I think partly I'm just on the mend and time is doing it's job, hurried along by being on my own, but partly I think I got a kick start from doing Tash's survey (here for those who are interested and who I haven't already sent the link to). Basically Tash is a lovely girl I know who's doing her honors, or masters or something really smart, in positive psychology. The survey involves answering some questions, and then possibly doing an activity for a week and reporting back afterwards (very important!!! that's where all the interesting stuff comes from). So I ended up doing one of the exercises which I won't go into, and at the end of the day I think just focusing on something positive for a little while once per day kind of kicked me out of a rut I was ready to get out of anyway, but hadn't yet. I took to it quite well and have been feeling really positive ever since, although I'm no longer doing the exercise itself, I'm now just a little more conscious of being happy about things. So that's nice.
Another interesting thing is that I'm listening to an audio book by the Dalai Lama and a western psychologist who's name I forget called "The Art of Happiness". It's quite amazing, The Dalai Lama himself is just such an amazing character, and I admire the way he's able to separate out and distill many techniques from Buddhism, but removed from the Buddhist religion side of things and present them in an agnostic manner. His basic premise is that every living thing is born with the right to seek, and the ability to achieve, lasting happiness. He then discusses that premise and his own beliefs on how to achieve it with prompting and additional discourse from the psychologist on common western beliefs and problems. I encourage everyone to at least give him a shot, listen to or read anything by him and make up your mind for yourself. He's incredibly profound and yet very clear and simple in his explanations. Bjorn, the German guy I was hanging out with in Laos was also really into him, and had actually spent a fair amount of time in Dharamsala where the Tibetan government-in-exile and Dalai Lama currently call home. One really fascinating thing I find is that I'd already practiced a fair number of the techniques he provides for achieving happiness earlier in my life. At around 18 years old I was going to a youth group called Reach which did quite amazing things for me in terms of appreciating life and loved ones, but I'd also taken inspiration from a physics teacher I had in high school who was a bit zany, but inspirational in terms of humility and his childlike expression of excitement for things he found interesting, whether the students around him thought so or not. The end result was a man who wrote everything on the black board in meticulously multi-coloured chalk, would lunge and generally wave his arms around excitedly (yes this is quite likely where I picked it up), and who would give up any amount of his own time to help students who required it. At the time I had noticed that I could change my behavior long term if I tried, but had previously often changed in ways which ended up being problematic because I hadn't been very conscious about what I was practicing. So I took all of this and quite consciously picked and chose things that I admired in some people, tried to put myself in a good mood every morning, and set about reviewing my actions every day to see how I thought I was doing. And I seemed to just luck out on a pretty fundamental level, because at the time I was just experimenting with no guidance whatsoever, but those are all things the Dalai Lama advises people to do as a start on the road to happiness. Those and subsequent years were fundamentally the happiest of my life. They weren't perfect of course, but I feel like I almost accidentally, but quite effectively, put myself on track to becoming someone I really wanted to be, and I was definitely consciously practicing being happy.
And then somewhere along the line I stopped practicing. I remember when it was, around the end of my first year at uni, and I'm not sure why. I guess I just felt really good about myself and didn't think I needed to practice anymore. Oops. Over subsequent years I was knocked around by life a lot more, I had big ups and big downs, although I've only just noticed that recently in reflection. I've being remembering this a fair bit recently, even before starting this book, because I remember consciously practicing being happy, and I knew that I should be doing that again. But I found it intensely difficult to actually practice because I couldn't muster the feeling of happiness or joy to any level I noticed, and I wasn't sure how to go about stimulating them. So then I would get frustrated and angry and sad again instead. That's been a real core of my issues over the past while, not knowing how to practice feeling something when I can't feel it, no matter how many amazing mountain top views I see.
