I went home this morning with a sore lower back, & all the while I was thinking if my kidneys are already at stake, with my mom’s beratings & the fact that I’ve been taking antibiotics haphazardly after the past couple of weeks that I’ve been sick for a couple of days. But much to relief, when I woke up, the pain was gone. That’s what I get, I guess, for improper posture, for an imbalanced diet, for stressing myself out silly at work, & for not getting enough sleep. I just hope there won’t be any more pain this week. Last Saturday & Sunday my back was extremely painful, & despite the massage (& should I mention the wonderful blue marine body scrub formula?) I really couldn’t muster going home in an instant. I better make the most of my vacation leave then this Friday by paying attention to my derailing health (& I might to go to a high-end tarot reading session in the afternoon for myself).
Funny how I chanced upon reading this first thing after waking up this afternoon in my e-mail:
Brain Damaging Habits
1. No Breakfast
People who do not take breakfast are going to have a lower blood sugar level. This leads to an insufficient supply of nutrients to the brain causing brain degeneration.
2. Overeating
It causes hardening of the brain arteries, leading to a decrease in mental power.
3. Smoking
It causes multiple brain shrinkage and may lead to Alzheimer's disease.
4. High Sugar Consumption
Too much sugar will interrupt the absorption of proteins and nutrients causing malnutrition and may interfere with brain development.
5. Air Pollution
The brain is the largest oxygen consumer in our body. Inhaling polluted air decreases the supply of oxygen to the brain, bringing about a decrease in brain efficiency.
6. Sleep Deprivation
Sleep allows our brain to rest. Long term deprivation from sleep will accelerate the death of brain cells.
7. Head Covered While Sleeping
Sleeping with the head covered, increases the concentration of carbon dioxide and decreases concentration of oxygen that may lead to brain-damaging effects.
8. Working Your Brain During Illness
Working hard or studying with sickness may lead to a decrease in effectiveness of the brain as well as damage the brain.
9. Lacking in Stimulating Thoughts
Thinking is the best way to train our brain, lacking in brain stimulation thoughts may cause brain shrinkage.
10. Talking Rarely
Intellectual conversations will promote the efficiency of the brain.
Le sigh.
Speaking of good conversation, I’d like to thank the people I’ve come across this year who’d sit down & take time to share their thoughts & whatnot with me. I’m happy with your trust & confidence, even if I’m not so much an engaging storyteller or talker anymore. My newly-acquired speech impediments brought upon by ‘brain damage’ (haha) become evident during work, whenever I stammer, stutter, & slur my way out of things that demand verbal/mental precision & confidence, but that’s just how wasted I am lately. The only time when I’d totally feel like I’m in my league is when I babble about tarot, & too bad I wasn’t able to lug around my decks the last time I went out for tea with a friend. It just feels weird how I, the alleged Poster Girl of Dysfunction, would need to talk about topics for the regular Jane like romance & relationships & the struggle for independence ironically + the savvy girl lifestyle, & I’m not even sure how people would take my word for it when I present myself to the world with mismatching clothes & unruly hair & eyebags & flabs & a current fancy for red nail polish (which for me, is the new black, thanks to
Essie in Long Stem Roses & Red Diamond for that Bathory-esque goth feel, LOL j/k eww I’m never really fond of blood). I’m never girlfriend material, & I’ve come to terms with that, but everybody does feel the same way about certain things, & only with my detached perspective can I sanely talk about loneliness. I’ve had enough rationalization about feelings, & what occupies my thoughts now as I age is how to maintain what’s left of my health & how to obtain a stable career despite the former. Oh, God, I really now feel ancient at this point, & I’m not even 30 just yet! Oh, & guess what, check out my new
personal anthem at the moment!
Perhaps what I’m really trying to say in this post is that, just what is really the point of staying alive? Yes, even ’soothsayers’ like me must get stuck in a plateau somehow, even when I thought I’ve got it all figured out a couple of years or so ago. Maybe it’s the remainder of my youth that gets me confused, especially when I still have no idea what I really want for myself to the point of actually striving hard for it. Is it really loneliness underneath it all? Or confusion? Or a bit of both? Osho said it once in his Transformation Tarot deck that we must not hurry in our journey to reach God’s doorstep, because once we get there quick, what then? Shouldn’t we even try to enjoy the course of our getting there to begin with?
The 42nd card of that said deck has this to say about the subject:
Have you ever taken note of one thing?–the present is always juicy, the present is always blissful. Worry and suffering are created either by what you wanted to do in the past and could not do, or by what you want to do in the future and don’t know whether you will be able to do or not. Did you ever notice, did you ever look at this small truth, that there is no suffering in the present, there is no worry? This is why the present does not disturb the mind–anxiety disturbs the mind.
There is no suffering in the present. The present doesn’t know suffering–the present is such a small moment that suffering cannot fit into it. In the present only heaven can fit, not hell. Hell is too big! The present can only be peace, can only be happiness.
PFFT. Talk about sans souci. As if one can really relax in this day & age!
The moment you rest, the moment you relax, you know that existence is already going, moving, reaching towards higher peaks. And you are part of it. You need not have separate ambitions.
This is relaxation–resting, dropping all private goals, dropping the whole achieving mind, all the ego projections. And then life is a mystery. Your eyes will be full of wonder; your heart will be full of awe.
We are not to become something–we are already it. This is the whole message of all the awakened ones: that you are not to achieve something, it has already been given to you. It is God’s gift. You are already where you should be, you can’t be anywhere else. There is nowhere to go, nothing to achieve. Because there is nowhere to go and nothing to achieve, you can celebrate. Then there is no hurry, no worry, no anxiety, no anguish, no fear of being a failure. You can’t fail. In the very nature of things it is impossible to fail, because there is no question of success at all.
That was pretty intense, wasn’t it? Perhaps you’re now thinking, what does he mean by “no success at all”? Is nothingness to nothingness really the whole journey? Like what I’ve read recently, what’s so scary about “from ashes to ashes, from dust to dust” when it just practically means that since we’re from the Earth, we must go back to Her loving arms when it’s time, just like everything else?
OK, enough about waxing philosophical over the inevitably obvious. Sorry for the morbid undertones. I therefore conclude that whatever happens to us now (& I pray for the best, always) shouldn’t be too much of a hindrance to making us seek for peace of mind & stability. & I do believe that if preparing for a vacation is more of a pain in the neck than anything fun, I might as well just get some sleep in the confines of my own lurid room. Thank God for airconditioning.
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I also have to thank Neil Gaiman & Tori Amos for the title of this post.
