Category Archives: Mental Health

Mental Health

How My Cousin’s Self-Compassion Helped Him Recover From Drug Addiction

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Self-compassion taught him to admit the fact that life is painful sometimes

Take the misery of negative self-judgment in a luxuriously calm refuge-island of self-compassion… – Olya Aman

My cousin Victor was a fair example of a typical ‘mazhor’ (a kid of wealthy parents). He snapped his fingers and had everything he wished. And when his father lost every dollar they had in a risky market deal, Victor’s self-esteem suffered a great deal. He simply lost his place in the world, thinking that material possessions were the only means of determining it.

When his family moved to a shabby-looking village house nearby, his grandma left him in a will a long time ago, he considered all his plans for the future ruined. I found him very poorly equipped to live frugally and happily, rather he was prone to make up in negative judgmental feelings what he lacked in dollar bills. We were not friends, although spent hours together talking, or arguing about life. I was only 13 at the time, but felt myself superior to this 18-year-old kid.

Victor lived a narrow life of anxiety and depression. He suffered from fits of narcissistic, self-absorbing anger. He stopped any communication with his father, blaming his misfortunes on him. He spent almost all his time in the nearby town, and when he occasionally showed his wistful face in our village, he often ended up in my kitchen. He longed for compassionate attention and understanding. He was lost amid his troubled thoughts and feelings, and painfully needed to talk to someone, to pour his misery out and, by doing so, try to get his turbulent life in order. I tried to be a sympathetic listener.

In about a year of village life, Victor stopped coming home at all. I can admit now, I missed this troubled boy a lot. His parents found him almost too late. He entered the narcotic state of self-destruction, greedily grabbing after each opportunity to get stoned and forget about the present.

Self-compassion tells you to resist the temptation to criticize harshly yourself and others. You reach the full potential in life if you are alive with kind thoughts and feelings concerning others.

Six months in a rehabilitation clinic drew a straight line between his past and his present. Victor had to learn all over again to establish contact with people. But to do that he needed to notice their engaging characters, rather than labeling any new acquaintance either as a ‘valuable’ or a ‘useless’ one as he used to do before.

I was happy to accept my cousin in a small circle of my best friends. Now we could talk without raising our voices. Now we had more in common.

Self-compassion kindles a sense of belonging and connectedness. Attachment to humanity is the only way to diminish suffering.

To find new friends, Victor needed to add more positive emotions to his life. I loved him and was ready to accept him with the entire fabric of his timid personality and teach him to understand the keener pleasures of life without an abundance of money. Victor needed more people like that in his life.

The first note of compassion washes away anxiety. It was suggested by the science that self-compassion lights up regions of the brain linked to empathy, pleasure, and caregiving.

He plunged into the healing process by getting rid of regrets, doubts, and self-bitterness. Victor added to his life the rich touch of self-understanding, self-acceptance, and self-praise. It gave him power enough to think favorably about his future. I always told him he was smart enough to reach the desired, be it personal happiness, or material comforts. Finally, I saw signs that he believed in this creed.

Being kind to yourself means to learn the art of positive self-evaluation. There is nothing in this world more delightful than that state when you mentally balance between self-worth and acceptance of imperfections in yourself and in the world around.

Today Victor claims to have self-compassion enough in him to straighten his life in a balanced, heartfelt, and mindful way. He is not ignoring his past, but he is no longer exaggerating his own misconduct, rather takes the best from each experience. He needs to fight his way to happiness, always remembering about his past addiction. He praises himself for each day lived without drugs.

Conclusion

My cousin discovered inner instruments to make himself believe that he was special just the way he was. Victor doesn’t need money, recognition or fame to prove it. Today he accepts things as they are, because being not perfect means to be unique.

Victor recognizes his past mistakes and explains the reasons for them. Self-compassion taught him to admit the fact that life is painful sometimes. He radiates an atmosphere of power and productiveness, even facing hardships.

My cousin is imperfect yet magnificent as every one of us is. When he embraced what he could share with others rather than what benefit he could take from each person, he found genuine friends, people ready to be beside him even when he is in the wrong. Now his self-worth is much less easily shaken.

Stay tuned…

Mental Health

Gratitude Motivation: 6 Ways to Be Cheerful

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I was armed at all points. It was a pleasure to be so completely equipped for the life battle with my gratitude weapons being polished steel. – Olya Aman

Introduction

T. was a generous spirit. He had all the illumination of wisdom, and yet he was distressfully dying. There seemed to be a happy symmetry in this unhappy depiction of his life. I was touched with wonder at the depths of perception of which this person was capable. His unselfish belief in the idea that gratitude is a way to make the most of life was something I could set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to…

T. had a taint of death, a flavor of mortality in him – which is exactly what I needed to shake my world to the bottom and have a chance to find myself in the thrashed around pieces of it. I hung on every syllable he uttered in his diary, and received, as oracles, all he wrote.

With gratitude, your mind is never cold. It enjoys the pleasure of sincere appreciation of what you have. The positivity behind this feeling is always present. It gives food for pleasurable emotions and breaks the monotony of life. You become intolerable to negative thoughts, odious to your soul, they are smashed by every supreme moment of complete kindness and compassion.

In a grateful state you live as thirsty men drink – sleep with spirit, eat with joy, communicate with virtue, and, to crown the whole, your health becomes void of all those sicknesses that originate from harmful emotions. They have no power over you, your cheerful temper and uplifted spirit keep your bodily health unstained.

1) Gratitude Is a Way to a Far-Reaching and Infinite Happiness

“Of parents extremely poor and extremely honest, it was next to impossible that I could paint my life other than in grateful colors. Our family seemed to be possessed with a kind of intellectual gaiety at the times of the most troublesome hardships. We were able to starve any thoughts of misery and lack of appreciation entirely away by just a mere force of heartfelt love to each other and to the life itself.”

“I often was bruised and felt scant of breath but never ungrateful. Every misfortune walked me away from despair and gave me the key to patience. I was a sick-nurse to my father (my mother died when I was 28 and my father and I never fully recovered after that loss). I was seriously out of health. I caught a violent cold right after the saddest day of our life, which fixed itself on my lungs and threw them into dire confusion.”

No day can go without a speck of some misfortune. However, if you spend at least a moment a day recollecting it with humor and praise with gratitude the opportunity to learn from it – it becomes impossible to let uneasy thoughts hunt you for long.

Be ready to undertake 5 minutes each morning portraying yourself reading a poem about a coming day, composing a piece of wonderful music that will accompany you throughout it, or drawing a beautiful picture that will depict a culminating point of it. While doing it, keep in mind that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.

Every now and then put your thin forefinger on your lips and remind yourself of many blessings in your life that you are sincerely thankful for. Kiss it with a smile on your lips and imagine embracing yourself tenderly. This mode of actions will set every nerve in your body quivering with happy vibes.

2) Gratitude Makes You Light and Incapable of Stupidity

“I had good winters and poor winters. I basked in the sun and went to bed when it rained. And I never forgot to spend a few moments a day reflecting on the things in my life I was blessed with.”

