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______).::h is for happiness::.__ _ ___
************************************************************************* ‘One cannot weep for the entire world, it is beyond human strength. One must choose’
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I was always very philosophical about the world, why it seemed so harsh and why everyone couldn’t be happy and get along. Unfortunately, I came up with no answers. I thought it was because so many people were selfish and greedy, thinking of themselves instead of others, not sharing money and wealth. But that was just me, the selfish and greedy one. Thousands of years of advancement and what for? A depressed obsessed world where life isn’t really worth living? A world too hung up with finding the meaning of life to get down to the nitty gritty of living it? A world where we fill our emptiness by idolising money, seeking material possessions? A world so consumed by envy that we have to watch soap operas to convince ourselves that some [fake] people do have lives worse than ours? A world so overtaken by post modernism that anything goes- as long as it feels right to you then the consequences for others do not matter? Hmm..I’m thinking it was all a big waste of time. Of course, I’m probably wrong, I’m sure that the world is full of nice, considerate, content people but having observed from behind the bars for so long, that’s what I saw. Nowadays, it seems that there are a small number of people who think about the feelings of others, about their responsibilities to their neighbours. Children in schools bully other children, not realising that others have feelings, and rights. Adults attack in more subtle ways, picking faults with politicians or school teachers, without understanding that they too have families and lives to lead, that they can be hurt by continuous abuse. Funny really: while half the world fights for life, so many of us in the developed world struggle to end it. Something seems wrong there. Perhaps, now that we can survive to an old age, we have taken that for granted and looked to the quality of our lives. We are told that we shouldn’t suffer; that life is a Hollywood fairy tale where we meet The One and live happily ever after. If our lives aren’t perfect then we are insignificant, destined for the scrapheap. We are seeking the elusive state of happiness, something which can only be found inside ourselves and within others. So many people can never be content because they are too busy searching for contentment. I don’t think that you can find it, I think that it is something that finds you. I was always envious of those people who emanated peace, who were satisfied with what they had and asked for no more. Any gains for them would be seen as actual gains, rather than the fulfilment, probably only partially, of an illusion. Because these people, who always want more, will be plagued by that desire until it consumes them. So even if they do achieve it, it will be a great disappointment, because, chances are, it will never live up to the dream. Say for example, that I worked really hard (yeah right) for a test one day and was hoping for 100%. If I did get 100% I wouldn’t be that excited because that was what I had expected, I might even feel disappointed at the let down of 100% never being able to give me the buzz I’d hoped for. And if I fell short of 100% I would feel desperately disappointed, even if I did get 99%. So there’s a no-win situation for you. Moral of the story: be content. (easy as that!) While half the world lies starving, unable to move because their muscles no longer have the strength to lift their thin bones, the other half of the world abuses what would be their medicine. In the West we see food as bad, and eating as a sign of weakness. So many people obsess over food when they should just be glad to have it. Overuse of the casual statement made by parents to their children to ‘think of the poor starving children in Africa’ nullifies the harsh facts; that we have more food than we know what to do with. While we avoid food, spend hours preparing it, eating it, burning it off and thinking about it; those in poorer countries can only wish for the smallest of scraps. Food ruins our lives: the years spent on diets or obsessed with what to eat and when to eat or the lives cut short by cholesterol related heart disease. Why can’t we just share it evenly? Currently, one quarter of the world has three quarters of the worlds wealth. Somewhere along the way man became too greedy for money, ignoring the compassion one should feel for people living on the same earth but in a totally different world entirely. The media hammers eating disorders; almost everyone knows someone with an eating disorder- perhaps everyone can understand the feeling of fearing food, and its power. After all, not many people in this, our confused nation, can cope with food, the substance fuelling our lives. Food is nutrition- we eat to live; so why is it so hard? Eating disorders are both glamorised and trivialised, made to seem like a particular lifestyle one might choose, as is homosexuality. Anyone living in the constant battlefield of an eating disorder knows the cold hard truth. Few people could ever remain in the honeymoon stage of an eating disorder, a kind of social eating disorder with no emotional commitment. Inevitably, getting slightly into anorexia or bulimia will slide and slide until it controls you. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe there are people who can throw up every so often without falling into the grasp of an eating disorder that takes them over completely, just as a lot of people drink without becoming an alcoholic. As I write this there has recently been a big uproar about eating disorders, someone at the top decided that something better be done about this problem draining the country of resources. So there were several meetings discussing body image, particularly about the effects of thin models on the catwalk and in magazines. While I can see that these images may direct psychological despair into trying to look thin, and may fuel eating disorders to continue when one can see no way out, they are only a symptom of deeper problems. No-one gets a serious eating disorder purely because they see thin and happy people in magazines, it’s just a way of expressing what’s inside, a way for all the pain to get out. The deeper roots of pain have to come out eventually, and in our society eating disorders are almost the fashionable way, which is perhaps suggested within the media, with their models and beauty obsession. I could ever agree with the look of models in magazines, but perhaps there are other things that the doctors and politicians could have been considering in addition to problems in the media, the roots which make one susceptible. At the same time as all these meetings were being planned a boxer and convicted rapist, was being allowed into the country against normal regulations. Not only was this wrong, in my eyes at least, because of the discrimination that allows famous people special privileges because they have the elusive ‘celebrity status’, but also because of the problems it could lead to. Research has shown that about half of the eating disordered population have been abused. To me, allowing him into the country is a way of almost condoning rape and abuse; a way of saying that sexual crimes but, well... boxing is far more important. Extremist perhaps, but if it saved one person from the tight clenches of an eating disorder, then that would be worthwhile. And abuse causes so many problems, it leaves behind it pain, pain of depression or self-harm or suicide or eating disorders, and sometimes a legacy of abuse that continues throughout generations. The great response given by my friend when asked whether his glass was half full or half empty: Depends on if you want more or not
THIS PAGE IS DEDICATED TO MY FRIEND SUNNY
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