conclusion so far, so I also won't hold my breath.

I do, however, know that I can let it, at times where I know how to let it do so, enter and then exit me within moments where my mind does not latch onto it, obsess over it, and amplify it.  Without my focus on it, it lacks much power, and is closer to a passing suggestion of how I should feel.

It's like the words one might hear from a friend that hates some kind of food: "Wow, that fish looks disgusting."  The last word is a statement of opinion, and such an opinion carries the implication that anyone would consider fish disgusting...and that in turn carries an implication, and a tempting one to consider.  One that comes, oftentimes, disguised as a question: "Don't I consider the fish disgusting?"  And then,  "After all, everyone should consider it disgusting.  If you don't, why don't you...?"

The problem is that, in my past and present experience, if I seriously consider the question asked by the emergence of anxiety into my heart - "Why aren't you anxious?" - one can become anxious.  After all, not knowing why one is not afraid when something that is within you is telling you to be can be, in-and-of itself, disconcerting and unsettling to say the least.  Combine that with a serious examination of whatever has created or led to the thought or idea of anxiety in a person, and they might start to go from thinking about anxiety, to feeling anxiety.

And once one is feeling anxiety, it is harder to stop feeling it until one has uncovered where the feeling came from - what form of thoughts, logical or otherwise, gave rise to the feeling and prompted the suggestive question of "Why aren't you anxious?" - and uproots it, discards it, disposes of it.

And for a long time as people, it has been in part a very good thing, at times, to feel anxiety; it has helped us to hunt and avoid being hunted; to hear, see, smell, and otherwise sense and detect and evade danger; to avoid those plants and fungi and phenomena that would kill us if touched, tasted, or interacted with; and to otherwise navigate and survive and, in some cases, even thrive out in the natural world where nearly anything within the realm of physical possibility goes, provided a living creature or a force of nature, on or beyond the planet Earth, can do it.

But we nonetheless must become better - much better - at dislodging this anxiety from ourselves when it takes seed and does us wrong by way of its influence on us.

In today's world, we have seen the damage that anxiety - both as a continual mental health affliction, and in moments as simply a feeling, a thought, and sometimes a problematic or even dangerous action - can do.  In our world, the rate of suicides is a disturbing thing that has grown, and strangely so given the supposed claims to fame on the grounds of advancement of technology and human knowledge that major cultures and societies profess to have made.  After all, can we not understand why people are hurting, and killing, themselves, and others and their lives, too?  There is serious pain going unaddressed in the world, and a lot of it does start, or gain further danger and impetus, in part on an anxiety-centric, anxiety driven level.  Though a function of the mind may be fear, fear in too great a seat of power does indeed ultimately become a dangerous mind - and a fatal human - killer.

So, let's work on this.  Let's work on discarding the anxiety, discarding the fears, and when they come back, being both calm and also resolute in saying, recognizing, and making real the fact that we've already tossed that reaction aside.  Make clear that you will not be anxious if anxiety has nothing genuinely valuable to offer.

And if you fail, and hurt yourself or others, repeat the uprooting and flinging away of what isn't needed; make amends where you can if needed, too.  The same if the anxiety overstays its welcome; your body should be treated as the temple for you that it is, and left to linger for too long, anxiety does damage the body, does detract from health, does deplete one's ability to survive.  Any and all things, in too much abundance, can be bad, especially for a kind of being made up of many things in various different measures and quantities, but never of one singular thing...like a human being.

But still, keep up the practice.  Anxiety can be filtered out of our systems, out of us, and simply allowed to swiftly enter and exit our awareness without us ever bothering to take the suggestion of fear that it brings too seriously.  It takes time, and a good sense of how to be and hold a steadfast calm - and I am by no means an exemplar of that in every moment (and am sometimes quite the contrary) - but this idea of non-attachment to our anxious thoughts, and our anxious feelings, is something that can be of good and general use.  I don't think it's a cure-all, and I don't think we should just rely on ourselves and hold solely ourselves, and ourselves alone, to the task of moving beyond the fear that surges through many of ourselves and others around us; we are a communal and social species for many reasons, and have been for dozens of thousands of year,s and that got us here through all of the anxieties and hardships of truly ancient times.