“I was always so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humor, reserve, and caprice that the experience of knowing me for a short while had been insufficient to satisfy my acquaintances, and those people lingered about me longer to build friendly ties with me stronger. This way I had a daily meeting with someone to be thankful for, an old friend reminding of himself to be grateful for, and a promise of a future pleasant contact to be longing for…”

There is more in the bond with other people in your life that you can put a name to. The real fact is that the knowledge of being respected and loved raises a presumption against unhealthy relationships. It is as if you put a protecting charm on the arm you use to stretch to shake hands with other people.

If you train yourself to care only for truth and kindness, and believing that two intelligent and friendly people ought to look for healthy relationships together, you will feel a great desire to be social, to share your grateful spirit with others.

3) Gratitude Drains the Cup of Health to Your Benefit

“I was determined to live longer, although the doctors professed the limit till just two-and-thirty. Imputing it to nothing but grateful feelings, which for ought I knew, prolonged my life extremely, I was able to make it to these days, waaay past forty.”

“When I was in pain I more often smiled than scowled. That was the foundation of my beauty despite of my many limitations. I had love enough but not too much, I had loss a lot but not unbearable. Had I lived my life again in every detail of desire, temptation, pain and surrender, I would have chosen the exact life I lived to the very aspect of sickness and every element of loss.”

Every day is a blank page, a pure white surface, and you are the only one able to paint it successfully in bright colors. Use art and guile, talent and temper, recognizing friendship, avoiding a mistake and taking care of the state of your body and mind.

Do not let yourself to be easily crushed by negativity. Evoke a multitude of grateful pictures in your mind and thirstily drain the cup of a happy and healthy life.

4) Gratitude Brakes the Monotony of Your Daily Life and Boosts Your Career

“My business affairs never were a dull round of searching a way to follow money, but a charming mode of meeting my expectations. I had a right mixture of the detached and the involved when doing a job which made every day in the office a splendid harmony of classic, calculated activity of the mind, and graceful, whining movement of the body.”

“Gratitude gave me that easy confidence of manner. Always quite up to everything, I was a sort of person you could depend on, and that made me splendidly respectable by my partners and coworkers.”

To build a successful career is to cut clean out of your life scorching pessimistic thinking. Do not let anyone or anything to throw you off an equilibrium which gratitude creates. Networking is gaining in strength by the contented approach. Above all, decision making improves more from good-humor than from gloomy concentration.

Gratitude, when truly genuine, makes you eager to listen, and this skill is essential for managing people and organizations.

5) Gratitude Feeds You by a Spring of Inexhaustible Positive Emotions

“I took no notice of negative people and very little of pessimistic acquaintances. The wealth of positive emotion awakened pleasure and added loveliness and virtue to my life. My heart being overcharged with grateful feelings, made me exposed to the goodness of the world around me. I was able to describe delight, peace of mind, and soft tranquility on paper, voice it to my friends, charge with it my family, and radiate it to the objects, and atmosphere around.”

Wrap yourself in happy memories, grateful emotions, and generous hopes. An open-hearted life is a possible perfection and must be treated with passion and love. Clear, bright, radiant emotional state certainly depends on what you feel toward yourself and others. The actual amount of pleasure you receive from life is exactly proportional to the expanse of compassion and gratitude in the air you are breathing in.

6) Gratitude Resides in Glad and Flourishing Personalities

“The fervency of my personality trembled from sunlight and fragrance. Gratitude created a barrier that was guarding me against cold and cheerless. Like any freezing temperature, those kinds of feelings could preserve but never let life to be developed. Any progress was stopped when in an atmosphere of a pessimistic refrigerator.”

“I looked on nature and my fellow-men and didn’t see the dark and gloomy. The cheerful colors prevailed, and those were reflections from my own grateful eyes. A clear vision was developed in the balmy atmosphere of positive vibrations. My mind rambled at its pleasure and every valuable information was deeply curved in it. My personality flourished with every grateful feeling and every glad emotion.”

Gratitude is the first warm ray of sunshine that, as the story tells us, makes the traveler throw the cloak from his shoulders, when the storm blows as it will, cannot tear it from him. You do not cringe away from the winds of life. Being ready to show appreciation to every obstacle on your way, you supplement them by profitable lessons that make you even stronger.

It does you a good turn when you appear less materialistic, self-centered and more optimistic, and spiritual. Gratitude makes this change possible. It compels you to achieve your goals without any anguish of uncertainty because success does not matter as much as the opportunity to test yourself.

Conclusion

T. died at forty-eight. When I saw him last, he evidently found great difficulty speaking. He waited long to collect himself, and then he murmured simply: “Take this,” and he handed me his diary. That book had a voice that dropped deep into my soul.

The last page contained a message: “Pain passes, but love remains. We suffer so much sometimes. I’m very old when I think about it, but I grow young again when I believe in generous mistakes that hurt, happy tears that burn, and deep adoration that squeezes the heart till every drop of love is revealed. And the only way to see the beauty in life is to be able to open your eyes every morning with extraordinary grateful gladness. Only this feeling will make you beyond the reach of pain.”

Let gratitude to excel every other quality. It would be a relief to cherish people over material things. If you recognize the need to build a habit of practicing appreciation, it will have an exhilarating effect on your nervous system. You will feel calmness and composure in difficult situations when dealing with people, philosophic equanimity facing cataclysms of nature far beyond all human power, and happy in your own quiet way when giving love and returning kindness.

Stay tuned…

Mental Health

My Encounter With Energy Vampires and Protective Techniques I’ve Learned

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Now I know how to spot, understand, and survive

Do not lock yourself in the secret tower of your deafness and muteness when a danger to be drained by a vampire presents itself. – Olya Aman

I became a member of ‘Pen-Friends’ club, aspiring authors of my little countrified and old-fashioned town in the spring of 2011.

There wasn’t a nerve in me this experience hadn’t twisted. It wrongs my heart to think that one of my books was so close to being buried in the coffin of a negatively false critic. The true nature of this club made me shiver with repulsion, sell my house, and change my address.

Hunting in the Night

I always loved reading and had a great natural aptitude for creating fascinating stories. I finished my book and its manuscript burned my fingers. When a friend of mine offered to spend a long winter night reading and discussing it in a company of like-minded people, I rejoiced and agreed with delight. Little that I knew what it would make me fear for the sanity of my mind and the soundness of my body.

Energy vampires prevent you from keeping your body and emotional state in health. There is nothing like a cheerful mind to stay sound and strong against any life challenge. Vampires defy positive and happy people to the teeth and do their best to wipe out the smile off their faces.

Dracula #1 — The Narcissist

We always met on the dark side of twilight and the owner of the house welcomed everyone with an uncompromising face, hard diction, and vibrating consonants. Dracula #1 was as crisp, new, and comprehensive as the first issue of a book before the folding in a cover. And from top to toe he had no misprint. But when I looked thoughtfully enough, I saw a person who admitted nothing and down faced everybody but himself.

If he could not out-argue me on the point of the value of my book, he bullied me and took my silence for agreement with his views.

A Narcissist Energy Vampire‘s face is decorated with a constant sign of grandiosity, a lack of empathy, and a craving for admiration. Such a person will collect his arrogance, self-centeredness, and ‘ME-first’ philosophy and hurl them into your face.

Dracula #2 — The Victim

Dracula #2 was very easy to sympathize with, but it was not at all easy to be of any help. She was apt to carry her head thrust forward and somewhat down in an imploring attitude as if she was looking to any available advice. But as soon as you offered one, she adopted a highly tragic and devoured by remorse air. Dracula #2 was not willing to listen, not looking for the solution, enjoying the attention, blooming only when complaining, and rejecting any possible solution.

