The Human Senses - Our Mundane  Superpower

An Internal Dialogue:
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PART 1:

Life recently has been characterised by a few different marginalisation’s which have left my brain behind un-comprisable iron bars. I’ve let guard down to what-not-known and left curiosity behind as well, alongside of this I have also left my know-it-all far behind me. Most things I thought I ‘knew’ or were ‘predictions’ as it were, almost turned out completely possible through a pessimistic lens, yet now, I’ve jumped between the extremes of predictability. I’ve gone from know-all see-all, be all, to feel-all, experience all and keeping myself open for optimism. Always keeping this level of sheer vulnerability though, comes with a sense of becoming debilitated. It is an exhausting practice, but one vital for learning, well swept in a cusp of unknown land. Last I spoke about being able to withstand and belong in the sea and storm in northern winds, but now I can admit this was fault. There was a part in time were the rope I was tugging at from both hands needed to be put down. God, I could say my heart and hands had calluses and were raw, beyond repairable state. I was constantly pulling between keeping on with my life, in a place so unstable and uncertain, but I could not let go. I do ask myself why, but I also didn’t know any different. My environment was filled with people of the familiar emotions I was experiencing, and I had not to blame myself entirely for putting up with it. The only reason that rope was put down, was due to each other participant.

Another promise I shall make myself, is not to stay, and not to be a ‘struggle at sea’, were thunder, rain, and the sharp winds feel like shards against my skin. I can uncap the darkness, and walk through it with my head standing high, but on merely reflection, this is not worth the sacrifice with an added perspective here.

There needs to be natural ‘boundaries’ into experiencing life at a fuller extension. You can yearn for beloving and empathising with individuals you come across with in your life, but to truly have that full extension, you need to leave room for self-discovery too. And without natural boundary, one becomes exhausted. It is an exhausting act taking everything, out of everything. You can learn from poets, and photographers, and most creative people, most become almost docile in down-time, and some of the most creative individuals succumb to substance-misuse, alcoholism, and over-working, to simply shutting down from riding out the high-highs and the low-lows.

There is an art to riding out the waves of emotions and differentials in experiences, honouring that life is up and down, and that things may just ‘happen’, I suppose this is greater in a selective ideology. In this ‘selective ideology’ it would suggest things such as work, daily routines, self-hygiene, exercise, and things which require small amounts of resilience, to being disciplined into doing so. And to be completely absorbed by this would be a dream of any governance. Things move more forward that way, I suppose in a typical scene, and that one is predictability, or predictable, enduring of actions, facing ending consequence, through self-selection, and could you really say this was a deserving/undeserving/meaningful to meaningless sacrifice of time, energy, and resources?

There are many great books about adopting ‘power’ and adopting ‘nihilistic’ approaches into daily life to make things easier for the human experience. Personally, I view that as a shame, it is a shame and a great waste of individual potential, taking note of how one chooses to live life, as it is owning main, largely most independent, and freeing choice they still have.

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PART 2:

I am a prone optimist amongst the struggles at sea, within the cusp of storm, thunder, rain, and the sharp winds which feel like shards against my skin, yet now I want to explain a deeper meaning into what it means to truly uncaps the darkness and walk through it standing straight with my head up high. I will enrapture the true meaning of facing my own demons, darkest psyche, and the meaning of living with a tied vulture at the back of me, and the unfairness in which life is not all true glory and everlasting light. I want to unveil the darkness, and make it heard that the human struggle is real, and if you give meaning to this, it will not sail with you, but the real in it will send chills down every singular bone in the body.

I like to describe myself as a realist, but the meaning I give this is very all so different to what we’re apparent to presume. A ‘realist’ in my dialogistic journal, interprets my social interactions being divided by what I view as experiencing ‘real life’ versus a ‘fantasy’, and this marginalises all my social interactions to a large extremity. I have a need to be with the unpeeled-raw version of the individual I’m sitting across from. I enjoy experiencing life as it is with them, and I enjoy unveiling layers into their comfortability to be their true self with me. This means going into the depths of how they’re consciously experiencing their life, without things such as ‘sugar coats’, and with their true, complete self. It is a vulnerable and rare thing, which I have been patronized for many a times, but this is a choice in which I chose to live my life. It gives it a new untold meaning, to be true to every single interaction I meet, and truly worship every being I interact with.

“It is as if my life were magically run by two electric currents: joyous positive and despairing negative - which is running now dominates my life, floods it. - Sylvia Plath

Now let me not discourage you, as this way of living is a hard yet detriment process into understanding the real humane experience. It is truly a way of being, and one which you must truly belong, one cannot walk aboard a train in which the destination is not meant for them, and fumble upon an unknown path without a calling to it. I find grave courage in the struggle and darkness of the human world, the north-winds in the Scottish grass, in the noise of wind struggling past leaves as they rustle, and the pelting of rain upon my skin as I let my body run free in this unknown forecast of hindsight. 

