Monday, January 7, 2019

Writing as Therapy

We all have different types of traumas we deal with in our lives. When I grew up it was more difficult to survive than now because often children died around me with whooping cough and polio in the 1950s. So, there was more "Physical Fear" of dying of illness than there is now. Now it is different because there is likely about 50% less general ignorance in people because more people are educated.

However, in many ways that doesn't mean that life is better now than it was then. Why?

Because most people also had common sense then even though in some ways they were also closer to animals than now. Now people tend to be much more hypochondriac and neurotic. When I grew up most of those people died young. But, now they go to doctors those people tend to survive and have children. So, often their children have psychological problems too.

So, as we evolve as a human race we are changing in both good and bad ways and in some neutral ways.

I can say when I grew up people were tougher (that's true) but they were also more ignorant and crazy than now.

Now people are more crazy from all the drugs they take and I personally see recreational drugs as a part of "Natural Selection" in killing people one by one especially opioids and other drugs that are pain killers.

I was taught to sublimate physical and psychological pain. I have found this very helpful in my life actually. So, I don't usually take pain killers almost ever. The only time I take a pain killer is if my physical pain prevents me from sleeping. I know sublimating pain is "cowboy" like but this is what I was taught and after all my grandfather was from Kansas and an electrical contractor from the early 1900s until he retired sometime during world war II. And my father was an electrical contractor in the 1960s in Los Angeles County and I worked with him summers from 1960 until 1965 and we worked for many famous movie stars and directors and producers putting in expensive Saint Charles Kitchens for them and other stuff and doing all the electrical work then. I also worked a year as an electrician in 1969 when I burned out as a computer programmer realizing I was 50 years too soon to do what I wanted to with programming and computers and robotics.

So, for me, writing has been a way to understand what was happening inside of me and around me. It was a way for parts of me to have conversations with other parts of me and to acknowledge the world around me. It has always been a way to integrate my knowledge into something useful for myself and some or all others.

Integration of all aspects of life and developing integrity and honesty with oneself and others makes us more and more valuable to ourselves and all life around us every day we grow in good ways as human beings ongoing throughout our lives.

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