Food for soul. [TW]

Feeling sad, bad, good, happy, tired, energetic or anything else is part of being human.

And its perfectly fine to feel anything you feel, It's natural and you didn't choose what you feel. So let it be felt.

It doesn't make us weaker or stronger. It's just being human. And as humans we need to be ok with not being perfect, and to accept how we are by understanding who we are and why we are who we are.

Understanding breeds acceptance. And acceptance breeds love. To understand is to love and to feel understood is to feel loved.

There is lot of good in this world. People going out of their way and giving themselves just to see someone else safe and happy.

There is greatness, love and miracle as much as there is misery, death and misfortune.

And the good is very good. It's Powerful, It's beautiful and captures the imagination of all creatures who know what it is like to love. As rare as it might seem, it still can be possible, even though it may never come to be for some, sometimes that's what we need, hope. Hope in the possibility of the good, hope that good exists, good that gives and is kind and loving and understanding and unfailing.

It is there, even if we may never see it. For let's take inspiration from the darkness and it's measureless pain, can't we similarly imagine that at the opposite end of the spectrum lies something so good that it just lifts the heart to elysium ? Something that is as bright as the contrasting darkness is dark ?

I believe and hope and know that there is good.

By accepting what limits us, it allows us to transcend the boundaries.

By knowing what we can be and can't be, somehow we can be something magical, we can be more than those limits

I talked about pain substitution related to Self harm, which talks about how the brain needs to substitute the pain it has, with a different form of pain in the form of self harm to provide some sort of distraction.

I want to think that this pain substitution can also be categorised as emotional substitution which goes on a level higher and encompasses the need the mind has to replace a strong emotion with another, when the event connected with that emotion doesn't bring a positive influence anymore.

The replacement has to be by an emotion of a similar strength and value, and sometimes even of the same nature i.e. pain for pain, love for love.

I think the mind can overlook the nature at times, but it's strength needs to be same or of greater measure for one of the emotions to replace the other. Classic example of an interchange of emotions of a different nature can be seen in case of sex and its connection with pain, in case of BDSM and similar forms of sexual release. The inherent subconscious pain is interchanged with a sensation of a different nature (although it's roots are dipped in pain as well, so we can't really say it's nature is entirely different) in form of pain which induces pleasure or sometimes pleasure followed by pain.

In case where the nature of the emotions our mind seeks to replace comes from another emotion of the same nature, the examples can be many. In cases of breakups, sometimes the reaction is to fill that loss of one emotion I.e. love, by looking for someone else who can fill that void, as soon as we come out of the relationship. It's not always the case, because many also react by refraining from being in relationships when one doesn't work. But in this case, there is a direct replacement for love with love, both of the same nature and both needing to be of the same strength. I think that's why most or some relationships that are formed after one person in it has very recently gotten out of a previous failed relationship don't work, because their need is to replace the loss of their past relationship in a swift manner and sometimes it's not possible, because love can take a long time.

I call this emotional substitution.

I think it's possible to find inspiration, hope and strength from things we might not associate as having those tools.

In those events, lines can be blurred between what is good, and what is bad. When the bad powers you to go great things and at times the good isn't good enough and lets you down.

To make it easier to understand, death. Death is something that may universally be signified as a dark occurrence, which brings pain and loss. But, but sometimes, sometimes it is also the inspiration and hope and the power behind people's will to live. A man suffering so much sometimes can't be motivated to struggle with the idea of life when it lets him down so often, but instead he finds hope to continue knowing that this period will end, by clinching on to his mortality, death.

Also, why we listen to sad songs or seek art that depicts negative emotions when we are down is because they relate to us, they understand our emotions and situations, more so than a happy or cheery form of art would bring.

And that's good, that's good, it's ok and even perfect to rely on different forms of inspiration who fail to identify themselves inherently as being of positive nature, who fail to subscribe to the idea of goodness.

Just goes to say that it's all about adaptation. Anything can be adapted to be good and bad. It's just the time, just the time. Anything can work depending on the circumstances and time.

And what if theres nothing in there? You die and theres nothing beyond that. Nothing. Nothing remains. Someone might remember you for a little while after but not for long.

― Dmitry Glukhovsky, Metro 2033

There's only one thing that can save a man from madness and that's uncertainty.

― Dmitry Glukhovsky, Metro 2033

Getting a new version of the answer every day, Artyom was unable to compel himself to believe what was true, because the next day another, no less precise and comprehensive one, might arise. Whom should he believe? And in what? ... Any faith served man only as a crutch supporting him. ... He understood why man needs this support. Without it, life would have become empty, like an abandoned tunnel.

― Dmitry Glukhovsky, Metro 2033

There was nothing: just an empty, dark tunnel he was supposed to plod his way through, from Birth station to Death station. Those looking for faith had simply been trying to find the side branches in this line. But there were only two stations, and only tunnel connecting them.

― Dmitry Glukhovsky, Metro 2033

On the surface, I was calm: in secret, without really admitting it, I was waiting for something. Her return? How could I have been waiting for that? We all know that we are material creatures, subject to the laws of physiology and physics, and not even the power of all our feelings combined can defeat those laws. All we can do is detest them. The age-old faith of lovers and poets in the power of love, stronger than death, that finis vitae sed non amoris, is a lie, useless and not even funny. So must one be resigned to being a clock that measures the passage of time, now out of order, now repaired, and whose mechanism generates despair and love as soon as its maker sets it going? Are we to grow used to the idea that every man relives ancient torments, which are all the more profound because they grow comic with repetition? That human existence should repeat itself, well and good, but that it should repeat itself like a hackneyed tune, or a record a drunkard keeps playing as he feeds coins into the jukebox...

Must I go on living here then, among the objects we both had touched, in the air she had breathed? In the name of what? In the hope of her return? I hoped for nothing. And yet I lived in expectation. Since she had gone, that was all that remained. I did not know what achievements, what mockery, even what tortures still awaited me. I knew nothing, and I persisted in the faith that the time of cruel miracles was not past.

― Stanisław Lem, Solaris