Furnace fight

At the end of the day, what matters is whether he is worth all the pain.

You will cry and lose a heart from time to time. Your pride will be trampled upon, your dignity will be pushed aside, but think, suppose you retain all these, will you be happy?

Happiness is a state of mind, it is not conditional. It is not a question of who, and how, but a question of what. “What makes you happy,” is more appropriate than, “who makes you happy”.

You decided to keep him not because he does make you happy, but that having someone to love, being loved and be able to share your life with someone special, do.

Striving to make peace is peace in itself. It is entrusting your fate to your muse--- a mystical creature with the ball of your fate in its hands.

Surrendering is trusting. Admitting that you need help is courage. It is not cowardice. It is not a sign of weakness but of strength.  No one is ever called brave for fighting a fight that he knows will only have his heart as casualty in the war. No one ever won a war if when he goes home, he goes home to the wreckage of the furnace he had fought to keep hot.

The heart is a furnace you try to keep burning.   Love is a fight you need to keep winning. If the fight would entail your furnace to die down to darkness, will the fight still all be worth it? If losing the war will win you your heart, will you not surrender?

At the end of the day, it is not him that you went after for.  You surrendered for peace.  You surrendered the pain, the rancid thoughts of hate and bitterness. You surrendered to keep your heart whole, burning hot. 

“Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it.Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.” ― Brené Brown

- 10/23/13 07.53AM

Conscience talk

“Waiting for him to forgive you is a damn waste of time,” said a man to Liz, who had traveled far and wide in search of things to marvel her and put her appetite for life back.  

We are human. We all make mistakes. If you dread and you said your sorry, then the ball whether to forgive you is no longer in your hands.  You cannot force a person to forgive you and understand. Never can you ask him to just forget and move one. But those things you can ask yourself to do.

Realize that unless you forgive yourself for the wrong choices you made, or the bad words you have uttered, the other person is unlikely to see that you deserve forgiveness. For he sure knows that the best one to tell whether you deserve forgiveness is yourself.

Forgiving yourself only means you are fully aware of your mistakes. You may not do better, or be a better person, but knowing where you fall short of, could be a good start.

When was the last time you had a long cold bath to wake you up? Or when did you clean up the house again? How long has it been, when you last smiled and enjoyed a good old song? Do you still remember the tasty tang of a good tea after a workout? When did you  last work out? 

Recall. Reminisce. Remember the simple things that had once made you really happy.

Think about it, there was no he in the picture then. But you were indeed happy. There is no he in the picture now. Why can you not be?

Remember what your mama would always say. You are beautiful. You deserve most of the love. You are smart enough to carry yourself through. Though, mama’s gone now, her words never did go to the grave with her. She had left them all for you to muster at this time when all that you do is try to live your life for others.   

Forgive yourself. Forgive others for not forgiving you. Free yourself from the burden of self blaming. Take comfort from the thought that he does not hate you, he is heartbroken. Let him heal.

No one else is more divine than God, who had taught us the nobility of forgiving those who have sinned. Be happy now. Let go of the thought of pleasing others. You’ve tried to do your part.

The burnout chronicle

If being burnout is sickness I could have been admitted in hospitals for permanent treatment long ago. 

The pain of being a racketeer of some sort, as some boss would like to call it, kicks in at this time when getting up from bed and adhering to your phone’s alarm become nothing but a dark pit to drag yourself into, feet forward, soul lagging behind.

Every dawn you get up, point blank, wash yourself from yesterday’s filth. But despite of all the brushing and scrubbing, your senses remain asleep, dreamless.  The sound of the bursting bubbles from your soap is not enough a sound to bring you up and carry you through another day.

Others might have nothing to complain about what I do. I sit at my desk and work with whatever that is presented to my face with everything else: coffee, food (microwave-heated if you prefer), sweet handouts from workmates, all at arm’s reach.

The problem is not the job, but the “work,” the lack of it, actually. The mundane task of sitting for straight nine hours, doing the same job you have been doing for the last three years, seeing the same people for 45 hours every week with no official break, with no honest leave, with nothing to look forward to except for banknotes handedly delivered.  