In her company, my brains got so dry that I almost lost my wits. She made me feel sorry for the lack of inspiration, imagination, and confidence in her life.

Victim Vampires dwell in the enormous mileage of suffering, low self-esteem, and lack of self-responsibility. They will fill you with guilt, blaming your actions and behavior for every negative aspect in their lives.

Dracula #3 — The Passive-Aggressive

Dracula #3 hated the world and its inhabitants with a quiet smile on his rather handsome face. No one looked half so tranquil among this group. In his company, I suffocated from the toxic energy that saturated from his whole being. I flatted myself that he had got a tough nut to crack, but little by little he made me begin a new record of angry self-doubts.

With Passive-Aggressive Vampires, a thing promised is never a thing done. There is no way to make them speak directly and about the matter at hand. They always jump on the negative side of things but will not admit it to anybody.

Dracula #4 — The Drama Addict

Dracula #4 looked like an Arabian sheik with his snow-white beard and frosty sparkling eyes. He was a high-class expert in the art of making people cross with each other, cry to the deaf ears of opponents, and crash nearby loudly smashable objects.

Spending just a few moments near this person, I felt rather erased, blotted out from the healthy realm of normal life. He fed upon the lives of others, and to amuse himself he used a special scheme of telling lies and spreading slough scandal about people he knew.

Melodramatic Energy Vampires make you agonizingly conscious of the ‘catastrophes’ all over the world that you otherwise would not know about. They make up in drama around what they lack in their lives.

Dracula #5 — The Guilt Tripper

Dracula #5 had her hour of victory when with malicious intention she made me believe she was a trustworthy friend. And when my heart was open, she triumphantly ended any amicable intercourse, exchanging it to a pretentious smile. She invented various scenarios to make me feel sorry for the things I’d done and confided to her. Her sudden transformation was the major reason that raced my shadow away from my hometown.

Guilt Trippers have no sense of proportion when it comes to pressing your insecurity buttons. They want to imprison their misery in a false sense of power and control by blaming you for every misfortune in their life. Inventing this manipulative business, they make you do what they want.

Dracula #6 — The Splitter

Dracula #6 was very handy with tools to separate and make people jealous. She found the way to spread vile gossips about me and my boyfriend. The entire scene with my lover was an unutterable mixture of tragedy and pathos.

Splitter Vampires seek relief from their loneliness in making other people unhappy. They waste their time in the imbecile routines that go by the name of divorce and separation. It is axiomatic for them that people in a union cannot live in contentment.

Dracula #7 — The Criticizer

Dracula #7 was not tall, but he carried his head so haughtily that he looked a commanding figure and there was something cunning and sharp in the look of his closely set little grey eyes. He disapproved of every attempt of my authorship experimentations in his engaging, deep, and a little husky voice.

I almost lost an ability to think under a tyranny of his pressing personality. He reasoned well and was driving at making me doubt my book and forsake an idea to publish it.

Judgmental Vampires are virtuosos in making rude comments, judge your decisions, talking about wrongs and ‘bads’ and saying nothing nice. Being close to these people will make you feel small and ashamed for no reason.

Dracula #8 — The Fixer

After a while, I got restless as one did under the heat of a sultry summer day. Dracula #8’s advice seemed so easy to follow and never fixed anything, rather made me cease to think about my problems and let them grow and multiply till I could not close my eyes on them anymore.

Peculiar charm and vividness of her sweet talk made one forget the important meeting, skip the urgent payment, let the important opportunity leave your grip. She had a great stock of excuses that I could easily borrow with no charge but self-reproach in ex post facto manner.

Fixer or Controller Vampires walk in your life without knocking and start controlling and dictating what you supposed to do and how you are expected to feel. They do not quite put their finger on the opinions you have, because they always have their own — and those are indisputable.

Strategies for Survival

In a company of these people, I became almost not real anymore. This wretched book club made me forget all my responsibilities toward my family and friends. They had been quite ‘blowing my trumpet’ to win my confidence at the beginning. And at the end, I became a person on which they exercised their revolting abilities to drain and drench.

That was a lesson to learn and never to be forgotten. I learned to stay positive no matter what happened, and what others thought about me. Now nothing can shake the step of my intellectual pace. I believe in myself and in people I love and care about.

Assess your emotional capacity and strengthen it.

Your understanding of yourself should be a gambit in the game of life. Self-reflect with genius and do not let self-love be a theoretical feeling — do that in earnest. Only this way you will know how much of a particular person you can take. A privilege to choose what and whom to let into your life reserved to you alone.

Determine how much of a threat to you the energy vampire is.

Determine what kind of a threat is in front of you and how much of it you can take. If you still feel that your head aches, your dry sleepless eyes feel as though they were bruised from behind, and the blood is beating within your ears — the intercourse with some person was too much and you need to remove the danger.

Vampire identification.

It doesn’t quite come home to these drainers that the entire world does not revolve around them. They seem somewhat afraid of responsibility and are in constant search for victims to put the weight of it on. One distinguishable feature of their personalities is a pessimistic approach to life.

The decision to make.

Has it flashed upon your vision that we attract in our lives what we haven’t improved in ourselves? Once you embrace with strong arms the issues in yourself, address them, work through — you will feel the fragrance of freedom. Every ‘Dracula’, deprived of the opportunity to prey on you, will leave you in peace searching for a more drainable victim.

Recognize when you’re being drained by an energy vampire. Take control of your nervous organization, follow your breathing, visualize a shielding barrier, a buffer zone, where no negative influence can penetrate.

Stay tuned…

Mental Health

6 Ways to Push Worry and Anxiety Out of Your Life

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“Understanding, that worrying was draining and unreasonable arrives in course of time,” said U. sitting himself with the air of a stranger.

Introduction

And U. was not a stranger in our house. Today he was very polite, as frightened men frequently are. We both, I and my mom, were visited with the same unpleasant sensation at that moment – worry, like the rippling of water in a silent place, glimmered faintly in his pale blue eyes.

U.’s eyes were sharp, noticing everything, skipping nothing. A round face, shiny black hair, and old fashioned half-whiskers. A friend to our house, a brother to my mom, a confidante to me. He was quick at understanding the teenagers who spoke their own language of youth, and the most reticent and distrustful of them would tell him their story without realizing they were doing so. But his own daughters seemed to get more and more distant and solemn with him.

1) Make a Whole Understanding of Your ‘Why’

U. had two twin-teenage daughters whom he raised without mother, she died when they were only three years old.

N. and M. were as different in their inner nature as they were alike in their outer looks. N. was rather more complex than M. She was fanciful with all sorts of unspoken preferences and was easily offended, her velvety green eyes filled with tears at every trifling misfortune. M., on the contrary, at almost any disappointment or displeasure would lift her chin and bear it silently.

Both of them at their 16 now were getting even with the life of love-adventure. That was the major reason for sleepless nights and days full of anxiety for their father.

Figure out ‘why’ you worry so much. Intently look at the true reasons for your worry. It may be a slight thing that disturbs your equanimity or a major distractive force that frails your mind – in any case, you need to form a clear understanding of what you are dealing with.

