I've been up since 3am. This happens often. What wakes me up? Nothing, or is it everything? I guess I would say noise wakes me up, but not necessarily the dogs next door, or the ceiling fan that’s slightly off kilter and the little pull chain lightly tapping against the glass lightbulb housing. It’s more of the noise in my head. What if I told you that I can hear my pulse, my breath? I actually think it’s my “mind”.
Wikipedia says, “A mind /ˈmaɪnd/ is the set of cognitive faculties that enables consciousness, perception, thinking, judgement, and memory—a characteristic of humans, but which also may apply to other life forms.” And then it says pages more…
I say, my mind is a brat. I don’t need to define the word “brat”. We all know what one is. My mind likes to brag about everything. Wether its showing me that it can recite the lyrics to a song continuously, recant some segment of a conversation I had yesterday, ponder the deep reaches of space and time, or recall some childhood memory that would otherwise be so inconsequential that it might as well be forgotten, except my mind is jumping up and down in my head screaming, “LOOK WHAT I CAN DO!” My mind will literally wake me up to tell me it can hear the blood pulse through the veins in my head. Where I might be in wonder at its amazing capabilities, I’m actually quite annoyed because I honestly just need to sleep. My body needs sleep, my organs, and in fact my mind itself in all it’s bratty wonder needs to calm the hell down and take a rest, but most nights it doesn’t. Most nights it nervously taps me on the shoulder, whispers in my ear, or just jabs me in the eye. It’s a needy little bragging brat.
It happens to be best friends with my ego. They love to buddy up and feed each other cake and ice cream then go on a sugar high rampage through my psyche. If you could only see the way they dress up. My mind wears all black and a mask like the “Green Lantern” and my ego of course wears a “Superman” cape. They usually work or (should I say play?) as a team, but often argue as to who gets to be the hero of each act.
My 2016 new year resolution is to strip or cut away inhibitions. Things that hold me back. A simple example is the fact that putting one’s self “out there” as in sharing inner feelings or opinions of things obviously invites response. For example, if I write a blog, the response may be some people read it and some don’t, some leave a comment and some don’t, some criticize and some agree… but all of those are responses that I inevitably see as measurements of someone else’ opinion of me. That has been a strong inhibitor in my life. The idea that I can share things and not care about the reaction from those who I share with is difficult for me to wrap my head around, but all of this said… I’m going to try yet again, to let go some more and just put it out there. In the end, if someone is inspired to do the same, to share, because they agree, or because they think the world deserves better than what I’m putting out then either way… we all benefit.
