SAD is a blog that encourages living with self-awareness, gratitude, and self-empowerment one day at a time; sharing stories, poems & information about overcoming adversity or trauma; building personal power and emotional intelligence. You can and must be your own hero. Call 1-800--273-TALK if you need someone to listen or need immediate advice. Leave me a message if I need to contact you.
Old Age: A Beginners Guide is a book about Parkinson's Disease by founder of Slate magazine, Michael Kinsley, editor at Vanity Fair whose conversation with Diane Rehm was aired on National Public Radio. He shared what he knows about living and about being diagnosed with Parkinson's. According to Kinsley, there are two ways to approach illness or disease:
Embrace it, join a community of those experiencing it and advocate for solutions to problems regarding it.
Ignore and hide it, which does not allow emotions to be expressed.
I have a third way to approach this illness: Consider it a blessing, rather than a curse and make positive changes in your diet and lifestyle, embrace or settle issues with loved ones, if possible. If impossible to reconcile differences, find a way to accept the relationship as it is and focus on building happiness supported by a network of people who accept and support you just as you are.
According to Michael Kinsley, Parkinson's Disease doesn't necessarily lead to demise. It can lead to disability but it's not a fatal disease. This means, you still have to learn to live a healthy life with it. This includes positive thinking, positive experiences and paying attention to overall health and emotional well-being.
I've been very very lucky and I have very minor symptoms. My eye twitches and that's close to the major side-effect that I have. What else? I have trouble sleeping, I have skin problems, and it's a wide variety of other [side-effects or symptoms].
Michael Kinsley is thankful for the things that are good in his life as he grows older and learns to live with his disease. He says that growing old is not simply a matter of longevity. It's if you can hold on to your cognition. It's a matter of finding ways to live a good life.
Human suffering is everywhere, but I don't worry about life circumstances because I understand we live according to our personal karmic footprint. If we created good causes in our past lives, our negative karma is reduced. If we committed negative acts against humanity, animals or Nature, our negative karma is increased. Christianity teaches, “You reap what you sow.” Karma is the same concept. The universal law of Cause and Effect never gets it wrong. It's hard to accept that we created the situation we're in today, so much easier to blame it on parents, teachers, significant others, or on the Black human race. Everyone blames the Black human race, even members of the Black human race, themselves. Let's face it, humans can be more vicious than animals. Animals kill in order to survive. Humans kill for the power, the sport of it, or to keep up with their Joneses. Animals, not so much. If animals feel their survival threatened, they will offer a response. If they feel driven to feed a family, then someone has got to die and only the strong survive. Such is not the case with people, especially Black people. We kill each other for sport. I love the color of blackness—blue/black warm, tattered yet standing strong, beautiful in appearance, in strength, in swagger and style. Black people are emulated and admired (secretly) all over the world. But if they only believed. Since they don't believe they are beautiful or powerful, self-hatred looms large (secretly) in the black community and self-hatred gets expressed in the way we kill each other off, physically or spiritually. “Black lives matter,” is just a slogan because we are so enamored with the notion of appearing rich, feeling important, or living white that we are willing to kill for it. Whether we kill bodies, the human soul or dreams and aspirations, Black people do this to each other on a daily basis. They feel it's not a crime against humanity because—are black people human? Whether acquiring worldly possessions, attaining political power, or building self-esteem through bullying, all can lead to the indiscriminate killings that humans inflict on each other, and Black people excel at this, just as they excel at anything else they try to achieve. Everyone likes the phrase, “Black lives matter,” but given the opportunity to undermine or destroy another black life or another black spirit, far too many black people take this opportunity. Black lives matter only so much. The human race has much to learn from the animal kingdom. You don't kill unless you must. You don't kill once the other is down. I think everyone knows the truth: In the long run, the white race has nothing to fear. Although Black people are beautiful, strong and resilient and although they shout it to the mountaintops, “Black Lives Matter,” self-worth is something many Black people have yet to believe. It'll take lifetimes to kill off the Black human spirit and soul so until then, white people can rest easy. Black people must first destroy each other; then they'll get around to the white human race. So what does this all have to do with karma? Do I really need to ask?
There are two mental processes that represent our thinking: the rational and the emotional mind. The rational thinking system is driven by detached observation, logic, assessment, and reasoning while the emotional thinking system is driven by an immediate feeling response, such as compassion. But which has the greatest influence on us? Although we might think we're being influenced by only one type of thinking at any given time, studies show we are equally controlled by both. However, if problem-solving is too complex or information is incomplete, the rational mind becomes overworked and overwhelmed making it difficult to make decisions or solve problems. So when in doubt, our emotional brain takes charge and we make decisions based on emotional responses. The emotional system enables us to respond quickly, even if it means trouble, while the rational system allows us to use logic and reason. The National Institutes of Health explains how complex our emotional system can be. Our emotional responses are immediate, but the rational thinking system causes us to step back and analyze the situation. When our two ways of responding are in balance, our emotional responses become more regulated and analytical. A Toastmasters online resource provides the following explanation of how emotional and rational thinking processes work:
We are persuaded by reason, but we are moved by emotion. Several studies conclude that up to 90 percent of the decisions we make are based on emotion....