"This is not about you. This is about the job,” a boss once said.  This should be the mantra. Regardless of your feelings, you have to work. Even if it means putting your creativity dispenser to rust, your social skills to oblivion.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to exchange mine for any other boss. But, once in a while, it’s nice to think about the what ifs and what might have beens. It’s nice to think that after the day, you get to see what you have done, that you accomplished something. The concept of working without knowing, the concept of working and sending your work to outerspace, is tiring. More tiring than that of utility workers’. At the end of the day, they have the glistening of comfort room’s tile to tell them they did a good job.   But there is nothing like that for me. Not a good-job-tap-on-the-back or a ridiculous criticism for “improvement of your craft”. Nothing. There is nothing really. It’s the mundane task that is deadly.  Deadly for your brain. Deadly for your soul. 

I’m at a chronic stage of burnout now. It has taken toll on me and my relationship, not only to my partner but to my friends and family. The burn has razed the entire part of me, leaving nothing but bitter ashes of failure and frustration in my mouth, and an exceeding level of apathy.  The burn had made me a pusher. I had pushed everybody away. 

First, my partner. My three year relationship has long suffered from my condition. Instead of love, my relationship had been made an avenue to belt out my boorishness. I have driven mad the only man who had tried to understand. And so he’d grown tired. 

Next stop was the only ‘friend’ I have in the office. She has been in the same funk as I am. So we clashed and burst out. She said her sorry. Instead of saying mine, I ended up breaking off with her. I said I’m done. I said I’m tired of her and I want to be her friend no longer. And in her silence, I know she had nothing to do but agree.

Everyday, my third casualty suffers from me.  My family, I never let pass a chance to scream and yell my heart out at them.  Every slip, every mistake, is a great chance for me to burst. My cruelty has gotten to the point of nowhere. It has crossed beyond the boundary of humane treatment and rationality.

I have nothing left in me now. No kindness, no love for self.  Except for hopes and wishful thoughts for the better of things.

I feel bad because I am.

As I realize the problem, I also struggle to find a solution. I’m thinking of leaving the job, of mending the hearts, both mine and the others I have hurt. 

 

“Burnout is a psychological stress syndrome that occurs as a “response to chronic emotional and interpersonal stressors on the job.” Besides feelings of excessive stress, burnout can ruin personal relationships and cause fatigue, insomnia, depression and anxiety. What’s worse? It may be spreading through Gen Y women like wildfire.”

- Huffington post

The Three Symptoms of Killing Our Dreams (by Paulo Coelho)

The first symptom of the process of our killing our dreams is the lack of time. The busiest people I have known in my life always have time enough to do everything. Those who do nothing are always tired and pay no attention to the little amount of work they are required to do. They complain constantly that the day is too short. The truth is, they are afraid to fight the Good Fight.

The second symptom of the death of our dreams lies in our certainties. Because we don’t want to see life as a grand adventure, we begin to think of ourselves as wise and fair and correct in asking so little of life. We look beyond the walls of our day-to-day existence, and we hear the sound of lances breaking, we smell the dust and the sweat, and we see the great defeats and the fire in the eyes of the warriors. But we never see the delight, the immense delight in the hearts of those who are engaged in the battle. For them, neither victory nor defeat is important; what’s important is only that they are fighting the Good Fight.

And, finally, the third symptom of the passing of our dreams is peace. Life becomes a Sunday afternoon; we ask for nothing grand, and we cease to demand anything more than we are willing to give. In that state, we think of ourselves as being mature; we put aside the fantasies of our youth, and we seek personal and professional achievement. We are surprised when people our age say that they still want this or that out of life. But really, deep in our hearts, we know that what has happened is that we have renounced the battle for our dreams – we have refused to fight the Good Fight.

When we renounce our dreams and find peace, we go through a short period of tranquility. But the dead dreams begin to rot within us and to infect our entire being.

We become cruel to those around us, and then we begin to direct this cruelty against ourselves. That’s when illnesses and psychoses arise. What we sought to avoid in combat – disappointment and defeat – come upon us because of our cowardice.

And one day, the dead, spoiled dreams make it difficult to breathe. And there’s nothing left to free us from our certainties, from our work, and from that terrible peace of our Sunday afternoons.

- note  to self. in the verge of killing mine. 10/18/13