Tag Archives: #gratification

Great Power of Strong Feelings That Will Uplift or Dispirit You

April 5, 2020 Olya Aman 24 Comments

Telling lies is a wicked habit. Once mastering this vice, you stop to be sincere even to yourself – Olya Aman

Love

D. used to be a cheerful boy who was rushing into childish sorrow and joy, both with the same zeal. He got strongly carried away and stoically endured failures. He got sick with many childhood illnesses in succession: broke his arm in a skating rink, fell through the frail April ice one time, and once almost died from anaphylactic shock. No one was truly worried about him or tried to protect him because the safety margin he possessed was truly inhumane. It was very likely the result of love everybody bestowed on him which was accumulated over his childhood.

Even a faint glimmering of love changes the way a person feels. The coming day seems brighter, any gloom is relieved with the warmth of sincere affection. With love in your heart you can bravely elbow your way through the thickest of the life troubles. On looking intently forward, the future seems hopeful with this rejuvenating feeling inside.

Companionship

Kids can be cruel in their antipathy as much as they can be passionate about friendship. D. didn’t know the taste of opposition, as we all do now and then. He seemed to be an exception – a pet to every girl, a confidante to every boy, and a favorite to every adult. Plump and rosy-cheeked as a baby, he was skinny and pale when a toddler and a teen. Always cheerful but never laughing out loud, he appeared to always know how to behave and what to say to a party of elderly people or a group of children of any age.

Friendly social circle puts heart in us. As if eating the healthiest and most nourishing food, compassionate touch and heartfelt conversation with the person that cares about you, empower you physically and emotionally. The equanimity of your mind is preserved with the help of friendly people. In the nature of all things, friends are more costly than any possible luxuries in life.

Appreciation

D’s family lived in a three-story apartment building across the road from me. His balcony located on the first floor faced the front gate of our house and I used to observe him through our sun room’s picture window watering the flowers or playing with his cat. We used to exchange our own silent language and meet on a neutral territory just outside the entrance to his stairwell. Gathering the rest of our kids’ company we played picture cards or staged some play or other for grownups from the area. We drafted specific invitations as our performances were popular and we liked the idea of choosing the audience.

D. was a source of endless ideas for costumes or the dialogue’s comical language. His sense of humor was superb, and laughter accompanied every act. I thought he would make a lead actor or a director in the theater world or even the cinema. His ability to change the timbre and depth of his voice, coming now from the upper part of vocal cords and then from his chest, fascinated me. D. used to easily memorize all parts and could improvise, always saving the scene when someone forgot their lines by mumbling the words of an unfortunate fellow in a funny sort of way, slightly opening a corner of his mouth and making the rest of his facial features unusually steady.

The wealth of recognition opens up our inner resources. If your vanity is duly gratified, a multitude of opportunities strives to be revealed to your judgment. Burning ambition is flourishing in the environment of appreciation, and it drives a person to move forward with his dreams.

Self-Belief

We all used to think his never-ending source of energy and ideas would be like an immortal all- present sun, that only in cloudy weather could not be seen, but everybody knew still existed in our sky. When he got sick, no one paid attention to this fact and considered any misfortune in his path as a slightly darkened forecast for the day: we might not see him today, but tomorrow the sun will rise again as it always did before. And true to this expectation, he woke up the next morning and went out to the balcony with his hand bandaged or his head wrapped. We loved him at those moments more than anyone. It seemed the memory of yesterday without his joyful spirit was sunless.

With voluntary self-assurance no hardship will hang about you for a long time. In this state you know that troubles cannot last forever and by degrees, life will get better. The belief in this axiom attracts positive vibes and favorable circumstances follow along. Self-confidence encourages prosperity.

Fear

But one thing finally broke that love-shielding wall that I’m sure protected him, and that jolly spirit perished with it. On one occasion coming home from school D. was stopped by a gypsy woman and driven by curiosity he let her take his hand. She predicted his death from a fall. Yes. So silly: no particulars of any sort, just a silly woman saying a silly thing out of spite just to scare a boy out of his wits. But his passionate nature disserved him this time and he was carried away by that nonsense. The look in his eyes changed gradually: happy sprinkles of yellow on a watery green iris gave way to gloomy brown ripples almost swallowing the rest of the palette of his eye. His countenance, full of lifeblood, had undergone the transformation into a shadow-like version of himself. His paleness was not noble anymore. Rather it was unwell, and his tiny frame gave the impression of some disposition or other.

