4 Tips for Knocking Over that Seeping, Black Tar of Dread Plaguing your Heart

Life can be hard! I just found that out recently. I must have been living under a rock all of this time. Everyone has their trials and tribulations, and it can be difficult to look past the effervescent, writhing miasma of haunting pain encasing your every day experience!

Here are some tips to help you get by.

Don’t Give Up!

While it may initially seem like a good idea to drop your sunk-cost-fallacial (sp?) thoughts at the door and tie yourself to the back of the nearest barely-subsonic jet liner, you should first consider that there are people who care about you, and things that are more important than the temporary (albeit all-consuming) pain that’s bothering you right now.

Locking yourself away in a grimy, moss-covered dungeon where your only friends are a pipe organ and an inexplicably old bottle of whisky will not only damage you emotionally, severing your bonds to the outside world in a way that while it may not seem so is almost certainly permanent. It will also harm your loved ones, who don’t wish to watch you transform into some sort of fantasy vampire creature that requires the contents of a well-weathered bag of holding to destroy.

Find your Friends; Find your Village

Though you may find yourself questioning the very purpose of your life due to the current state of the social marketplace as engineered by the likes of technology given barely-finite reach into the writhing souls of our mortal coils, cannoning you into a spiral of grief for the experiences lost in recent times and begging God himself for even a taste of the community that even your most recent ancestors experienced in at least a partial form, take heart. Social interaction isn’t totally dead. It’s merely having a sad moment.

There are plenty of places to find friends and meet community, galvanizing #1 on our list. For me, it’s the church. For you, it might be a bowling club. We seem to have lost sight of the importance of our village: a set of people in our lives who really matter, and who count, and who care about us. Your village might be small: it might be your wife and a few people who look at you funny when you’re sad for the first time since they met you.

It might be huge: you might walk into the place and it’s just the intro to ‘Cheers’, where everyone is patting you on the back like you just got back from the puppy saviour factory.

Regardless, finding the world outside of yourself and your miserable state will give you a refreshed view of reality. This is especially important if you find yourself living in your head: get out of there. Remember, a change to set and setting is important.

Eschew Hatred; Behead All Satans

Hatred is way too damned easy to come by these days. It is everywhere. It is everywhere. It is the central unifying factor of every social media platform in existence ( yes, even your favourite one! ) and it seeps into you like a slime mold takes to a 1981 ceiling tile at the local janitorial supply outlet.

The hardest part about it is how easy it is to fall into, and how difficult it is to displace. Real forgiveness is extraordinarily hard to achieve. Accepting someone’s apology is one thing, but moving past the awful thing that happened is another thing entirely. It’s a gift, and something that takes a lot of practice.

The more energy you give to the established dealers of hatred ( the satans of the modern world ) the more it will seep into you. Dodge social media. Dodge propaganda. Dodge it all. I am very aware of how insane this must read. There’s a reason people are buying flip phones in droves.

Pet the Cat; Smell the Roses; Kiss the Baby

Are you finding yourself spiraling to the point that you’ll write a mysteriously poetic article about your devastating sense of self worthlessness in the context of the sublime astral plan?

Just… stop a moment. If the cat comes and lays her head on you and asks for pets, take that chance.

When the baby smiles at you, kiss its head and smile back.

When your wife holds your hand, squeeze back tight.

Sometimes it’s a shock of joy that can yank you out from that pit. Just sometimes.