On Magic

Lately I've been trying to predict the next card from a pack of digital cards in an app on my tablet. Envisaging the card I want to see manifest next, and have had some great results too!

I've been treating it as an exercise for improving my ability to manage my expectations. I generate a feeling of knowing what the card will be and then project this at my tablet screen, but when I'm incorrect I carry on conjuring the same sense of certainty regardless, and over time my expectations become less negatively impacted because consecutive wrong predictions hurt less each time.

Failure starts to feel a bit meh.

The mind becomes able to focus fully on the goal or vision it has set itself, and is immune to the despair caused when the reality we expect isn't the reality we get.

It's important to make thoughts that need to get out of your head tangible and real, and are represented in the most faithful way you can muster. But making something tangible and concrete in the world has its own problems.

I feel like the most important things in life all exist in a realm where words aren't able to describe what happens there. A zone of human experience where secrets, epiphanies, revelations and miracles all reside and must be felt in order to be known. A place where trying to analyse what you observe only pushes the thing you see further and further away, because observation is an act of distancing ourselves from the thing we wish to understand in order to see it fully, and in doing so we protect ourselves until we're satisfied it poses no threat.

Understanding through observation is an act of precaution before the moment of acceptance. An act of rational hesitation. A process which first involves assuming we are separate from the things that surround us - which seems in opposition to acts of oneness, unity, or love - all states of mind fueled by empathy in order to know how the other is feeling, or being.

Questioning things which feel magical in order to find out why they are magical, kills the magic. In a similar way, a butterfly immediately feels like a corpse in our hand if we hold its wings closed to observe its beauty, preventing it from flight.

Because magic isn't born from reason, so it's no surprise that reason should find it impossible to explain magic to us.

The Velocity Of Your Vehicle Home

It's great having a hobby or interest which all through life you find endlessly fascinating and never get bored of. An area of interest you would love to pause time to fully explore, in order to locate the important truth or secret a part of you is convinced it holds.

Finding that truth or secret will most likely involve having to use your ear at first. Listening out closely for its unique sound amidst the sea of generic noise, before setting off in its general direction without guide or script to follow. But if you take a leap of faith - prepared to walk into the unknown, towards the place where you sense what you need to learn can be found - then the distance you cover with each stride divided by the time it takes you to make it will be the speed at which you can travel towards your answer.

There was a suspiciously strong air of humans being able to fashion the impossible when he pulled the zebra towards him from the arc of its chaotic tangent

Strangling A Chicken

As bad as strangling a chicken with your bare hands to make homemade chicken nuggets might sound, I can't help but feel that taking ownership of your decision that a chicken needs to die so you can have your dinner is a much preferable and healthier act for society as a whole than paying for someone else to do the murder so you can keep your hands free from the animal's blood and your conscience free from knowing of its pain during its final moments.

If meat is murder, then buying meat is the act of making murderers. Because someone has to do it. Someone somewhere has to kill the chickens. And you'd rather overpay for a product of inferior quality, processed and saturated with preservatives that allow edible death to stay edible for longer, than for that person to have to be you.

One could say that only wimps and children eat chicken nuggets they refuse to make for themselves. That they think the pleasure taking place in their mouths at the time is worth more than the agony collosal farms of these enslaved creatures must endure every day, who I'm guessing, would much prefer the chance to just be themselves, only ever knowing the sense of being free to roam the land as they wish.

Perhaps our own personal frustrations at not feeling free finds a therapeutic outlet in the act of eating those battered balls of 'who knows the fuck what', packaged and served to us in colourful cardboard fantasies, stripped of all traces of their unsettling back stories and overwritten with ones that are fun and entertaining for the whole family?

Perhaps chicken nuggets provide a bastion for those meat-eating consumers too sensitive and emotionally fragile to accept their complicity in the unnecessary mass murdering of animals in order to satisfy their hunger in a convenient way?

Have You Ever Needed A Miracle?

I was sitting on a bench in the outdoor communal area of the hospital a few days ago, with a fresh coffee and caramel wafer to have for lunch, and I asked God if he wouldn't mind getting involved and restoring my cousin, who was inside, back to full health as he had run out of ways to win his battle. I felt a bit cheeky asking Him to be honest. Like I was trying to get a miracle on finance because my celestial bank account had only a few pennies in it. Was the ritual of saying one's prayers each night similar to making a monthly installment on an insurance policy which would pay out to the claimant a miracle equal to the amount paid in? I was sure I heard God say "Pffft!" from the clear skies above upon receiving my request for him to intervene free of charge. It could be his good deed for the day, I thought.  

I'd tried conjuring a miracle a few years earlier, for my Dad who was in hospital ill with cancer. As I approached him sleeping in his hospital bed, doctors, nurses and family members all away, I thought I should at least take advantage of the solemnity of this fleeting moment and see if I could magic Dad's cancer away by summoning all my belief, which would surge through my body, flowing from my healing hands to the site of the disease. But each time I tried to find the strength to believe, an image of my mobile phone showing no battery came to mind. The farting and choking sound a rusty old banger makes when it can't start came to mind - Dr Bruce Banner in the film, The Avengers: Infinity War, attempting to transform into The Hulk, faced with a mortal threat bounding towards him, the latent rage within his unconscious refusing to come out to assist him came to mind.  