And, as such, just as we succeeded in overtaking our anxiety when it mattered most in ancient times, so too we can now do the same, no matter how 'difficult' anyone's anxieties might suggest the task ahead might potentially be.

So, let's do this.  We owe it to ourselves, and to each other, if nothing else.

...and yes, I have anxiety about that, to a degree, in a sense, given what I have seen and still see form human beings.  But, hey - no sense in not giving this effort our best, after all.

On Privilege, Struggle, and Realizing the Future

When a person challenges you on the grounds of your social, economic, or other privilege(s) to be a better individual, it is often better to, instead of being defensive first and foremost of what we have that others do not, see if we can meet that challenge by using what others do not have to their benefit.

And, given that we are, innately, social animals, we will find that, at least every now and then, our giving away of things and powers we are privileged with, out of kindness, compassion, and a desire to support others, will come back through others to define us as better people.

We are never defined by how much influence or power we have; only our actions surrounding how we use what we have will define our humanness, and inform how others view our individual identities as individual people.

It is through building these identities around the goal of bettering others as a means of bettering ourselves, and in the same turn, bettering the rest of the world, that a social species like us will truly survive the hardest of times, the worst of tragedies, the most grueling and cruel experiences...

...and in a time where people, places, and cultures are under attack under the false, fundamentalist pretense that nationalism is a good idea - that "our people, our culture, our views, our beliefs, our nation, are all 'SUPERIOR!' and 'GREATER!' than 'yours'" - in a time where this mindset defines the behavior of those who buy into it, and shapes their actions into physical, emotional, and in so many other ways completely and viscerally real -violence- we, as the people that we are, have every reason to do whatever we can to keep using whatever privileges and resources and opportunities we may have to keep helping others survive, and one day truly thrive.

So, folks - use your privileges, and use them - kindly, compassionately, wisely. Not doing so may one day prove fatal to you, to another you know, or to another you don't if things keep getting worse before they get better. And chances are that, from today on, as far as I am able to see, they will keep getting worse before they reverse.

I have not idea as to how long or short various struggles we are seeing will last. Regardless, let's do our best everywhere and every moment we can, especially those of us who do have privileges that others do not, whether they're socially given and enforced or not.

But please, keep serving each other from as humble of a place as you can;

Keep supporting others when they are not able to stand, move, act, or otherwise do what they need to do, in-and-of their own selves, physically or otherwise, on their own;

Keep protecting each other when life demands it in those hard situations that will crop up for many of us...and for some of us, over and over compared to others;

And by everything sacred, keep yourself in mind through all of it in a way that unites your happiness, your fulfillment, and your living with the living, the surviving, and the thriving of others.

Take joy in other people's joy unless there is something ethically wrong in doing so; one person's justified happiness should be empathically shared by, and with, everyone.

And, should this effort outlast all of the hardest hardships that could possibly be ahead, even if we are no longer here, or have moved on in a different way, those who inherit the Earth and the world it contains from us will truly be privileged in the best of ways with the best of futures we will have been able to provide.

I know of no greater thing that humankind can do than realize that.

What Makes Creating Art Fulfilling?

In this world, at this time, there seems to be a lot of struggle among lots of creative people to continue practicing and creating their art consistently.  I can speak for myself, as a music composer on this front with ease; for the last four months, I've struggled with composing music a lot, in spite of having just graduated as a Music Technology major from Capital University - and it isn't for lack of effort or drive or desire to compose.  In fact, I've found myself sitting in front of the computer dozens of times now, wanting to get something that feels substantial made, only to have my focus fizzle out far too quickly to accomplish anything of note by my own standards.

For a while, I asked why this was occurring.  Part of me feels that this happened because I wasn't composing as much as I was editing (specifically, mixing and recording) music in the classes that I took at the university - practices with which I needed more experience regardless, and that were definitely worthwhile to learn and spend notable amounts of time on.  Another part of me thought that, coming out of the much-larger-than-normal storm of stress that was my senior year at the university meant that I was needing to take time to relax, breathe, and then approach composing a while later, so as to allow my mind to re-engage in the kinds of creative processes I was used to instead of trying to force them to occur.  And, while both of these probably were true to some degree, I still struggled from early May of this year (2018) onward up through this month, September, with composing.