Emotional reactions and logical thinking go hand in hand when it comes to problem-solving, but when the problem requires too much rational thought, emotions win 90 percent of the time. This means, if there are too many factors involved or if the situation is too complicated, an emotional response will prevail over logical thinking. We need both types of thinking, rational and emotional, but we need to be aware of how the brain works when we are overwhelmed. If we trust the workings of our brain, very often, the emotional or intuitive response is the best response. (c) updated: mhjohnson (2017) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1201429/. http://www.westsidetoastmasters.com. From "The Influence of Emotional Subject Matter on Logical Reading," Journal of General Psychology 34 (1946): 127-151.
Some religions forbid sex before marriage but sometimes I wonder if sex before marriage is the key to a good marriage. After all, if the sex isn't good, how can the marriage be good? It's just a question that you might have the answer to. Read the following and feel free to respond with your words of wisdom. (The following is copied verbatim from the source cited. For more, contact the website.)
SEPTEMBER 9, 2015
18 Men Explain Exactly How Sex Is Different With Someone You Love
1. “For me, having sex with someone you love feels like you’ve ‘found’ something. There’s a real sense of discovering something that was missing before, a completeness that you don’t get from random hookups or even with long term lovers that you’re not in love with.”
—Luke, 27
2. “It is different. It’s so different that I actually think it might be the best way to tell whether you’re in love with someone or just in lust with them.”
—Oliver, 26
3. “The thing I noticed the most about having sex with someone I loved for the first time was that there was real humor and happiness involved. Like, we joked and smiled the whole way through. The sex was super satisfying of course but I remember afterward saying ‘that was fun’ and actually feeling joy instead of worrying about how I’d performed, etc. That was a real shock for me.”
—Nathan, 22
4. “Technically, I’ve had better sex with women that I wasn’t in love with than I have with women I have been in love with but at the same time I generally enjoyed it less. I’m still kind of getting my head around that.”
—Jonathon, 23
5. “People are always talking about how sex with someone you love is better but I don’t really see how that can be true. Sex is sex, either you have chemistry and know how to do it or you don’t. I don’t know how love could magically grant anyone mystic sex powers that suddenly make it better.”
—Ian, 24
6. “I’ve wondered about this a lot and at the risk of trying to explain something that probably has to be experienced to be understood I think that when you love someone you’re just more likely to trust them and when you have mutual trust you have better sex that’s mostly stress free.”
—Leo, 27
7. “This is really something men don’t talk about when it’s just ‘the guys’. I think that we’re told by society that A) Sex is dirty and awesome and that B) If you’re in love then you should never say so. Sex with someone you love can be actually transcendental and by that I mean you transcend your ‘self’ and become emotionally intwined with the person with whom you’re sharing that love. It’s a miracle if you ask me and we’d all be better off if we admitted how wonderful it is to feel that way.”
—Marc, 33
8. “The first time I had sex with someone I was in love with it scared me. It was just such an intensity of feeling that I immediately kind of freaked out and literally started shaking. The way I grew up and having the parents I had really explains this. There wasn’t much affection in the house. We were always emotionally on our guard. There wasn’t any trust. It took me some time to figure out what I was feeling and love making sort of ended up as a kind of reparative therapy for me. We’ve been married five years now and I feel like meeting her rescued me from what might have been a very sad and loveless life.”
—Jack, 28
9. “The first thing I noticed the first time I was with someone I was in love with and that was in love with me was that she seemed to really be into my pleasure in this really free way. I’d never come across that before.”
—Charlie, 25
10. “There’s definitely an isolation I’ve always felt during and after hookups, even when I really liked the person, that’s definitely showed me the meaning of ‘la petite mort’ (the little death). When I’ve had sex with someone I really loved I never felt that.”
—Tyler, 26
11. “For the most part, I’ve always enjoyed sex with someone new because you get to find out all about this new person and what they like and don’t like. There’s a lot of excitement in it but it’s definitely different from sex with someone you’re in love with. The best way I can describe is that it’s like you’re doing something with someone else instead of doing something to them.”
—Julian, 29
12. “It’s 100% possible to still have bad sex with someone you’re in love with. What I’ve found in my own life though is that bad sex with someone you love is still way better than good sex with someone you don’t love. For one thing, you don’t feel the need to leave right afterward.”
—David, 28
13. “They’re different, yeah, but as long as you’re not expecting love where there isn’t any then I think both can have their place. Where a lot of people go wrong and, I think, especially girls, is that they expect to feel love during hookups when that’s not what hookups are about. Making love is about being with someone you love, hookups are about sex or alleviating loneliness.”
—Jake, 30
14. “Sex is better with someone you love for the exact reason that literally everything is better with someone you love.”
—Tom, 22
15. “One thing I notice about casual sex is just how little effort people really put into it. If for no other reason, sex with someone you love is better because both of you are trying.”
—Jeremiah, 26
16. “Sex with someone you love is really different than sex with someone you’ve just met or haven’t known very long. There’s nothing like the adrenaline that comes with the sort of rowdy, casual sex you have with someone you just met at a club but there’s also nothing like sex that’s deeply intimate and that can be just as rowdy. The difference is that the former doesn’t have any meaning to it. The latter does.”
