Have you ever wondered… about mind over matter? I have. Zen do. Life go(al IMO). Yea.
Seriously, though, being able to better handle pain by processing it less (or not at all as some people courageously claim)? If we do not notice it, then it cannot affect our current state of being since we are being somewhere else. We choose to actively, courageously occupy our brains with other input. It makes me think of Edith Eger and what I have heard of her childhood. It feels wrong to even call it a childhood because I believe that no child should have to experience and endure what she suffered and survived. She was part of a Jewish family in Eastern Europe leading up to the Holocaust. As her family was being uprooted and hauled away by nazis, she learned a priceless life lesson from her mother:
No one can take from you what you’ve put in your mind.
-Ilona Elefánt
I am in wondrous awe of anyone who can control themself better to the point that they can ignore their physically-present corporeal periphery. Pour your senses (your present power or power over your presence) into a point on your perimeter. Give it a name. When did it get there? What point is that point proving? Perhaps it points to or from something? Perhaps it possibly smells up close. Name the smell. Taste the smell. How does its perfume percolate? Present a play-by-play to yourself to the point that your brain possesses a presence pertaining to a possibly-permanent point beyond your body.
We are products of our past, but we don’t have to be prisoners of it.
-Rick Warren
My heart breaks when I imagine about and empathize for Edith’s past life experience. I believe we should never steal childhoods. I respect any courageous child who can steel themself amidst such chaos. However, why should children ever even be put in a horrific nightmare to begin with? We need to courageously defend the powerless and weak. We need to set the right, positive example. Like Edith’s mother, we need to empower children to the point that they no longer remain powerless. When you see kids helping other kids while adults squabble back and forth like toddlers, who is really being grown up there?
A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.
-Helen Keller
Life happens. Each and every day. How do we each respond to it? We will get knocked down. Will we get up again? Will nothing keep us down? Can we be the correct clown?
You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.
-Maya Angelou
I courageously seek out those moments in my life like the brief brilliance that Edith shared with her mother, Ilona. What lessons can I learn that will linger with me for a lifetime? How many nuggets of wisdom can I acquire and share? I do not wish to hoard what I hold near and dear to me. I yearn courageously to help others as best as I can. Maybe it is wise. Maybe it is dumb. Time will tell. Courageously wonder, y’all :) <3