But I have seen a miracle happen before, a real one. A miracle in the sense that an event took place which science said could not happen. And it took place in a hospital in an episode of Louis Theroux called 'The Edge of Life". It's on iPlayer so you can watch it, but be careful, it will be an incredibly difficult watch for some.  

In the episode, we learn that the medical experts, including the patient's principal consultant, are unanimous in their evaluation that a young African American man, Langston, who had initially been admitted to the hospital suffering a drug induced seizure which had then led to a coma and had lasted for 12 days, would most likely never wake, and if he did, the best case scenario his family could hope for would be for him to remain in a permanent vegetative state for the rest of his life.  

But for each time Langston's family had this bleak prognosis reiterated to them by the medical experts, they would politely dismiss what they been told; before returning their attentions back to enveloping their poorly son with love as he lay in his bed sleeping. Their insistence that their boy would awaken from his deep sleep and return to them as he once was had rendered their spirits assured and calm, without worry and without fear. For them it was simply a matter of time before Langston's miracle took place.  

Louis spends some time with Langston's sister, browsing over old video clips and pictures to gain a fuller picture of her brother. Her certainty about Langston's inevitable recovery as resolute as ever. When asked by Louis whether she would expect Langston to think the same if their positions were reversed, she quipped defiantly.  

"I'm only gonna die when my heart stops beating, says God. Not says a human being. As long as there's life in my body, allow me to fight".  

As I watched on, aware of my privilege as a viewer having access to both the thoughts of Langston's family and the opinions of his doctors; seeing the strength of the love and affections this comatose man in his bed was being soothed by, but also knowing the cold brutal facts about this man's unfortunate predicament. With the objective data from the brain scans and corroborated expert opinions of his neurology team, the stark reality that was being painted for me caused me to feel a deep sorrow in my chest for Langston's family and their inability to accept the truth - that they would soon have to say goodbye to their boy. And the more they remained steadfast in their vision of a bright future for him, the more my heart sank.  

Later on in the episode Louis receives a phone call that he should come to hospital immediately. Langston had awoken from his coma.  

Although extremely weakened, having spent the last 37 days in an inactive state, Langston was now able to speak and could identify his family members, even quizzing his sister as to who the lanky bespectacled British man with a film crew in his room was. Langston's principal consultant, had also come to verify the good news. She asked Langston,  

"Who's that?", pointing at Langston's sister, Ashley.  

"It's my sister", Langston replied.  

The consultant, visibly moved with a thankfulness which felt genuine, began welling up with happy tears. She told herself off for crying in front of her patient, but carried on enjoying the moment anyway.  

Ashley, who was helping her brother eat a chocolate mousse seemed calm and relaxed. When Louis commented how unsurprised she seemed by her brother's miraculous awakening replied,  

"I already told you what would happen. I'm grateful and thankful to God, but I knew he was going to be OK and I know he's going to get better.  

"Do you think this was a miracle?", Louis enquired 

"Yes", Langston interjected.  

The three of them laughed  

Speaking privately aside with the principal consultant later Louis wanted to find out what her thoughts were.  

"Well that was a bit unexpected!", Louis gushed.  

Equally flabbergasted by this fortuitous turn of events, the principal consultant struggled to explain Langston's unanticipated return to life.  

"He didn't read the textbook. He's supposed to be in vegetative state, but he's not. He's waking up. And that's a miracle I guess.", she said  

7 weeks later Louis returned to the hospital to see how Langston had been getting on and was bowled over to find Langston walking down the corridor towards him, completely unaided, wearing a smile which beamed nothing but gratitude. The nurses behind the reception desk who had cared for Langston were overjoyed for him, but also couldn't hide their shock at the man's rapid progress.  

Still sat on the bench, my coffee untouched and caramel wafer partly nibbled, I was left with an strange sense that you can't just hope for a miracle, or believe that a miracle could happen. Because where there isn't complete certainty, there are fragments of doubt which grow if left to breed. Langston's sister demonstrated to me that people gain greater power to make miracles happen, to make events that seem impossible, possible, when they act devoid of all doubt, knowing that it will happen.  

Langston got his miracle because his loved ones spoke to him as people who knew it was coming. His miracle was a certainty. It was a fact that had already been written. Whether the total conviction they had was granted by God, or was created by themselves as a result of believing that such a God which could make the impossible, possible, existed; who knows? And who cares? What was important was that each had drawn on a source of strength which had left the fibres of their being knowing things would turn out well. Every interaction and every utterance spoken to Langston confirmed how bright his future would soon be. Doubt and uncertainty was never allowed a moment in which it could enter. As he lay in bed, trapped within his own body, only messages that asserted his eventual release reached his ears and fed his spirit. Words which were delivered by voices that refused to pay any attention to the narrative of how things ought to turn out, according to what science or logic or history was insisting should happen. And I feel like it was this unadulterated source of certainty about Langston's ultimate victory which maximised his chances that his miracle would come.  

