Relative Something

Happy July!

I wonder if all the little things that go right for me add up and have a positive influence equal to the power that all the little things going wrong seem to wield. Even though I have learned a lot of significant lessons about my mental health in the last 16 years or so, I still am not free of needing to address things over again as if it was a brand new class. I’m in the same school, but this is a different hour, and I guess it’s no surprise that I have a brand new teacher.

No one gets to be exuberantly happy all the time, but it surprises me when I get doused with an all-encompassing gloominess even though I have an overwhelming number of blessings showering me and just a few little nuisance hassles like losing track of a cell phone charger and needing to go back to the house again to look for it, but not finding it, and then learning the car leaks coolant… There just isn’t enough there to justify the long term impact that seems to result. And so then I begin searching for other things that are wrong, or could be wrong, to make sense of how I feel and there you have it: I begin developing a self-fulfilling prophecy. Wasn’t I just being delivered this lesson even though I felt I already had a decent grasp of it?

Which comes first? I start feeling bad, so then my thinking gets off track and prolongs gloominess, or my thinking starts to get off track and triggers the bad feelings? Doesn’t matter in the end; I can adjust my thinking and change my feeling. I know how to do that. I have enjoyed success doing that.

Little things deserve to get attention commensurate with their level of influence. My little mind has a power of influence that can more than equal the floods and sludge of gloominess. Sometimes, a silly little photo can trigger my mind to remember happier times and initiate a new chemical direction for the rest of me. This one causes me to smile:

Self-portrait on the way home from the lake last Sunday.