Trust your innate wisdom

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I was prompted to write this entry due to current events encompassing harassment, normalization of hate and bigotry, violence, false news, divisiveness, and an article shared on Twitter about how harassers use "gas lighting" to sow seeds of self-doubt on their prey.  The term gas lighting was also used a few hours ago by a writer (who identifies as a person of color) who decided to leave the online newsletter she used to work for due to the "hipster racism" that one of its creators represented.  

Gas lighting is a manipulative tactic employed by a person that begins with provocation (e.g. a racist remark) and then when called out on it will divert his/her action by stating that the provocation was not intentional or that the other person is over-reacting or making things up.  This strategy effectively causes anxiety and oftentimes (a sort of) submission by the manipulated person.  I have witnessed this and even experienced this through the years.  What my parents taught me was to trust my gut. 

My mother had excellent intuition--a lot of us think she may be of the supernatural kind, actually (haha).  My visceral reaction is what I (up to this day) trust.  If I feel I am being manipulated, there's a twitch that happens inside my head. I blink. Red light bulb flashes. It is not something you can read on, unfortunately, but really only develop after years of various interactions.  My simplistic course of action is to disengage cordially.  No volcanic eruption-type confrontation or pyromantics.  Honest words. The low-syllable count kind, if possible.  I often pride myself as being able to handle many difficult situations, negotiations, and confrontations in a sophisticated manner without being sly or dishonest. 

Dishonesty and sesquipedalian rhetoric--just not classy. Hah, I used sesquipedalian. Anyway, I do not mingle with the low integrity, insecure types. I would rather befriend an uneducated street sweeper (who, based on experience, tend to be the wisest kind of people you would meet) than a multi-hyphenate, multi-trillionaire, who owns multinational companies with the business acumen of Mojo Jojo....you understand my drift. I also detest witnessing a gas lighter gas lighting a gas lightee.  Ew.

Thought cloud filler: You can cover the smell of excrement with bottles of lysol, but really, excrement is excrement. Correct? High five.      

sine qua non

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So much fatigue that has manifested into a full blown flu-like situation.

Went to PoemHunter for a mental respite and Lucy Maud Montgomery's "Come Rest Awhile" stated You have forgotten what it is to smile, in your too busy lifecome, rest awhile.

"If music be the food of love."

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Quite happy to be playing the keyboard and guitar on a non-hobby basis this year.  I had accompanied a holiday choir in my institution last year and I've been asked to do it again. What I particularly enjoy about playing for singers is the need to fill-in the tonal gaps.  For instance, the singers are all female so there's a lack of the bass and tenor voices and so I tend to focus the accompaniment on the lower keys. Also, the person who leads the group chose either sheet music or chords and I enjoy reading both--I also like having to transpose the key to accommodate everyone's voices.  It's a good way to exercise the brain and recall key signatures. It's fun to wing it when it comes to these laid back venues. There is something preternatural about making music--music in general; that music can express whatever cannot be communicated via some vernacular.  I suddenly remembered a sonnet read by Tom Hiddleston (Loki himself hah)...

Snarky

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I felt uncharitable today. In fact, I wanted to throw imaginary snide darts onto an imaginary dartboard. Why, what happened? A spontaneous conversation that unleashed specific memories which I have buried deep in my mind as molecules of the recent past. It was as if Pandora's box was unlocked inside my head and all these unpleasant emotions emanated like noxious miasma. All the while struggling to maintain the most socially acceptable facial expressions and mannerisms--a la Victorian restraint.  Yes, friends, despite the apparent desire to possess every virtue--I can be capricious. As in "argh#&@*%^ *insert expletive*" levels in my head but looking like Wednesday Addams on a good day.  People who are very close to me are familiar with the unmistakable deaf-mute state I enter when I'm pissed. I try to veil, of course, just so it does not become too much of a big deal especially when there's really no point communicating that I'm pissed. But in times like these, we must go the Elsa route and "conceal don't feel, don't let them know--let it go." Let blogger absorb the cyber-soliloquy where self-preoccupation is masking as self-deprecation. Hopeless. Wretched self-examination. Ayayay.

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Note to self: disengage from negative emotions. Think happy thoughts: unicorns, narwhals, rainbows, chocolates, potato chips, refillable coffee...etc etc. Oh, brownies, pasta, cream cheese, picturesque rural places, etc etc. 

Venturing into the trenches of thought

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To refer to philosophical works as a means to design one's life is similar to following religious doctrine. There are philosophical theologians who have endeavored to reconcile philosophy and the divine.  I had been gravitating towards the practicality of stoicism, primarily because most of my ideas and perceptions about life and existence conform to stoic ideas. Also, I have been reading Meditations by the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius and about the stoic school of thought until I had to draw in the reins after listening to a BBC Radio 4 episode on Stoicism.  Mainly due to the fact that I am not trying to justify a pagan, self-sufficient life.  I must agree with the stoic conviction of pursuing a virtuous life by investing in the present, since (as classical Greek stoicism exhorts) nature has already designed our destiny.  However, I believe that it is not enough to think that just because the future is uncertain, we have incomplete control over what is to come. We still need to live a virtuous present with the future in mind; that our present actions ultimately affect the future. And that the uncertainty levels of the future can be dampened based on the conscious efforts we exert in the present.

As Josemaria Escriva once wrote on his chapter on supernatural life: If you lose the supernatural meaning of life, your charity will be philanthropy; your purity, decency; your mortification, stupidity; your discipline, a lash; and all your works, fruitless. (The Way, 280)