I am not sure I have the answer to everything anymore. Ha. For instance, I have lived with anxieties for as far back as I can remember. Real anxieties. I can remember leaving bars/parties/large gatherings panic-stricken with anxiety, and everyone thinking, where the fuck did Mike go? I can remember sitting in front of the TV for hours as a little kid because it made my anxiety go away, or at least easier to deal with. I know how it feels to stare aimlessly at the ceiling not able to sleep at night with the weight of the whole world peeling back the lids of my eyeballs. Then poof. It’s gone.
A strange calmness settled in over me several days ago. I think it had everything to do with my trip to Mississippi. A very smart person down there said to me: “Happiness is something some people never feel, and being blessed is something you can’t help but feel. It all depends on acceptance.” Hum. What does that mean? Now don’t go thinking I have been reborn, or found god. I still think he/she is dead. But I have settled into a strange feeling of acceptance, and it feels really good. Personally, I think it’s just that I’m learning to use my heart instead of my brain.
It is however a feeling I can’t explain. I have always just assumed my issues were chemical. Can the brain just change its functions over night to correct any flaws it has had since inception? I don’t know. I am weary of that notion for the same reason I am weary of doctors.
Sidebar: Have you ever been someplace where the air contains a unique energy? Like there are more souls per sq inch there than in other places. I am not talking about it being a particularly nice day out, and you were in a good mood. I am talking about a place that every time you go there, you sense a change in energy? You can push your hands out and feel positiveness, maybe the opposite of anxiety? Maybe it resembles love a little, because your heart beats faster when you are in it’s presence. This is the hard part to explain. Ok, you know when you are a little kid, and you swear there is a monster under your bed? You can feel it breath. Its presence makes you scared. It’s a manifestation of your personal fear in negative energy right? You might even say it’s an exercise in how to deal with fear. Well, what about the opposite. I think I had a life lesson in dealing with goodness. Accepting goodness, and letting go of the opposite. That is what my trip to Mississippi was for me. And that changed me.
So now I have to explain. Man I knew this was going to take a while, sorry. Like I said in my last entry, I went down to Mississippi to work on a documentary about the state of things two years after Hurricane Katrina. Well, things pretty much suck down there. People are not getting the help they need to rebuild their homes, and for the most part, life has not resumed to normal. Normalcy down there resembles coping. People down there are coping. Eighty thousand people in Mississippi are still not living in their homes. Not to mention all the emotional trauma that people are living with, which is considerable but to personal to get into. I would say the people along the gulf coast are living in a state of post war mentality. Here is the point though; there is this strange positive feeling in the air down there. Its like an omen that you have to be able to see, but it’s there. And it’s that positive energy that has been a turning point for me. For me, that positive energy is a result of two things. One, the amount of suffering that occurred in one place, and two, the amount of goodness that over powered it.
What do I mean? Well, the only help that people are getting in south Miss is from volunteers from all over the country. They come down in buses and vans, sometimes cars, to help rebuild homes. To rebuild dreams and lives. Sometimes it is only to rebuild a home for an old person to die in. But that person can then die with respect and dignity. Other times they are getting families back on their feet, or helping married couples save their marriage. All and all though, they are helping people get out of the hell they are living in by being succumbed to FEMA trailers for two years. These trailers are horrible. I could write about them forever. But I will leave it at they are horrible. These volunteers come down, and they are of all ages (13 to 84 if I recall correctly), and they bring with them smiles and hope and decentcy and humanity. These people come down there and rebuild homes, lives, and sometimes happiness and hope. I think it is they who have brought with them this karmic energy that is changing that part of the earth, and it is evident in the people whom they are helping.
Imagine losing everything. Imagine you have lived through an apocalyptic event, and you can’t get over it because your life won’t unhinge from that event for two years. Well, forget that, because it’s impossible. You had to be there it seems to grasp it. Just know that what the people along the gulf have gone through and continue to go through is a total nightmare. It’s the biggest, badest, meanest fucking monster there ever was, and it’s not under the bed, it’s in their face! So how is it that so many of these people feel so blessed? I don’t know. I have been trying to figure that out since I got there. And at the root of that question is where I found my peace of mind, because if they are blessed, there is no reason I should not be living in a state of bliss.
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