Well, I will surely never win any awards for consistant behavior! :) Two posts in one day - the world stands on the brink! LOL!
When I went to my hair cuttery this afternoon (for my third appointment of the day with someone), the snowdrops in their back lot were blooming with abandon. Earning their names as we had cold, cold rain drizzling down, threatening to become snow. :P
I don't know whether these flowers are escapes from the residential back yard on the other side of their privacy fence (see below for widespan view photo) or the bulbs were actually planted in this tiny verge next to the parking area behind the spa. The snowdrops don't care in any case - they just bloom where they are planted with profusion (I expect that is a pretty good analogy for some life lesson:).
As you can see, neither trash nor incipient carbon monoxide poisioning threatens their blooming urge. Tough little bloomers!
I have been watching my inner thinking processes all day (see my earlier morning post for chemical/pharmaceutical insight) ... and it occurs to me that I am beginning to understand my son a tiny bit better. Hmm, a bit of background info.
There is a definitely a genetic tendancy toward anxiety and/or depression issues in my family line - many of the people in my mother's, my and my offsprings' generation of family members have anxiety or depression issues of one kind or another. Now, not to dimish the seriousness of deeply clinical problems some people have ... but, we are pretty much all above average intelligence and mostly pretty productive people (with the possible exception of my son whose occupational goal is 'hermit':). Some of us are medicated and some are not.
It is common in American contemporary culture for the average 'joe' or 'jane' to think having any kind of mental 'issue' is shameful. I happen to think that is a very uneducated opinion! If you know anything at all about neurochemisty, you know that the condition usually reflects a difference in the chemical metabolic pathways of some brain hormone or other - is juvenile diabetes (difference in insulin hormone metabolism) shameful? Not in my humble, but I guess outlooks vary. :P
Along with many other genes I have inherited from my ancestors (which include random traits such as webbed toes, high verbal acuity, unusually acute intrapersonal awareness, hazel eye color, an extreme tendancy toward arthritis and thousands of other less identifiable items), I have chemical imbalances in some of my brain chemistry pathways that make me vulnerable to depression and seasonal affective disorder. (shrug) I include this info here merely as a conversational explanation for the metacognative items I mention below. :) (remember that verbal acuity I identified above?:)
Where was I going with this ... oh, yeah. My son does not like to take medication for his anxiety issues; a fact which I have trouble understanding because the medications I have taken for so long make my life not only bearable but pleasantly stable. He says the drugs (besides being drastically nasty if not taken - they can cause very unpleasant rebound experiences) make him 'feel like a zombie.' HE prefers to deal with his anxiety issues with behavior modification and awareness. (shrug) Works for him I guess - I, myself, am not into suffering. :P
There is a common belief (possibly substantiated by research) that most truly wildly creative people are bipolar (or 'manic depressive' as it used to be called in less pc times)...and that the madness is just the downside of creativity. I am pretty sure creativity can be taught and does not have to be an inborn trait. On the other hand, I can personally testify to the fact that I am lots more productively creative when I am not medicated. :P :P Trust me that is one wicked trade-off. :(
Mark Twain made a comment once to the effect that every person has a much, much richer internal life than anyone can ever really know. Certainly my unmedicated 'inner life' is more introspecitive and analytic than my 'normal' one (well, or I'm just delusional which is a realistic alternate possibility:).
When I am 'normal', I usually spend my mental 'free' time considering my task list, mentally examining problems I feel need to be solved and trying to plan some course of action. In my unmedicated state, I am much more likely to be pondering metacognition or my observations of something I'm reading/watching (for example, right now I am enjoying watching the Masterpiece Theater series Wallander on Netflix - which has a lot to say about the inner life of the central character as well as his job as a Swedish police detective). Convergent lines of thought. :)
One of my favorite adages (probably popular on 'chinese' fortune papers) goes something like this: "When you come to a constriction in the way, transform yourself and move onward." That pretty much explains how I like to deal with problems - if I can walk all around it (mentally) and consider every permutation and possible solution I can work out ... and still find no solution that works to solve the issue ... it is time for me to change the place I am standing or the outlook I am using that causes the issue to _be_ a problem. More than one way to skin a cat as my mother often says. :)
Random brownian motion of the mind with some nature notes tucked in for tonight's post. LOL!
:) Linda
PS Just for reference, I happened to find a photo of the very same snowdrops blooming on Feb. 17th last year (2012). Guess spring is definitely on the way? :)
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