2) Piece Your Worry Out

U. was quick to anger, quick to laughter, and kind and loving from the depth of his soul. His daughters used to confide in him with every life adventure. But now they were growing into little ladies and needed a woman’s… mother’s guidance. He felt the need for a gentle touch in their upbringing all the way during his faithful-to-his-dear-wife life. The same sudden recognition flashed into his mind more and more often now.

U. noticed that with him his daughters would restrain their speech and manners out of some secretive modesty. They hated the superior tone that he sometimes took with them, trying to reason and caution.

Turn the power of reason on. The wealth of your mind should piece out every worrisome thing in your life and make a full list of what you need to confront. Analyze the list. This intelligence is refreshing. It gives you an ability to look at the things that disturb you so in a more distant and broad way.

3) Embrace Uncertainty

His daughters resented U.’s protective manner. Now they had only their girlish fanciful minds to batter at the world with. He consoled himself with the belief that he had managed to instill in them the endurance to go through life trials, but he feared that their open-to-love hearts may get bruised on the way to more mature understanding of relationships.

N. and M. were tossed down blindfold on that life of emotion. To predict what it would make of them was impossible. The vital essence, the throb of it, the light restlessness – rising suddenly, sinking suddenly, impulsive and playful – they needed to taste it with their own taste buds.

Accept the uncertainty fulcrum. Everything in life comes in perfect time. We need to admit it and welcome every change and challenge rather than feel dread and fear. We grow and become stronger sometimes with the help of things we can explain, and very often with things we are not able to comprehend at all. And to predict which of them would become a happy or a sad coincidence is impossible – and that, exactly that makes life so interesting.

4) Become Handy with Distractive Tools

U. was walking slowly, dragging his feet along as if he had a great weight on his shoulders. His daughters were the only salvation for him. He needed to divert his thoughts to something completely different, something that could rose the old man from the torpor of worry in which he seemed to live now. My mother was a wise woman and a good friend to her older brother. She reasoned with him, instilling in his mind the understanding that every step his daughters took toward love added to them strength and expansion as individuals.

My mother said that there was no purpose in tossing the days in a sort of monotonous agitation as there was no way to stop the natural process of girls’ awakening sensuousness. She had me and my sister to think about and she chose to trust and respect rather than worry and question our self-esteem.

Change the way you relate to worry and anxiety. Make every effort possible to add meaning and pleasure to your life. Fill your free time with the activities you enjoy the most. Read interesting books and watch fascinating movies, listen to nice music and enjoy your most admirable hobby. Distract your mind from the thoughts that make you feel uncomfortable.

5) Consider Overestimation that Resides in Every Worry

U. needed to call back to his memory the days of his early youth, the recollections of first love when there was not a particle of earth beneath his feet, the resentment at the face of any amount of reason that his parents were trying to thrash into him. He could make his authority felt and lock his girls at home, not letting them wonder with their friends after school – that would only invite violence and protest – U. knew it too well.

His daughters were merging into their teens. Soon enough they would be grown young women and to get to this point they needed to acquire experience that only heartfelt affairs could give.

6) Say a Lot to the Purpose

I was on friendly terms with M. and N. Sitting together, exchanging occasional words, glances and smiles, we indicated a certain advanced stage of intimacy and camaraderie. That friendship produced a consoling effect on U.’s worrisome mind. His girls spent a lot of time in our house, talking to me, my sister, and our mother. That was not the same as having their own loving and caring mother beside, but that still gave them an example of a mother-daughter relationship. They could ask my mother questions that were not destined to man’s ears. The answers they received were full of dignity and depth of graceful and noble judgment.

U. also had a privilege to relieve his long-pent emotions and talk freely with my mother, his younger sister. She was able to balance the strange anxiety in his soul, solace his spirit, and soothe his ruffled temper with the company and conversation.

To talk about the things that bother you with someone you trust is the best way to come closer to understanding them better. Voiced, they lose some degree of frightening power over you. A feeling that you shared your worry with a beloved person consoles your heart and diminishes the weight of anxiety that holds your soul a prisoner. Talk about it, let your fear come out – it may dispel in the air or at least reduce in size.

Conclusion

The time of agitated, burning heart and brain is left behind. U. is an affectionate grandfather to his many grandchildren. His beautiful and wise daughter M. is an ornament of true motherly love and daughterly devotion to the whole village. She came back from a big town with a child in her hands seeking retirement for her broken heart. An icy hand released her soul when she met a simple farmer, married him, and became a mother for four brothers to her little older girl.

U.’s other daughter N. became a famous writer – married to her books; constantly in love with her cats, niece, and nephews; and caring about every relation on a distant gift-giving manner. She remembers all the important dates and never fails to send a word and a present but rarely shows up herself, always faithful to her secluded way of life.

Exercise daily to make your body stronger, it will add flexibility not only to your limbs but to your mind as well. Learn to divert your thoughts from the worrisome ideas that may possess you. Drink less caffeine to minimize some tension on your nerves, get a soothing and calming herbal tea instead. Meditate and learn to see the beauty and charm in life around, relax your body and soul.

Never blame yourself. Be loving and caring towards your feelings. There is a solution to every problem. Get help from other people: your family, and friends – bring your worry to an end together.

Stay tuned…

Mental Health

An Autistic Boy Helped Me Recover After a Loss

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Know the difference between distractive loneliness and desired solitude

Olya Aman
My kind of loneliness rather aggravated than relieved the gloom of my life. – Olya Aman

I stole cautiously towards my secluded bench in the middle of a little island of sunflowers in their utmost bloom and richness of color. One would be almost invisible amongst those kingly looking plants with their golden crowns and massive leaves.

My face during that tough, lonely period of my life was a good deal over-serious for my two and twenty. I was well-nigh alien to this stunning and bewildering scene. My gloominess quite confounded the senses.

I looked at the boy on my bench, my neighbor, in mute and timid wonder. How did he end up on my patch? The intelligence that shone in the deep green eyes of this autistic boy, when I finally had a chance to look into them, seemed scarcely of his age, or of the world. The changing expression of good humor and seriousness, his ability to blush very red to the ears, made me admire a thousand lights that played about his face.

When I rented a small cottage in this remote village, I took no notice of other people and very little of this boy, although we were house to house neighbors and met often coming out and getting in our homely places, both thresholds facing each other. I seemed hard upon my thoughts, constantly looking down as if examining my boots and the ground right under my feet.

That day I smiled at this boy and said a word of polite greeting, but he, dedicated to his thoughts, didn’t respond. I discovered that this ability to concentrate made him a fantastic listener. At that moment in my life, he became my salvation. I was pouring on him a torrent of personal sentiments.

Not looking at me, he said, “L.. l.. l..”, then a long pause. The boy had a severe stammer. Finally, he produced his name in an unusually deep baritone, “Liam”. We communicated in notes from his side and words from mine. The first thing he wrote was, “You are lonely.” And he was right.

I told him my love story and although he avoided any eye contact and scribbled something in his little journal all the way; I knew he was all ears.

“I am in love with a dead person. If I knew him longer, I could have loved him longer. I miss his clear and pure miniature skies under the arch of his eyebrows. Only in his company I felt no need to think of what to say. Every moment of silence was a blessing, every word uttered was a revelation. He poured out more treasures of his luxurious inner nature in one minute than anyone else could’ve done in his entire life.” Liam brushed tears from my cheeks with his checked handkerchief. It was so old and soft, as if a tender touch of a mother.