—Mark, 26
17. “The sex is different, yes. Is it better? It can be and when it is better it’s a lot better and when it’s bad it’s just okay. However, some of the best sex I ever had was with people I wasn’t in love with.”
—Evan, 24
18. “Sex with someone you love doesn’t have any of the ‘locked inside your head’ self consciousness that hookups have, in my experience.”
How do you know you're in love? How many times have you been in love, and how many precious memories do you still have? If you could turn back the hands of time and if you could relive the moments of being in love, how would you describe that love?
Process:
Writing a short narrative or a prose poem is a good place to start writing if you're not an experienced poet. You spend less time thinking and more time just writing, relaxing and allowing thoughts to flow.
Example in prose:
My first love is not easy to determine because it just is not, but the way to write anything is to keep writing for three to five minutes, allowing the mind to free-flow, while trying to keep the question in your mind. Let's see...I had a boyfriend who loved me but then I had a fiance whom I thought I loved until he hit me in a state of jealousy and nearly broke my jaw. It crackled for months. In the whole scheme of things, my first love seemed to love me about as much as he loved himself, which wasn't enough for either of us, so it didn't last, but I think that might have been an instance of true love. I'm writing freely right now, but I want to stop or I might be forced to cover evidence, and that's not the point of writing at all, at least not when the purpose of the writing is to get the creativity flowing. So I'll stop with this, but I wrote a poem earlier, a poem which is more a series of questions than anything else. If I planned to write a longer poem, I would focus on something in the poem--the emotion, the images, the message and I'd build upon that. The trick is to start where you are and continue writing without worry, without erasing, and without stopping. After getting started you can continue. Once you think the writing is finished, you can go back and add whatever you think the writing needs. An example of poetry writing follows:
Example in poetry:
How do you know when you love someone?
After you've seen their face or smelt the musk
Of a hard day's work and thought,
How beautiful? Or is it much simpler,
Like how your entire soul cringes
When they say hello or good night?
Or is it how you take flight,
Fearing a heavenly
Lock down?
(c) by Mjia Johnson 2017
Someone somewhere asked this question: "How would you spend your last day on earth?" I thought for a second but it didn't take long before my muse responded. What follows is not a poem, but with some poetic restructuring, it could become a prose poem. Here's what I was inspired to write:
If today was my last day on earth, I'd spend it with family, teaching them how to pray in my final moments, telling them stories my mother told me, explaining how important it is to be free because being owned by anyone in any form or fashion, living in fear of being hurt or exposed, is like living on borrowed air, which would be a travesty because there is nothing sweeter than fresh air. I would share the importance of Nature-- wolves and tulips--and people. I would share words of Emily Dickinson: "Tell all the truth but tell it slant/ Success in circuit lies..." I would teach them to be proud because there is no one on earth born with their particular gifts, so the trick is to be proud of your gifts and cling to those who appreciate you. I would tell them to listen to people and sounds of Nature more than they speak and to ask the right questions. Then, we'd have oxtails, curry goat, empanadas, coconut cream pie, listen to great music and dance until I was ready for sleep & prayer.
Blind obedience is what I learned as a child and if I spoke out or spoke up, I'd be scolded or spanked and ignored for half the day. I had no time to sulk, never thought I deserved to, so I ended up keeping my emotions inside. That's all well and good, but unless you express how you feel, it's hard to determine how you feel. Self-expression is a form of defining and asserting who you are, and it has a very empowering effect.
My mother was a beautiful, proud and dignified woman who was a product of her up-bringing in the old South on a 240 acre farm with two parents and sixteen children. She learned the value of hard work, respect for self and others, education, and obedience to parents and elders. Her father warned her about men, especially fast ones from big cities, and most definitely against those who didn't attend church. She listened respectfully as her father spoke, one day left the farm and traveled west, where she met her husband, my father.
After their divorce, she held us accountable for maintaining her father's proud legacy of high moral values and obedience and made sure we did everything she, herself, would have done in terms of keeping to tradition and keeping quiet when elders or superiors were talking. Each day, she left a strict plan of action and returned home with everything in place.
I was never my mother's favorite, but I was care-taker of her house, and she taught me everything she knew. She was quiet-spoken yet uncompromising. but she left me with gems of wisdom to last a lifetime. She made me laugh and she made me cry, but through it all, she made me, stamped me, "Made in America," and left me her story to share.
I knew my mother, but it took a while before I learned who I was because it was unacceptable to boast, self-express or complain. Being quiet and invisible never entered my mind because "Children were to be seen and not heard." It had always been that way and it was an established tradition in the South, especially in the Mississippi South.
Although I didn't talk back, I loved to cry when I felt hurt. I felt like a disobedient child when I cried but it allowed me to process negative emotions, which will find a way to escape, as indeed they should.
But that was a generation ago and things have changed. Psychologists, mental health associations, researchers and educators emphasize the importance of self-expression for emotional growth. It's never too late to learn all you need to know about yourself. But self-knowledge begins with self-expression.
