Antidotes for the Holiday Blues
If you are like a lot of others this time of year, the holidays blues and heartaches are back for a visit again, if they ever left.
So, no real need to get, once again, all heavy and melancholic about:
The (rapid) passage of time: This is NO big deal and, truth be told, it's better that way. We are all moving through life's stages, step-by-step. Read and memorize this poem: All the World's a Stage, https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/922090180146237440
Humans would be totally worthless without deadlines. Old age is the ultimate deadline. Whatever it may be (that phone call, music piece to learn, bonding with kids/partner), get it done. This weekend!
Good times or bad, pay attention to the messages and messengers coming into your life. The person living under the same roof and breathing the CO2 you just exhaled is a MESSENGER, whether you see it as so or not. Carpe diem! Try to meditate. Here a starter for you: Juliette as a guide, https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/894421571278974976
It's all pretty perfect (as far as your education here goes) as is, if one only learns to listen.
Here are some quick ideas, for the acute and chronic sufferers of the blues:
- Acute sufferers: Change the thinking. It's all software, after all.
"take it easy on yourself",
your standards are to high/low",
"don't over dramatize",
"it's only a dark day"
"this too will pass",
"always darkest before the dawn"
and ad nauseum, pablum for the ego. Whatever works short-term to get you through the night, use it.
- Chronic Sufferers: Change the way you have programmed the head, or NOT.
You bring all this funky monkey blues stuff upon yourself. You love it. It makes you feel more intensely alive! In a word, you're getting something better than happiness out of this repetitive invoking of the blues. What is that and it is worth all the pain?
Program the brain better. If you are experiencing what we call sadness, the blues, a funk, whatever, it is a (valuable) indicator (aka symptom) that is telling you that your brain has been badly/ improperly programmed by you. Not easy but definitely do-able. Get off all excessively powerful psycho-meds, including alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, sleepers ..... They mask symptoms, lulling you into a cocoon or pseudo-safety. No chrysalis coming!
Start to memorize poetry. Yes, do so, obsessively, every day, like a medication, like electroconvulsive-shock that finally works, because poetry will work to shake the blues. Start with a couple of beauties:
Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/897387642060926976or
Sonnet XXIX https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/897386168347881472or
Invictus, by By William Ernest Henley https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/891931009546510336
- Be your own (honest) psychologist. Nobody but you can care about you as much as you (ego) desires. Get over that and other so-called "mommy" issues. Rather ask yourself some pointed questions: Are you doing everything possible to upgrade and enrich yourself (music, reading, sports, meditation, storytelling, languages . . . . . ) ? Agreed, no man is an island and the bell tolls for thee and all that. But, still, upgrade yourself before complaining about life, love and relationships. Huge step towards becoming complete and understanding life's proposition better. Good luck!
- Lastly, by the way, you're not Billy Holiday (aka Eleanora Fagan) and neither am I. She could really take a hit from life and come out swinging and singing. Sing it, Billy. https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/922852614797910016
So cool, Madame Holiday, merci mille fois.