Thought Picnic: Living a storied life

For the quiet around

Even without hearing a sound, there can be a lot of noise, deafening and debilitating noise, banging on your eardrums from the inside of your head.

They say the battle is mostly won in the mind, but how do you acquire the silence and quietude to concentrate on resolving the issues that give you much discomfiture?

I find my comfort in many things, the times when the turmoil proves too upsetting, I would probably just go to sleep. It keeps the thoughts from getting overwhelmed with imponderables and the implausible, hours later in wakefulness, the mind has settled into some resolution and purpose, it is a strange journey to acceptance that I have travelled many times before.

Not for a thing

Worry is an illness that can infect all organs of the body and make you terribly ill. The residue of religion left in me is the insight into how worry can change nothing. If nothing can be changed for the situation, you’re in, why bother expending energy in ruminating over the wastelands about you?

This is where other aspects of the residue come to play, for many stories from the Book have the narrative of coming to pass, rarely ever coming to stay. Nothing stagnates to the point of having no movement of time. Time rarely stands still, things might seem long in passing, but never immovably stopped that all the laws of nature are upturned. This too shall pass, and it will pass into the realm of stories told in the future as if it mattered not at all.

Talk to thy self

Beyond that, I speak to myself, loudly in my Anglicised name, I tell myself, it would come out right, I expect things to turn, I prepare for the future ahead that I cannot see, but know that life creates stories that you are given to help others see beyond their walls, their clouds, their chains, their gates, their inadequacies and anything that makes you think any less of who you can be.

I have a vision of the possible, the possible that walks through the impossible, usually not as miracles, but as the gift of fortune and fortitude with a mind set to rise and be lifted above the fray. Then, because I found it when I was in the Pentecostal movement, I still speak in tongues, it might be gibberish, incantations, prayers or commands that turn nature on its head like the parting of the seas, that is my teaspoonful of sugar that makes the medicine go down in a most delightful way.

I can find my peace in storms that rage so violently that the hearts of some men fail, I have stood in the whirlwinds that swirl the dross and dust off me to leave me feeling refreshed and ready for the next challenge. There is a life to live, live it well, for from the very first day, it was a struggle to thrive and a blessing, it remains each day, what I am thankful for, a life so ordinary, yet made extraordinary by the stories I have been given to tell.