Self-Doubt

From that time every disease he suffered from drained the life out of him drop by drop. There was a sickening flavor about him that made one think of misfortunes, bad luck, and weakness. That unfortunate prophecy stole the charisma that D. undoubtedly possessed and the admiration we all felt towards him yielded to the force of death that obsessed his mind and changed his looks drastically to the worse.

He constantly repeated that crazy woman’s words, which resulted in an alien personality he started to wear, thinking somebody else’s thoughts about his life in constant fear of a fall. He came to be one of those unfortunate people that always look back on others with dread, nervously trying to read everybody’s thoughts, expecting them to pity him and disliking them for that. He desperately needed someone else’s sympathy, approval, and love. He had all of it in abundance when he was able to give his cheerful smile in return. When a gloomy mood possessed him, any positive feedback from outside was forever lost.

The injurious effect of self-doubt is enormous. It aggravates everything about life. You simply give vent to misfortunes when you allow yourself to lack confidence. Everything takes a longer walk, you simply have no power to alleviate the sinking of your soul and spirit.

Stress

At the age of 14 D. withered as a flower pulled from its soil. It was a minor cold that killed him afterward. Many think though, that he was dead long before that illness took his final breath. Dread of everything that life is – trials and failures, meetings and partings, praise and hearsay – was a murderous weapon that made the final shot. The memory of his awe-inspiring cheerful nature that reserved everybody’s favorable attitude towards him was a red cloth that made him furious when he saw the change in people that truly was only his own nervy and stressful alteration, reflection of which he saw in others.

In a state of stress you are creeping away in life, with cautious steps making your slow advancement. Cold and cheerless days without sunlight and fragrance are your destiny if you let emotional strain oppress you. You need to be careful with things that distress you. Many things are omitted and a lot is forgotten when your mind is pressured with negative thoughts.

Conclusion

D. used to be a champion in any undertaking and even a failure served as a source of energy, adding more experience and a higher chance of being victorious next time.

When he came to be a poor victim of a senseless lie people stopped taking him seriously but that was just the result of his lack of confidence in himself. The world with death being an integral part of it was a poisonous place for him. That prophecy doomed him to live a life of fear. That dread became his daily companion and, being a jealous nasty thing, deprived him of friends.

When you do not fear anybody, you can handle any judgment people make about you, taking no interest in what kind of esteem they hold you in. The brave spirit of an adventurer reigns in your life and you take risks and come out winning most of the time.

People will always crave company, understanding, and love. The one who is not able to give love will lose the resource of it that everybody congenitally possesses and hopefully accumulates through life. Love needs to be given to enlarge its dimensions and quantity. Kept inside, it grows moldy, turning green of jealousy, then gray of greed, and finally, the dark color of hate paves its way.

Stay tuned…

Mental Health

My Struggle With Hatred After My Boyfriend Was Killed

August 26, 2019 Olya Aman 21 Comments

Do not let hate make you old and stale and faded

I was beside her, wrapped around her, melting in my anger… – Olya Aman

I was almost abnormally fond of Adam.

The little dimples on his cheeks were driving me crazy. He was the only means of complete and ineffable happiness, the very essence, which I defined as Life.

His heart stopped beating and the Hatred to the person (who drove the car in a state of alcohol intoxication, killed my boyfriend, and remained almost unharmed) began to control my existence with innate satisfaction.

This experience turned my understanding of Hate and Hatred bottom side up.

I meditated on my hate, crying quietly, shouting inwardly. I was utterly desperate in my desire to inflict the same suffering upon a person responsible for that devastating emotional pain, soul-torture, the heartbreaking outcry of my whole being.

I will share my love story with you in a few well-chosen silences, and the story of my hate — in several emotional words.

1) Try to accord with the disturbing person.

The ghost of an idea to get to know that person better (and if not to forgive, but at least to free my spirit from a tormenting feeling of anger, that didn’t let me breathe fully, function satisfactory, and live bearably) invaded my thoughts.

I visited Mary in prison for eighteen months and four days after the car crash. The expression on her face told me wordlessly that I should (if I would be so kind) spend a moment in her presence, make an effort to not shout from inner pain, listen if she had anything to say, have a look into her eyes for just a fraction of a second… and just be quiet.

Mary’s apocalyptic face, whiter than Death’s itself, seemed incapable of even a glimpse of a smile anymore. I felt my hatred if not slipping away but for sure diminishing. In front of me, there was a woman that made a fatal mistake, a mother that could not be beside her kids, a wife that lost her husband’s trust and love.

