By Abigail George
Rule 1: Be kind and expect nothing in return. Be the eternal optimist.
Rule 2: Have no expectations because that will kill your self-esteem.
Rule 3: Be a seeker; you will find truth, beauty, suffering, and hostility on your journey.
Rule 4: Read, and you will write intelligently and express yourself with mastery.
Rule 5: Why would you want to establish and find an exit to paradise?
Rule 6: Don’t offer your criticism to older adults. No good will come of it.
Rule 7: Everybody hurts—even the wealthiest person in the world and even the eternal comic.
Rule 8: Find meaningful things in your life whenever you feel bored and depressed.
Rule 9: You’re alive. Get to the business of living your life for the betterment of society.
Rule 10: Don’t tolerate arrogance or negativity in anyone.
Rule 11: Build a library in your home. It will keep you company and sane.
Rule 12: Wars don’t end. There is only recovery, healing, and eternal revolution from within.
You’re in charge of your life. This life is so many things. Upheaval and mayhem, war, identity politics, gay pride, pride and prejudice, and the question then evolve. The question then becomes how do we combat feelings of utter panic, anxiety, and fear daily? How do I achieve self-love, personal freedom, and success, and how do I develop my skills and expertise in my chosen field and outperform and compete healthfully with my colleagues, peers, rivals, or nemesis and not stress out about the glass ceiling of the administration, the bureaucratic bungling of the day? How do I set the pace, set an example to up-and-comers, be a mentor, and understand that if I am going to live my truth and be the very best version of myself, I can’t justify the clouds of negativity in my energy field?
I need to get myself to operate at a frequency where I am empathetic to the needs of others and reach out to others with kindness and humanity. Broken people’s souls are shattered, and they find it tremendously challenging to pick up the pieces. I have been in ongoing (on and off) therapy for decades and have realized this.
Change comes exponentially in every facet of your life once you make a strategic decision that you want personal growth, you want to achieve those goals you’ve been journaling about, you want to be happy, and you search for self-love and not a romantic entanglement that will wear down your soul. That’s a death—losing someone when they are still alive. They tell you in so many ways that you are not the person they want any longer, that they are not in love with you, and then they detach themselves from your life, and it feels as if you are ripping off a band-aid, and they walk away. When people cannot love you or fail to love you, completely understand that the relationship was a season that has now come to an end. Yes, it’s over, and they’re not returning to you, but no self-harm will bring your ex (perhaps you were even going to get married) back to you. You are not a fixer but a being in charge of your own life. Two broken people do not commit to each other and walk down the aisle. The mysteries of love language can be found in a book, but it takes a divine meeting to unite two people; after all, this is the rest of your life. In the days to come, it will hurt. The hurt will come in waves, in vibrations, until finally, there will be a surrender, recovery, and healing.
You must, for your sanity and understanding, realize what that person brought to the table when he made you happy or comforted you when you felt troubled, emotional, wounded, unhappy, uneasy, or when you felt hurt by a remark that somebody made when he made you laugh it was sincere, and that your relationship even though now it is over there were elements of his personality that kept you awake at night but when it comes to the dimensions of the relationship leave them intact is what I say. Every relationship that comes to an end brings insecurity about securing another partner for the future. If you are used to being independent, on your own, and are happy to live without the quest for another soulmate, make that abundantly clear to the universe.
Look after yourself, remain mindful, practice self-care, immerse yourself in activities that make you happy, and bring out your best. Life begins again. Everybody hurts. We are beings who experience joy, manic highs, and crushing lows. Our euphoria turns us into the consummate animal. We are all consumers and marketers and decide daily what we advertise to the world about ourselves. We have all experienced an adverse experience in childhood, and we have all experienced the existence of having a fractured identity at times. This psyche is fragmented when your self-worth and body image become emotionally damaged.
I am charged as a writer to pen all the experiences I have had in my life in such a way as to help other people make powerful changes in their lives for good and to help others see their trauma. I want to help them remain sane, efficient, and emotionally stable in their everyday lives, which speaks to the stability of being accountable for all-around mental wellness. Have we lost the capacity to care in this COVID era? The pandemic made us realize just how vulnerable we are. Our mental health was affected, depression increased, the risk of suicide increased, and our loneliness, isolation, and futility reached us in lockdown, where we coped as best we could with the dire situation.
The poverty of the mind is more debilitating than acute physical hunger. Psychology textbooks say that to be our best selves and live our best lives. We need other people; we need to relate to them daily. In war, that is all you do. Your neighbour’s life becomes yours, and that is how we cling to humanity. That is how we survive by psychologically setting our mind at ease with stringent markers that comfort us and put our mind at ease. You see a flower, which transports you to a memory that focuses you intensely for a few minutes, for example. Then in a few minutes you are not thinking of the grain deal or that there are cities in ruin, winter is approaching, and the world has forgotten about the Ukrainian people. Most of them now have to make new lives with their children in another country.
The mothers, children, the disabled, the elderly, the mentally ill, and the lonely. What happens to the person with schizophrenia, the manic depressive, the anorexic binging and purging herself, the individual with a mood disorder, the person who has to take medication daily to save their life in war? Another example to think about when you’re faced with an adverse external environment is this one. To release yourself from anxiety, you close your eyes and think of walking to a nearby park. It is cold out so you have to put a jacket on. You go outside your front door and shout, “I’ll be back in a few,” you begin to walk briskly as if you have somewhere to go. The citizens that have remained in the Ukraine might have nowhere to go. It’s a sad reality. They’re homeless, but most of all, they are broken people. Broken people do not just exist in the scenario of war; they are everywhere. Life can be problematic. You can become very fearful about the future. After the divorce, the romantic affair ends, and your heart breaks with the onslaught of grief; you need consolation. You only need to read the newspaper headlines to find yourself there, staring back at you on the page.
Sometimes, I use tools like meditation and prayer to steady myself in this rough world. I do this, particularly when I don’t feel challenged enough to face the day, ready for conflict, or when I have to cope with adversity. It can’t give you another childhood or parents that didn’t have maladjusted personalities. Fathers make mistakes. Mothers make mistakes.
I sit and close my eyes. In seconds, I am in nature. There are trees and birdsong that rise out of the shadows of the day. It stirs my soul, so I experience an inexplicable amount of joy for which I have every unexplainable reason. I am entirely alone. This is how you heal and recover. You pay close attention to what your body tells you; if anything it says is wrong, you have it checked out by a doctor. Do just that if you need a second, third, or fourth opinion.