“Only two years I spent in this blissful state. He missed our second anniversary. He‘d been run over by a car.”

Liam handed me a note with the following question, “Do you feel that your happiness is owing to him, and without his presence, your existence lacks purpose?” This boy could read my heart.

We met every day on that same bench. I was talking; he was scribbling. I said to Liam that I voluntarily chose isolation. I nurtured the notion I differed from all other people that surrounded me. I saw the world in clouds and fogs rather than in colors and vibes. I perceived people as rough creatures, not fit to understand my pain and be my companions.

I busied myself diving in my newly formed plan of moving to the village and burring my over-drained mind in simple farm occupations that required no thinking but just hard physical work. I used to have the vastness of feelings to lose myself in. Now I tried to be forgotten and forget.

When at home I felt my words thrown out, conversations started and no one to address them to. I used to defend myself tragically in an empty room in front of an imaginary lover. My bitter remarks dashed in vain against empty walls. I ate and drank, but it didn’t put any heart in me.

I couldn’t sleep, the night was fast closing, not gifting me with rejuvenating rest. I carried myself with the air of a weary person, feeling the claws of depression pressing harder on my chest. I had no tools to cope with stress, life attractions seemed to be hidden from my eyes. I found it harder with each day to approach people.

Liam listened. When I was done, he handed me his journal and smiled.

Liam wrote the following

It is vital to know the difference between loneliness that feels draining, distractive, and upsetting; and desired solitude that is peaceful, creative, and restorative. I found that you suffer from six kinds of distractive loneliness.

  1. New-Place Loneliness by the nature of things may force a person into the embrace of solitude. Shutting oneself up for a long time may create a communicative barrier that will prevent a person from seeing an opportunity to meet people.
  2. No-Soulmate Loneliness, when intimate bounds are missing. A beloved person is a source of love energy. Missing a romantic partner fills the heart with silence that is not soothing but upsetting.
  3. Lack-of-Trust Loneliness is a pessimistic approach to life. If you do not believe in the existence of truly well-intentioned, kind, and helpful people — you do not believe in life itself.
  4. No-Time-for-Connection Loneliness is misleading. To throw oneself into daily occupations not leaving any space for yourself and for others is a big mistake. That time may be considered lost because there is no one to share the pleasures of your achievements with.
  5. I-Am-Different Loneliness is quite a mystical state of mind. It is good to be different, feel oneself unique. But there is a fine ground between feeling different and feeling superior. The first one is most often positive, rather than the other is for sure negative. To teleport oneself from negative to the positive side of uniqueness is extremely important. To achieve it, you just need to open your perception to the ability to see the individuality in others. The uniqueness of personality, when multiplied, creates a wonderful cocktail of human characters.
  6. Quiet-Presence Loneliness is the lack of companionable silence. Sometimes we need someone to be just there for us, present in the room but not intrusive into our thoughts. The knowledge that we are not alone adds a comforting element to our lives. It is always pleasant to enter a habitable place after the day’s strain and excitement, rather than to find no eyes to look into during dusk hours.

What you should do to recover after your loss

  • Stay open for others. Connect with people. Nurture relationships. You need to feel that you belong, to confide, to give and get support. Attempt to secure the favor of warm-hearted people. That will add peculiarity to your personality.
  • Give love and you will receive it back multiplied. Be generous and wrap your beloved people up in attention and affection. Your life will be full of light, of unmingled happiness, if you cherish faith in the best in people.

This autistic boy changed my attitude toward life

Friendship, which before these days seemed impossible, crept in my life accompanied by blithesome music of this boy’s kind heart. That music taught me to value the treasures of the heart over any material possessions. I stopped feeling superior over others, admitting that I had tons to learn from simple people with little to boast of in terms of monetary luxuries, and so much in terms of values of the heart.

When I let myself be open to the truest, warmest, soul-felt gratitude — I saw more smiling faces around. The reason was simple — the charming smile found its way to my face, and even though I had forgotten how to wear it, my gentle nature was always ready to master every positive skill all over again. I learned to share the devotion and affection of my nature so long locked and sealed inside my soul. This transformation brought deep and lasting relationships with other people.

My mind was firmly set on never to return to the sorrow and calamity of my past distractive life apprehensions. I intended to not let my positive spirit tarnish. My long suffered heart found the perfect formula for happiness, and the key element in it was a strong connection to other people.

Stay tuned…

Mental Health

How Backbiting and Gossiping Ruined My Happiness

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Why, or rather when the opinion of others matters

Spend precious moments stubbornly biting your lips, speaking sternly, and acting openly… – Olya Aman

Dima was my first boyfriend. A terrible bore as he was, I loved him dearly. I always thought him to be above the average in the firmness of his mind. He read classic literature and spoke the language of 19th century romance. We were young and very much in love.

Dima was a sensible and handsome young boy of twenty at the time. I was a smart, pretty girl of eighteen with merry grey eyes and lofty, intelligent forehead. Today when I see a photo of us together, I remember how contagiously happy we were.

One incident ruined our happiness. Dima thought himself deceived, duped, and hopeless. A slough scandal was spread through the entire village and finally found its way to Dima’s ears. The tempest of doubt and dread, of jealousy and rage, almost blinded him. Some shallow minds believed it right away. People that wished us bad luck were rejoicing.

I got to the root of it only by hints and innuendos, as no one dared to speak openly with me about it. I stopped any intercourse with the poisoned humanity, the ones that readily accepted the circulating vile slander.

Why it is normal to rip up the ties.

Dima’s spirits rose almost to madness when he heard the dreadful story of me being unfaithful to our love. I thought nothing could crush his faith in our shared future. The story was a lame one. Unfortunately, he believed that I could swear love to someone else.

The first night after discovering that his best friend was an instigator of the slander, a paroxysm of anger disquieted Dima’s breathing, and he bitterly reproached himself for the moment of weakness. His friend, a worthless reprobate, an impracticable fool, gave food to envenomed tongues, and they started to talk about me as if I was a little frivolous kitten going around and gifting my love to insipid individuals.

Eventually, Dima cut all ties with that false friendship. Forgot the way to his friend’s house. Wiped him off his phone contacts and social media accounts. He brushed the dirt of this acquaintance from his life. After what happened, Dima knew too well to keep such people at a great distance from his life.

Why, or rather when the opinion of others matters.

My heart rejoiced when my parents and my elder sister took my side in this insinuated story. I felt strong support and stoic faith from them. My close friends showed me the true value of their relationship. People that sincerely wished me to be happy took pains to consider everything thoroughly. They recollected what they knew about me and found not even one reason to surrender to the falsehood circulating in the village.

Why take the reins in your hands.

This occurrence served as a great lesson for both of us. Dima’s so-called friend, being a jealous and wicked person, ruined our happiness. He did his utmost to bring about a fatal collapse to the true love between two faithful hearts. That unfortunate affair taught me to avoid provokingly jealous, heartless, and artificial people. I clean my life from any false attachment.

Today I make my life a pleasant experience, awakened by grand people. The mention of any piece of news that concerns me is heart-felt when coming from a loving soul and easily forgotten when coming from a distant and unimportant acquaintance.

Conclusion

People tend to talk. We may like it or not — but they talk about us. It may aggravate you, but I would encourage you to take no notice of judgments that come from people that do not bring value to your life. Whatever they think should be considered a slight thing. It by no means should disturb the equanimity of your mind or had any injurious effect upon your appetite.