I, for one, had her to blame. Mary had gone on every night without the consolation of exoneration.

2) Keep in close touch with your motives.

After the meeting with the person who killed my boyfriend, I was unhurriedly and calmly propelling myself toward recognition of my loss and acceptance of my fate.

I did not forgive Mary, I still felt the pangs of hate often. That was a huge step forward to a new life, where moments without this suffocating feeling were visiting me more and more often.

I had never in my life so perfectly understood (even to the most exquisite nuances) that state of hatred I lived in for so long.

But before that meeting, I had not even one-third the command over it. My ability to distract my thoughts and recover some balance in my feelings ranked better with each new day.

3) Thrust hateful shock upon a paper.

Although my loss was the unspeakable and the unwritable history of agonizing anger and bitterness, I created by some occult process of self-mastery a diary of perfectly cruel time in my life. I wrote about the perpetrated deed of self-distraction committed by hatred.

I wrote down my feelings partly because I wanted to get rid of that hate, and partly because I wanted to have a shred of evidence in the form of a written word of that time, to justify my desire to live when my lover was not among the living, to show him that I still loved and suffered tremendously from that loss.

4) Value trustworthy spectators and listeners.

I could not push this pain off or away, but I started to talk about it with people who cared to listen.

By doing so, I rose from the domain of the inner prison cell I used to live in one on one with this feeling of hatred.

I appeared on the surface where friendship and love of close people and consolation saturating from every encounter could help me recover and drift peacefully along with the current of life.

5) Breathe a tepid skepticism and sickly dislike out.

From all the indescribable I had known, definitely, the most intense one was the feeling of overwhelming loss, pain, and hatred mixed together.

This cocktail made me sick to my stomach and dizzy in my head.

I learned a special breathing technique to help me manage this dreadful inner hullabaloo tornado of disruptive feelings.

It helped me to diminish that absolute and incurable hysteria of emotions and, with time, to extract it from my life almost completely.

6) Ease your pain in the certitude of positive and healing forgiveness.

I visited Mary, the unfortunate driver who killed my boyfriend, only once.

I could not force myself to go to prison again. In one more year after our encounter, Mary was released.

When that piece of news was announced in an official letter, I felt bitterly disappointed. Were thirty months in prison enough to pay for the taking of someone else’s life?

I was despite myself with grief. The feeling of hate overwhelmed all my entire being all over again.

The authorities forced our second encounter on me. I needed to be present at the release meeting, where Mary would declare her remorse, ask to believe in her renewed self, and plead to be forgiven.

What a hellish thing it was to sit through it. I could not lift my eyes to see her talking. When most of the time elapsed, the door opened and two pairs of huge black buttonlike eyes entered the room.

A three-year-old boy and a 6-year-old girl. Mary’s husband divorced her while she was in prison, but being a good father brought the kids to see their mother on the day of her release.

The spectacle was refreshing for my feelings. Now I stared all eyed in the scene of devoted love of a mother and unconditional love of her children.

I leapt to my feet and made for the door to shut it and never see these people again, to close that chapter of my life, and be partially contented with the idea that I could not hate this loving mother anymore and hopefully would never see these people again.

Mary and her family moved to a different state, away from the memories and people who can judge her and bully her kids in school. Away to start a new life.

Let me tell you what I know for sure.

Hate is the most uncomfortable, impoverished, and disagreeable feeling to live with.

It sucks the life-giving energy from a human being like a hungry vampire from an unfortunate victim. It is inhaled together with humiliation, mistreatment, and a feeling of impotence.

As an artificially grown black rose, that you may buy to go to the funeral, this feeling cannot becomingly complete a bouquet of beautiful and kind emotions. It spoils the entire picture, sticking out and disgustingly protruding.

Forgiveness and compassion can help to avail this sickly atmosphere.

To say ‘No’ to distractive thoughts means to see better days. Start a journal of positive recollections and put yourself in a contented state every time you read it.

Sometimes things you write may be appalling and rereading those is inflicting even more pain. Tearing up or burning, though, on the contrary, is releasing yourself, freeing your spirit — making it flexible, prone to change.

Close, loving people represent all the vast conscious world of consolation, empathy, and emotional and physical support.

Relax in a company of a friend, the one you can talk a long time to, who will be attentive and intense, who will drink it all in and will help you release your pain, anger, and misery.