Bit of the book, bit of the movie, bit of myself

      The midnight is getting here. Hot. I lay down just with my knickers on. From time to time I hear the cars passing by through my street. The house is empty, it’s just me, listening to some indie rock radio station. Boring.
     Two good things happened to me lately. One is a book and the other is a movie. “The Man Who Wanted To Be Happy” by Laurent Gonuelle and “It’s Kind of a Funny Story”. But first I say what’s the background, why these two pieces made me feel happy (or happier).
     For a while now I’m struggling with depression and anxiety. Sometimes I get better, sometimes worse, but it’s there, at least in the background for most of the time. It’s been few years already. I feel weighted down by the reality. Financially it goes awful, I keep making new debts just to survive, my career is basically non-existing, and so is my self-esteem. Then no friends, no people who get me... Just to clarify – I’m not whining here or trying to get sympathy. Actually at the moment (tonight) I feel good. It’s just an objective picture of my state of mind in the last few years.

     So first I read that book. One of my friends mentioned it on facebook. I couldn’t find the pdf for my kindle, so I decided to buy the regular book, but then I found out that the Polish edition is sold out and since I prefer to read books in my own language, I got another book by the same author (“Les dieux voyagent toujours incognito”) and really enjoyed it. It was a real eye opener. Eventually I got the English edition of “The Man Who Wanted To Be Happy”. The book was exactly what I needed. Clear and simple presentation of how our beliefs create our personal reality. There is a guy on holidays in Bali, he meets a spiritual teacher and he takes him on the road to self-discovery. Gradually he finds out that his failures, low self-esteem, inability to fulfill his dreams (or to have dreams at all for that matter) aren’t caused by the external world, which is neutral, but rather are the result of our deep-rooted beliefs we acquired during our lifetime.

     With every page I can just see how much it applies to my life. The childhood, insecurity because of my father’s drinking, my mother’s unfulfilled expectations about my education. Then I got better, when I took my life in my hands, moved out at the age of twenty. Then I fall in love with the most beautiful girl I had ever seen, and to my great surprise she loved me back and eventually we got married. At this point I started to have more faith in myself. If I could get such a girl, I could do anything;) Then we started to travel, be free, I learned music, did some writing and got published. And then the disaster struck – first my father’s death, which made me think and feel deeply that nothing makes sense, since we were going to die anyway. Then we moved to Copenhagen, and nothing worked, we just hit a concrete wall of opposition from the world. Bureaucratic, financial and professional catastrophe. It was there, three years ago, where my self-confidence disappeared and I started to experience anxiety waves.

     So the book made me happy, because it made a really convincing case that I’m not doomed to be depressed and feeling shitty, that these are only self-imposed, self-thought reactions to the every day challenges, and putting some work into it, I can learn new reactions, this time the positive ones. I think that most of our distress comes from the feeling of being unable to influence reality. When we feel like helpless victims of random situations and events, we just slowly die inside. Once we start to feel that we are the ones who shape our own lives, then we start to feel happy, energized, inspired. So this is the theory, for me it’s still a long way to go, but reading that book, it was liberating to see the ocean of possibilities.

     This was about a book. Then tonight, after watching about ten episodes of “The Big Bang Theory” I decided that if I see one more of Sheldon speeches, I will descent to the madness, so I better play something different. What could be better for me then a movie about a suicidal teenager who ends up in the psychiatric ward? I was right:) The movie was so nice, so positive. Maybe it wasn’t as nicely structured and thought through as the book, but I really appreciated the take on the importance of support, friendship, love, creativity in helping with psychological tribulations.

     This is rather a long post. Written in the middle of the night, so it should have a special Moon quality in it. Oh yes, in the movie there is an actor I have special feelings for. Jeremy Davies. I just love him since “The Million Dollar Hotel”. He didn’t have a big part in the movie I’ve watched tonight, but I enjoyed the little moments and things he put into his character.
     Ok, that’s enough rambling for tonight. Sleep well, guys.