A true friend will cry and laugh with you, not at you. The one that gives you handsome compliments in your face and talks about you with much malicious philosophy behind your back is not a friend. Rejoice when you find out about some false attachment. Let this person go as far from your life as possible and wish him good-speed. Remember that the ones that stay — worth hundreds of those that had left. This is a natural life improving, beautifying process. You multiply positivity but getting rid of negativity.

By the way, it is better to be talked about. That means people find your life interesting and for sure a better topic to discuss than whatever their own existence presents. So, let them do what they please and continue to live as YOU please.

Stay tuned…

Mental Health

My Father Died From Cancer, and It Taught My Mother to Write

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I painstakingly pieced this story from the several treasured excerpts of her diary

You must have a divine heart to be so full of vigor when life is a misery, filled with it like a precious vase… – Olya Aman

My mother makes beauty beautiful.

She dreams in words of love and hope when her life is tragic enough to make my face distort with darkness.

Her life is a sad song for an outsider and a bright red fire for those who have the privilege to know the divine rebellion of her smile, the cheering appreciativeness of her spirit, and the great resoluteness of her mind.

My mother gifted me with her beautiful diary on my 30th birthday. I painstakingly pieced this story from the several treasured excerpts from it.

Grace Your Life with the Presence of a Diary

Life may seem vengeful. When a beloved person is forever lost the existence appears empty. A painful loss sternly represses breathing although the chest is heaving with passionate feeling. Eyes become blind to all life attractions, ears deaf to all the words of love and affection. Every living being that still keeps smiling looks so provokingly heartless and mindless.

May 1988: “I buried myself in the full of soul eyes of my dying husband. I know I need to think of my dear child and myself for her sake, but it is so hard to tear myself from his bedside. His sufferings make my heart weep. I wish I could sacrifice myself and save him. His voice rising painfully when he holds my hand and pronounces my name. I quiver with restrained grief and smile to cheer him up.”

My father was going through tormenting sufferings on his way to the end of life. His pain, the result of advanced incurable cancer, was inadequately relieved. The question of surgery was not even possible to discuss. It was too late.

May 1988: “My diary is my salvation. I often write and hold his hand in mine. I put on paper what I feel and fold it in two. I plead and pray to God and hide it in my soul.”

July 1988: “He is in constant pain but looks the very incarnation of quiet bravery and love. Even in his intolerable condition, he strives to carry away my disquietude by talking about the beauty of life after death and the pleasure I should feel on this earth even when he will leave me.”

August 1988: “Whenever he is awake from his tired slumber he asks me to write the messages to daughter so I can deliver it to her when she will grow up to understand the preciousness of every word that was voiced through pain and suffering. I like to listen to his sentiments. I love his extreme good sense, his exquisite taste, and the feeling of life. He urges our girl to be uncompromisingly bold in the defense of her opinion and life principals, to be earnest and keen in pursuing her dreams, and to win the esteem of her mother and father by vindicating her character from any unkind inclination.”

Let Place, People, and Obligations Comfort Your Spirit

The freedom of nature and tranquility of some quiet shelter gives a sense of repose and expansion to the mind. When you take your place on a bench under your favorite tree it opens the floodgates of your soul. Here in loneliness, you can pour away the tears of grief. Being with beautiful life one on one you can learn all over again to feel the rays of sunshine with your soul and to experience the freshness of breeze with your heart.

October 1988: “With an agitated, burning heart and brain, I live through every minute of my life without him. How do I dare to live when he is not among the living? The one who in intellect, in purity and elevation of soul, was immeasurably superior to anyone I know. I rush outside to cool my feelings in the balmy winter air, and to compose myself each time I feel the hot tears coming to my throat. The solitude of my garden helps me to put on a gleeful smile to cheer my child.”

December 1988: “The poison of this loss spreads through all my essence. I now recognize its harmful intentions. The serious depth of it may kill life within me. I fight it, turn my back upon it. I seek retirement for my pain in taking care of my girl. She is my salvation. I let my head to be carried away by her childish ideas. There is no better cure like a merry, simple-hearted child — ever ready to cement broken heart, to melt the ice of freezing soul, and overthrow the walls of sorrowful isolation.”

Open up Your Heart to a Friend

It is an overwhelming toil to be in constant grief. Everyone needs to recover from the effects of it and a close attachment to the living dear people is the best cure in this case. A heartfelt conversation with a friend can fill you with faith, hope, and joy. It will drive away the keen regrets and bitter dregs of lingering sorrow that still oppresses your heart.

March 1989: “My mother is my faithful friend. When I see a flash of love in her eyes, a glow of sincere care on her face — I think that one day I will cease to feel this pain. When throbbing recollection flashes upon me, and a cloud of sorrow darkens my eyes, I talk to her: in person, on the phone, or in my mind, and a moment of inward conflict gives place to quiet conduct. I start to behave with exceeding calmness so that she never had to reprove me once.”

Delightful and Fruitful Activity

Perhaps another great healing technique would be an activity, business, hobby — the mode of actions that is enjoyable to the utmost degree for you. Keeping yourself busy and enjoying every moment of it is not a job, it is a recovery process that cures your heart and heals your soul. Leading an active life prevents you from disturbing your own heart by touching upon the infectious thoughts of loss and grief too often.

November 1989: “I started my diary with more truth than wisdom. In the beginning, I was still fearing to be rooted to my loss. Often the paroxysm of pain and despair was preventing me from saying what I was intended to say. A torrent of tears stained the pages with misery, and I prayed for forgetfulness. But only memory gave life to my words. Never do I endure so long, so blissful nights as when I write. I go through every moment of happiness and pain all over again. My goal is to keep the fire of my foaming and swelling with emotions life engaging and bright, so it warms the heart of my child when I give it to her to read and remember.”

September 1990: “Smiles and tears are so alike with me. I often cry when there is nothing left but to laugh and smile when I am in bitter grief. My diary is my remedy. I feel graceful easiness and freedom about all I do these days. The expansion that this new activity gives to my mind is so refreshing.”

October 1990: “I cannot stop writing. A broad sea is rolling between my past and present. My soul is forever united to the one that is dead in body but always living in my heart. My husband is my everyday companion. I feel his soothing presence. And this feeling of our reunion is not sad anymore, but rejuvenating.”

My mother started a diary and found consolation in putting her feelings on paper. Writing those down by-the-by brought consolation. It brightened the doomed comprehension of life. The melancholy musings and painful lamentations stayed on paper.

The words of sorrow, written in her diary, purchased solace and tranquility.

Conclusion

To find an antidote to painful emotions is essential. Grief, when left alone, may carry you away against any reason and will. It breathes a tired apathy born of long sorrow and hopelessness. You need to fight for your life and happiness every day for the sake of those who are living and for those who are no longer among us.

To be a prey to distressful feelings is a sad destiny. To do our utmost to live life happily is the only installment of our universal debt. There is certain graceful ease about being busy with daily life, household chores, taking care of the kids. These activities distract from painful recollections. When you remind yourself that there are still living people that need your attention, you tend to forget to torment yourself with thoughts about death — life is calling you to be present and active.