In desperate times of crisis, when it seems like the only chance we have left to survive is for a miracle to occur, we first must accept that the miracle we wish WILL take place, and allow this feeling of absolute certainty to course through our veins, radiating out of every word and deed we carry out in order to serve it.

Curing Autism Potentially Means No More Greta Thunbergs

I really hope scientists don't discover a 'cure' for autism. I feel like many of the guys I support enable me to reconnect to precisely how one goes about obtaining meaning from life. From their total lack of concern at having their actions judged by onlookers, to expressing their joys and sorrows in their fullest, without anything held back - this neurodevelopmental condition I'm continuing to learn is helping me keep in sights what it is that connects all humans on the most fundamental level. How we must all find or nurture a meaning for our lives which feels like it fits perfectly. One that we wear permanently like clothing. A second skin.

I love Greta's direct and sobering prose. She has found her meaning, and swathes of the world's populace is resonating in agreement with what she has found. Her autism has afforded her the everlasting ability to never become dissuaded from needing to reach her goal. The daily streams of social debris, the small-talk, the gossip, the rumours and malicious speculations, the personal attacks and outright garbage the majority of us are forced to wade through each day, trying our hardest to not become emotionally deflated by - these trivialities are like water that thankfully mostly run off Greta's back. Power's oppressive will is unable to steer her life course. The futile efforts by the patriarchy to smother her have only caused the world to learn of its enfeebled impotence. Her 'disability' has found itself appearing more and more like a super ability at this moment of time in our technologically developed civilization.

Her haters are right to fear her, as she poses an existential threat to the system itself. A system whose powers to persuade and convince people to accept problems intentionally and cynically created for them, so that they may buy its impoverished solutions - a system whose ability to steer her wants and needs has been in vain. A person like that is indeed dangerous to the system. They feel like a calling.

Your Anxiety Is Telling You Where Your New Strengths Lie

Your anxiety is telling you where your new strengths lie.

When I was at uni I would often walk into the campus library with my rucksack all packed with the day's study materials, find the nearest available computer to sit at, and just stare at the screen blankly for what felt like 2 hours, but was probably closer to 30 minutes. Occasionally I'd scroll through the day's news and current affairs headlines before preparing to head home, feeling like a total fraud, and an embarrassment to my friends and family, who had such high hopes for me.

The dark void I carried around in my chest, a black hole from which all light was unable to escape, would begin pulling my vacant heart down, as I sat on the bus back towards my halls of residence, wishing to never arrive. All attempts to prevent my heart from free-falling through self-administered pep talks, always failing - making the rushes of despair and the urge to sabotage myself beyond all repair increasingly alluring. Open planned libraries were the worst. It felt as though the only direction safe for me to look in without being stripped naked by the scrutinizing gazes of my fellow students was at the floor. But what do you expect when you're smoking tons of weed every single day!!!

That period of my life I think was bordering on full on depression to be honest, and I was only able to feel sad about the state I was in long after I'd begun to get better. Sadness, for me, feels like a temporary sense of loss for something, and so I didn't feel sad for myself at the time because I didn't have anything left I could lose.

In order to stave the ominous pull of depression manifesting, I feel like sometimes people just have to throw themselves without thinking into the deep end of their current anxieties - against the wishes of their protesting ego, in order to realise that they do actually possess the strength of will to overcome the adversity they are in or soon must face.

A lot of my anxiety over the years has stemmed precisely from not wanting to realise this fact - from not wanting to find out if I would sink or swim should I decide to take it on. I would cling to the delusion that by choosing to remain in limbo, in a state of perpetual inaction via the means of procrastination - by refusing to enter into a confrontation with my anxiety, I could stay protected from its debilitating effects. But what ended up happening was the complete opposite to what I'd hoped for. The anxiety created by denying that I needed to take action simply lay dormant within me - silently growing in its intensity, until eventually becoming a new, and even more corrosive source of anxiety which dwarfed the original.

FFS!!!

Thankfully, after thousands of failures, denials and refusals to act, I began to accept the lesson which had been staring at me all along. The best way in which I could become stronger was by flipping the script about what anxiety actually means to me. Anxiety is simply a signal informing me where I must apply myself next. And I'm finding that the rewards from conquering the challenges that confront me when I locate its origin always outweigh any benefits I thought I would have obtained had my anxiety decided one day to magically fuck off and disappear forever!

Anxiety is like a loot box in a computer game, in the sense that if you dare to smash it, you get rewarded with additional life skills, weapons and bonus health to aid you on your quest, because you dared to take the risk. And it's all for free too!!!

And so the more anxieties you have, the more potential strengths there are for you to acquire. You just have to take the plunge, and build up your plunge taking muscles over time. Don't think too much. Just leap into your anxiety and start kicking its pathetic little ass as soon as your feet touch the ground!  

Nothing good ever comes from trying to avoid things that are located inside your head because wherever you go the bastard just keeps following you around! Anxiety and shadows have a lot in common in this sense.