Courage is a rare gift, and it is an honourable skill, described as the ability to control one’s fear in a dangerous or difficult situation. True courage is a skill to be viewed with the individual who is brave, unarmoured, tangible, and fluid into their own experience, what it means to them, and to control their own presence in the present, courage’s them through the storms in one’s mind and situational circumstance. Yet there is a very dark-side to courage itself, the false-self, id, ego, and misuse of courage, captures a demon-like self-inside of us and can upturn events to benefit itself, true courage extinguishes this through the bravery of honesty, to be truly oneself, and to not use things such as pride as a longitude for bettering oneself. 

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PART 3:

Looking from the corner of a spit on Mallaig, I experienced a so-called spiritual type of wonder, but I feel like this will do the experience a grave disservice. Previously, before I reached this landscape, I was in a caravan, I was quite flustered at the time, and I started over-analysing, and almost too consciously, and I began to dissociate, seeing myself from above. I never experienced such a mad wonder on nothing but coffee, and a biscuit. Yet when I felt like this, I couldn’t help but feel claustrophobic. I began to cry in panic. I got up, told them I felt uncomfortable, and soon as I left, I began walking towards somewhere I felt I could belong, somewhere that would allow me to be, just as I am.

Behold, this cold, large rock, after the rain. The beautiful sounds and light bouncing off the ocean waves, as I sat there and listened. This is where I belonged, and the anxiety slowly drifted away. To gain a sense of belonging, it takes time. I found my sense of belonging in nature, as Sharon Blackie’s “Enchanted Life”, would say, you can find home, weathering the northern winds. And I take pride in belonging to something so unconditional, predictable, but evidently home to many things. Wildlife, nature, the grass, and all my senses combined helped me to conduct actions which would ground me into this place, where I could finally feel myself. And it also isn’t easy to belong somewhere like this, it takes time to push oneself out of one’s own boundaries, including physical and emotional.

There are many people that feel the same way, and I have read many books of individuals finding their belongings in the cusp of storms, mountains, and wind. “Sightlines” by Kathleen Jamie, a beautiful expedition of wild, northern lands including Orkney and Shetland, St Kilda and Rona, Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane, and many more. And to me, these people made me realise that I am also, to be understood a sense of true belonging, in the wilderness. I love to be encased by the birds, swooping above me and singing their songs, as I appreciate and take in every note. I also love to look up to the sky, and see how, if you look, there are more insects above you flying, than you would ever previously realise un-consciously aware, and that my interest in reading water, as a language, is a power in which I get such a rich life in grave understanding for true creative power.

Easy to be confused with, though, as over-conscious living, (not in holistic sense), often brings about anxiety, reluctancy to socialise in public, difficulty carrying out tasks and a general sense of un-belongingness in main social constructs we find ourselves trying to fit into. But to be, it is worth it. I’ve found a home where I can belong, and where I have also created and crafted it myself through experience after experience and finding reliability and grounding in wherever I want to. I walk this earth, with my head up, and this may include a concoction of butterflies, rabid thoughts rushing round my head like a dog chasing a rabbit, romped ideas, a weird personality, and a sense of humour, yet I am always proud to say I am myself no matter what, and I am proud of who I am and where I belong in the sense of the “world” today, and moving forward.

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As We Come to an End:

This takes an awful lot of learning, and it takes an awful lot of listening, questioning of oneself, years of practice, non-enjoyability, and uncomfortable circumstances. It includes spending months dedicated to learning about the clouds above in the sky, it takes year of observation to watch the changes of the earth with curiosity and wisdom into what’s to come, rather than a negative reflection on how the weather outside may not actively benefit oneself immediately. It takes such grave questioning of one’s own thoughts, that it drives one impossibly insane. You must open yourself up to such grave empathy, for everything around you, looking out into the snow falling from the sky will give you such childlike wonder you will begin to cry at the feeling of excitement of what’s next to come. It is so oh so worth it, and if I could teach any practice to anyone, even my own child growing up, is to breakdown the boundaries other people set Infront of you to become comfortable with the world presented to you. There is so much to yet explore. There are rivers to learn from, water that dances Infront of your eyes, and if we as human beings can even compromise and have the information Infront of us to learn of such things, and interpret them through stories, fiction, and non-fiction, it can give us such a meaningful life and add such joyous wonder.

I am given an amazing gift of feeling everything around me, and it gives me so much back in return. I put in the effort to open myself up to these new experiences, all the time, everywhere I go, and this is my chosen path. I don’t look forward to unhidden curriculum, such as outcomes of anything apart from my own chosen stability, structural happiness I’ve never enjoyed. There is so much to be learned from what we already have, and consumerism and no matter what equipment you buy, mountains you set foot on, and countries you’ve explored (asides from learning about culture, exploring and learning true observation), you must find a way to also open yourself up to the full potential of what you, yourself can gain from these things. My choice was, feeling. And I am afraid I’ve chosen one of the most difficult ones, which always almost leaves me defeated, yet picks me up again through external facts, in which I take back the information and learn from what in aid my brain gives me back. Such as memory consolidation, neural (plasticity, neural circuitry, energy excitement, hormones to simply my own thoughts. There are all things I’ve chosen to teach myself. And it is not over  night, yet numerous years. I suppose I’ve put most of my time and energy into my own thing, and own world here.                                                                                                                                                 ©

A. DOCHERTY-NICHOLS ©