Stay tuned…

Mental Health

6 Ways to Keep Happy Attitude in a Disabled Body

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To linger here or to feel that you belong… – Olya Aman

Introduction

T. is a lean, long-backed, large-headed Lebanese, with surly tones of his voice and coarse features of his face. We scour the country together every now and then: I – on my feet and he – on his wheels. His wheelchair is a speedy little beast, accelerated by his mighty hands and skillfully maneuvered by his flexible torso.

T. is my dear friend. I can drop a curtsy each time I see him hurrying to greet me in his very wealthy manner. You would never believe looking at his expressive and full of exhilarating energy face, that death had been hovering over him just three years ago.

1) A Rushing Torrent of Grateful Feelings

The dark night in T.’s life crept slowly on, unexpected and unwelcomed. The sun rose and sank, and he was dwindling away beneath the dry and wasting heat of fever, trying to understand the reasons why he was still alive…

A weak, thin, and pallid face was looking at him from the multi-squared mirror lights of the hospital ceiling. Outside the window the mean-looking portico showed strangers in and out, smiling and crying, old folks and newborns – all colors of countenances and personalities were passing through his painful perception for forty-three thousand agonizing wakeful minutes of his confinement to the bed.

When starting to sit down to his meals, still dispirited and sad, the realization that the chains of grief were the heaviest of all fetters came to T.’s mind. He knew that the mournful spirit he was in would only bring the end of his life closer. The belief in a higher intelligent plan and purpose was still holding him tight, not letting him sink into that despair completely.

T. needed to return to the world he belonged. And hour by hour the drop of every happy memory brought back first feeble streams of life. The fairest consolation came in disguise of a prayer. He applied himself with assiduity to the task of reviving his inner and outer strength so his family, always supporting and loving, could be proud of him.

Every generous impulse and feeling of his heart were acknowledged to bring him back from that low and solemn air to the full and blooming life around. He made off as fast as he could to lay his spirits to the ground and managed to get himself out of the bed and on his wheels with surprising speed. Every morning he called before his mind’s eye a vast amphitheater of loving faces of his dear people: his mom and dad, his brothers and sisters, his cousins and dear friends.

Grateful Feelings remind us that dear people and happy moments in the past and present should wrap us in their loving warmth and console the wounded body and soul. Regret and grief bruise the heart, making things in the world dark and gloomy. These feelings may force hate to prevail, so that the person that is suffering would condemn himself to abhor life and think that it pays him by the same coin. One should love life worse than it loves him and live only by that motto.

2) Life and Death in Opposition

The beauty beyond the tomb, when it is accepted in the very heart, can shed a gentle glow upon life and bring a quiet happiness. T. didn’t make a coffin of his heart and sealed it away. He didn’t let his life be buried in the pages of a death book. The gift of life is enormous and the only way to make an effort to pay back for it is to try your utmost to live to the fullest contentment, so that the bliss of your love towards the world around charges it with positive energy.

The contradictory emotions T. felt brought greatest interest and eagerness to his life. Sorrow still was tingling through his veins, but it raised the rattling exaltation at the every notion that perception was able to fill his senses with. He didn’t feel his legs anymore, but that missing part of his body was substituted by strains of overly agitated nerves of his arms and spine. He followed on the track of strengthening his torso every instant he felt the need to hue-and-cry to the missing limbs.

Comparison and Contrast of life and death teach us that life is a poem and it ought to be sung down to the very bottom. Because to cease to love is worse than to die, and death is worse than suffering. We are sorry for the men and women who forced to linger here in constant pain. This feeling of compassion revives willpower of a soul, and chains of indifference, for say what you will, are the exact heaviness as chains of hovering death.

3) Elbowing Hard upon Goals

T.’s life hanged heavy on his hands even before the turning point that left him without legs. He used to ruminate long and hard trying to decide what direction to set his life forth. Being 32-years-old, he had been poring over various subjects and not over anything with enough time. He rambled at his pleasure too long, mostly spending time in the gym listening to his favorite music. It seemed a matter of impossibility to center his life around fitness and body healing strategies now when he lost almost half of it, but this idea was firmly impressed upon his mind. T. became transfixed with the desire to achieve the heights he didn’t even think possible for his fully-functional healthy past-self.

So vigorous a pursuit of a dream that T. started would make anyone wonder at the beaming of energy that he possessed. He was not ignorant of his own mind any longer: his heart was set firmly on a goal to become a physical therapist working in amputee rehabilitation. He was not mistaking the impulses of his soul – he became a world known inventor of dynamic specific strengthening exercises that flex and tone the muscles. His online teaching courses are empowering. His own experience gives him psychological advantage to motivate people who suffered a loss to set goals and move on with their lives.

4) Issuing Forth with a Mentor Beside

The impressive stateliness that radiated from T. was adopted from his mentor. The multifarious influence this person had on T.’s life helped him to not only look on nature and his fellow-men with positive reflection but gave him a clear vision of himself.

The simplicity of his mentor’s life stirred T. profoundly. This person was happy, chasing his dreams and loving his family. With neither legs no arms he was shining with heart strength and will-power. Every trace of T.’s essence strove to be worthy of the second chance he was given and to live his life limitlessly. He had that example of extraordinary idyll and threw himself headlong into the task of bringing purpose and happiness into his life.

A Person Beside that shows an example of indefatigable hope makes us forget about the despair and misery. Hope is the light that dwells in all hearts. We need to be reminded as often as it is possible about possibilities and discoveries. Life is not stationary, it drives us to new interesting days and when we see how other people manage to live those happily despite any limitations we strive to do the same.

5) Power of Giving Others a Heart to Live

T. still had a realizing sense of his weakness and captivity. But he was recovering his life-balance by an effort of willpower and desire to set an example for others. There was a dash of the divine in it – to be smashed from monotonous and tiresome life in a healthy body by a fall of a tree on a thunderous day, and to be revived to the beautiful and happy life in a wheelchair.

T. decided to never be lost amid a host of distressing feelings and regrets. He wished that something partaking of the unheard-of dream-like life would happen to him. The desire to become a role model for others gave him that spiritual illumination that shifted his life and he was ready happily to face his past, present, and future.

6) Let Only Love to Hold Your Body Prisoner

T. didn’t think that he was more than other people. He was a man like every other man and that by itself attributed exceptional importance to the task he set for himself. He conveyed a message that whatever happened to him was not a run of ill-luck but a fortunate wakeful blessing. He shared many talks on how to accept the past and devotedly love your-past-self and present-self.

He received many compassionate comments on his media channels. The influence which his sincere contented personality exercised was deep and lasting. People saw a humble person just like themselves, never repenting on his helplessness, but actually claiming to be powerful enough to uplift his own spirit and inspire others to do the same.

Love-Centered Life is a masterpiece. The creative force is in everyone and everything living on this earth. Our hopes and wishes when driven by love transform the world around us into an art gallery where you and only you make a choice what to hang on the wall of your life. Make the exposition marry and colorful. Conquer death by the force of loving ecstasy.

Conclusion

Often, we find ourselves at a crisis in our lives. The loss takes many forms: ruined health, missing limb, beloved person that was forsaken… The union of fate and belief can give us the most poignant bliss. And the passion to live life to the fullest is only gaining in strength fueled by grateful feelings, love to the life itself, and love towards yourself. The birth of day is growing brighter, more from accomplished goals than from the sun rising. The purest and most amiable generosity of other people, their truest, warmest, soul-felt teaching of flourishing despite any limitations serve as the greatest power that alleviates the sinking of soul and spirit.