Except, there were some odd exceptions to this on rare occasion - moments of progress that I had trouble predicting and finding a pattern within.

While I am still trying to verify what, exactly, the underlying pattern is that allows me to have sudden bursts of creativity and utilize them without distractions chipping away at my focus, and without my focus dwindling like a limited supply of fuel propelling my vehicle of progress forward, I do have a theory as to what has been the 'stimulant' providing me with extra energy and concentration: my knowing, or at least believing, that other people have a desire to hear my music.

You see, I, like a number of creative people that I know, may struggle with creating my art, but this has not always been the case for me.  Before my three years at Capital, there were a few 'regulars' with whom I shared my musical compositions.  These 'regulars' were people that I either knew in real life or online who took an interest in what I composed and made it clear, consistently, that they wanted to hear more and more of my work.  And I, enjoying the creative composing process, continued to make music, both as a creative exercise for myself that brought me joy, and as a way of saying "thank you" to them for taking interest in, and encouraging me to continue with developing and fine-tuning, my craft.

Once I started up my time at Capital University as a Music Technology major, however, the time that I had was much more limited then when I had been taking a much smaller workload at Columbus State (the college from which I transferred with course credits and a two-year associate's degree from when heading to Capital).  This definitely meant, early on, less composing...and less composing meant less to share with my regular music-enjoying friends and supporters.  Soon, I lacked the time to keep up with both all of the new social connections that I had found on the university's campus and those that I had off of campus, and I decided to nurture primarily new connections to new people that I was meeting at the time.

Furthermore, a transition also occurred that impacted my musical work.  As I mentioned earlier, I was no longer working on composing nearly as much as I was learning about the new-to-me fields of recording music (both in studio spaces and during live performances of varying forms) and mixing music (handling music after the recording or initial composing stage so that instruments and all other parts and sounds in a song, or other composition, work together to sound as best as possible to achieve the intended goal of the music).  This meant that I was absorbing new information, and trying to merge it with what I already knew about music and composing, as well as weeding out a lot of misconceptions and bad habits and practices that I had developed that would, in the long term, hinder my ability to compose, mix, and produce (and maybe also one day master) my own compositions.

Now, though, those three years that I spent as a student at Capital have concluded, and I have transitioned into a different part of my life, in which I intend to compose musical scores for various different media (with a particular focus on video game, film, and commercial scoring and composition).  Yet, in spite of that transition, it has taken quite a few months to get back into the composing process, and it is still much slower than it was over three years ago - a fact that I am coming to believe is due to a lack of feeling like my compositions are fulfilling, meaningful, or wanted by others.

Thankfully, that feeling isn't completely absolute; my parents and a few friends from the university that I keep in touch with are also interested in my music, and want to hear it when they can and when I create something new.  Still, it's not exactly the same; I used to keep a dialogue going between myself and those who really valued my musical composing processes.  I would read or listen to their feedback, the impressions of the music on their own imaginative minds, and learn from them about what I had created.  This process, in-and-of itself, felt like a kind of confirmation that my music was serving more than just me, and in an almost-paradoxical way, it made me happy that others enjoyed what I was able to weave together more than the act of creating it itself brought me into feeling happy and fulfilled.

I've heard it said before that "our gifts, our talents, and the energy that we use to fulfill them is not for us, but for others."  Perhaps this is true for me, in a way, in that I cannot access such seemingly-easy and enjoyable creativity, and focus for sustaining creative work, without feeling like I am preparing it to provide it to others.  Now, as I regain my ability to compose with a focused, creative, and easy-going, but also intuitive and persistent flow, I find myself wondering how many other artists might find that their creativity emerges and manifests that much more readily if it is made for an audience of others who are supporting them - namely, by enjoying and savoring the fruits of their artistic endeavors, and telling them about it.