The Dalai Lama also stresses that a lot of time is required. And that's what I didn't give myself. I was making progress ages ago, but it was slow and and often very slippery progress. I would feel emotions, but just very flatly, and then I'd focus on them so much that they'd disappear. I noticed quite recently that I was actually afraid of feeling positive emotions at all. That was an eye opener I had when I noticed that my skin prickled all over when I read or heard the word love. I also remember my mind going absolutely crazy at one moment when I first started yoga and the instructor asked us to visualise gathering warmth and goodwill into a ball of light and then sending it out to someone. I couldn't do it, my mind was racing way to fast, and my heartbeat sped up and I couldn't think anymore. Now I know that's called anxiety, but I hadn't started counseling sessions at that stage, so I didn't know. Luckily I seem to be getting over those aversions. It's a bit like a big rock that's nearly impossible to get started, but which gathers momentum as you role it.
Anyway, I'm back in Chiang Mai now, just arrived this morning on an overnight bus from Khon Kaen in the Isan region of Thailand. I'm feeling pretty under the weather, I think I ate something dodge before getting on the bus so I had a pretty nasty bus ride and the rest of today has been pretty terrible too. But I'm getting better. Hopefully I'll be better tomorrow. Being back in Thailand has been good, it's possible to eat for so cheap, and the street food is, for the most part, amazing. But I'm discovering that different regions are quite different. Isan doesn't seem to understand what a vegetable is either, slightly more than Laos, but not by much. I found it really difficult to eat healthy, although I found a lot of pretty good food around the place, it all had meat.
They did have a really great market though. Ahh, the markets of Thailand, it's something I'm really going to miss when I get back home. Imagine the Queen Victoria market in Melbourne with all the stupid knick knacks, shirts, watches, and most importantly, the fresh produce. Now make the produce fresher, and add a big dose of crazy shit that you've never seen before (most of the fruit is new to me, and there's a LOT of fruit). People buy pigs heads for soup (yeah, I guess I've been eating that for a while now), fish which are killed and gutted as you buy them, little walnut sized eggplants, strings of green undried pepper corns, bags of homemade chips and sugar peanuts and dried fruit bigger than me, and sacks of basil. It goes on. And there's not a brand name in site. AND it's open as early as you want to get up in the morning, and goes until after sundown. Plus there's always the people who go all night selling soups and fresh bags of greens at any hour of the night. Plus an entire food market which goes through to 4am EVERY NIGHT OF THE WEEK where you can buy stir fries, soups, mango sticky rice, waffles, sweet roti, and a bunch of other things uniquely Thai which I won't bother explaining. The markets are really one of the key things which make Thailand for me. The convenience to be able to go and buy fruit shakes, fried shit, or mangoes and bananas at any hour of any day, and spent about $1 for each meal.
So I discovered a compromise for these meat heavy regions where I buy about 20 bananas every 2 or 3 days and eat the shit out of them, supplementing with any other fruit that catches my eye. That seems to counteract eating noodle and meat broth for every other meal. But it is good to be back in Chiang Mai where I know I can get vegetarian when I have the craving, and where a green curry is made cheaply everywhere rather than having to be sought out. And it's nice that all my favorite haunts remember me. I've just got to get better enough to make the most of it.
Sima Cutting will be arriving on the 9th or 10th in Chiang Mai to spend some time hanging out and generally being her cool self with me around. I'm really looking forward to having her around, I don't really seem to get lonely as I thought I might. But it'll be nice to have somebody from home to hang out with. Lets hope it doesn't make me homesick :-).
Anyway, I have to go, it's getting a bit later over here and I really need to sleep and rest my guts up.
One thing I have wanted to share was this comic. It functions as a most succinct and romanticised reply to the odd statement people make about me being brave or some such thing for writing so candidly in my blog. Although it still freaks me out a bit too sometimes.
Love to you all,
Frankie.
P.S. If you've got time have a flick through some of that guys other comics. Some of them are really smart/funny/touching/sad, etc. He's an ex-NASA scientist who gave up his day job to write stick figure comics instead.
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