Stay tuned…

Mental Health

Only Her Parents’ Death Could Teach Her This Simple Truth

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Essentials for building inner contentedness I’ve learned from my friend

Let us be acquainted with my childhood friend Marta.

She is my noble and generous friend. Noble not by birth but by her personal qualities, virtues of the heart. Our strange friendship started in the first grade and ended in the 8th… to be renewed with the boldness, freedom, and maturity of womanhood.

When in school, Marta used to make fun of everyone in a boisterous manner. When someone came to the class with a new school bag the classmates used to say, “Marta will be mad before long, you wait and see.” And sure to the word, she gave enough time to lamentations that all the kids were ready to swallow up all the new things they had before Marta could lay her envious eye on them. They called her ‘the practical’ because of her love for all material things.

I rarely had anything popular at the time: the cool gadget pet that you can feed and it grows into a funny fat cat or a scary huge beast; the pretty multicolor pants all girls adored and considered the only possession that can pave you a way to a popular kids’ group; the denim backpack with numerous pockets, belts and buckles that every boy and a girl had; the list is endless. The lack of those things made my life a nightmare sometimes. I was an outcast in old neatly looking pants, and a sweater my mom made with so much love that I felt her hugging me each time I heard a bullying accusation. I looked so lovely in it, which made every teacher adore me. And… yes, I was hated for that even more.

Marta’s parents were respected doctors with busy schedules and no time for sentiments. She was well dressed, well fed, well groomed… and not loved enough. There were no grandparents to substitute the lack of genuine affection, her whole being was craving for.

She started to take a fancy to me mostly because I seldom had anything worth her attention and I liked her, because she was the only child walking home with me. My friendship happened to be the most precious thing for the child that could have everything in her life but for sincere affection.

After 8th grade, we’ve lost each other. Marta and her family moved to live in the nearby city, and I stayed in my native village till graduation.

Change the desire to possess to an affectionate attitude towards yourself.

A few years ago, a nice-looking woman entered my train compartment. The long trip to the far-away city was shortened to a thought provoking and tears causing conversation.

I wanted Marta to make the running. The inner writer and explorer of human mines raining in me. I was resolved to persevere in my silent patronage of the conversation.

Marta gave voice to her inner child, and we cried bitterly and laughed heartily at the memories of a girl who considered gifts to be the merits of love. A girl who could ill bear when someone had things she considered pretty and nice. She thought that meant someone was loved more — and that notion was painful for a child deprived of a genuine feeling.

That day in the compartment Marta looked contented. Strong character was visible in the physiognomy of this young woman with her big unmoving eyes, her almost lipless mouth, and a high intelligent forehead. Marta carried herself with confidence. There was not even a passing feeling of irritation, only that physical beauty that comes from the loving energy inside.

I was not able to take my eyes off her. She radiated positive energy and every word she shared was saturated with thoughtful consideration. I couldn’t help thinking that the person in front of me was not the Marta I knew.

Recollect a painful loss.

When I asked her about the turning point, the element in her life that caused this alteration, Marta fell silent for a moment, so much taken up with her thoughts that her eyes seemed to stop seeing.

The loss she endured was painful enough to make her think of what she could have exchanged for a life given back. Her parents didn’t have time to love her, but she loved them with every cell of her body and every vibe of her soul. She was only 18 when an unchained element of nature left her an orphan, her parents’ car being smashed from the road by a violent gust of wind, both her mom and dad dying instantly.

It seemed like a dream, or fiction, or chimera. Vulnerable and insecure, Marta was left alone to think about the present. The past was gone, but the future was hers. Anything in that timeframe of days bygone and days to be still lived was compared to that particular incident.

I could see into the inside of her nature with the eyes that understand and the heart that can weep in unison with her soul. I lost my father in a car accident only a few months prior to our meeting with Marta. The day I received a call from my mother I would never want to forget. It turned my world upside down, and it stayed this way till that meeting with her on the train. I finally had a person who spoke to my heart with the words it could understand.

Any feeling, being at its utmost tension was measured to the one we both felt at that time of a loss. She showed me how to not be at war with myself. Life, after having handled her so roughly, seemed now was willing to teach her the survival skills. She found the diary her mother had, and that precious notebook was full of tender words her mother seldom voiced but no doubt felt — and that was the only thing that mattered.

Think about true values in life.

Marta was not going from then on, she was led by love. The exhilarating effect that love has, changed her understanding of true values. Any envious feeling towards material possessions of others disappeared like a star lost in the distant darkness of the horizon.

Her salvation was in a feeling of gratitude. Her beauty was in the desire to devote her life to the people she loved. Her life was in pursuing the course of in-spirited life: a life of inner and outer health.

Marta had no family left. She decided to have a big one comprised of abandoned children, orphans. She volunteered for many years in various orphanages around the country and abroad. Marta’s family left her a substantial legacy which she spent on education and donated to different causes.

Train your senses to feel empathy.

Marta was lost in wondering and half-admiration when we shared the account of some major facts from our mutual friends’ lives. She felt genuine enjoyment from seeing others succeed, and sincere sympathy towards the ones failing to achieve the desired.

She witnessed life undisguised, seldom gentle and often cruel. Her experience made her compassionate and generous. Marta favored a minimalist approach to material possessions. She became a passionate advocate of children’s rights. Her dream was not to have a luxurious house and an expensive car, but a tiny home full of love and child’s laughter.

Our shared journey was coming to an end. Marta waited silently for any fresh question that I could have, being a little tired from all the various emotions she forced herself to go through again. She surely satisfied all legitimate curiosity, and I let her rest and husband her strength, joining her in contemplation of a succession of low hills and rich forests outside the window.

Remind yourself of the love you have.

Marta became an active, vigorous woman, and even now I can see her in my mind’s eye being happy in her chosen career. She is a therapist working with at-risk youth.

She rarely breathes a word of her private misgivings, but always opens a listening spot in her busy schedule for a friend who needs some consolation. And she offers her love with that shy grace that is so very charming.

Marta and her husband do not give up hope to have their own kids. For over 10 years, they failed to conceive. They adopted a two-year-old girl and a 13-year-old special needs boy, two siblings whom they didn’t want to separate. Every time I visit my native country, I go to their house to get the feeling of unconditional love. This family is happiness personified. Her daughter experiments with my hair and her son makes me play all known table games with him. I go home with my hair tangled and my heart singing.

Marta shares love. And the more she gives, the more she has coming back to her. Marta’s life is unbroken by the misfortunes. Every painful event stitched the pieces of heartwarming feelings together, making a beautiful patchwork quilt of her love-centered life.

Conclusion

Let love be your faithful guardian that keeps close watch and prevents you from taking a negative feeling into your life. Let empathy be your true comforter that reminds you about the beautiful emotions that fill your heart and soul. And the bitterness of past grief should bore you company in moments of false despair. The contradiction between them will bring back your self-control.

I am just beginning to pour forth in the most respectful manner the stories of people who were able to restore equilibrium in their lives. Often, we obliged to go away together and take our laugh or tears out with the person who opens his/her heart to us. You should not regret the time spent when you become wiser with the experience that was lived through by someone else.

Stay tuned…