By Maxene Mamba / MILLENNIALS UNIVERSE
IT seems nowadays more people are getting depressed and suicidal. Achievers in their field, seemingly healthy and happy individuals—international models, honor students, social butterflies—and people who seem to encapsulate our aspirations are suddenly ending their own lives.
At first glance, it seems like an irony when we are more “in touch” with each other through online social-media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. I am not going to blame this on technology because, just like electricity and money, this is just a tool that can be used for the better or for the worse. Some use Facebook to contact long-lost peers and create new friendships; others disregard quality time with family to find a random hook-up on Tinder.
In every situation, the human person stands in the center of both being affected on and affecting their environment. The difference is in one’s choice: Am I going to be affected? Am I going to take control and responsibility for how I feel?
Sadness, like most emotions, are signals. Whatever makes us sad tells us that something does not agree with our expectations. The emotion is strong so that we cannot ignore it: telling us things are not okay. Something must change.
Whatever the hurt is, we should have the courage to face the hurt and label it. After doing this, we now have the power over our sadness. Our mind has caught that wild animal of an emotion beating down on us. How we address this emotion is the difference between heaven and hell. If we think of emotion as a stoplight, a sign that tells us that something has to change, we immediately use this information to direct our sadness to happiness by tackling the “how’s.”
How can I change this situation? How can I feel differently about this? How did this problem happen? How can I solve this?
Asking how we can change the situation changes the focus from what a person did wrong to what we can do right. It also transforms us from a victim to solution-maker.
Feeling different about something is changing the way we see the same problem. There are always new ways to look at a “sad thought” that could transform it and our life into a spring of possibilities.
Asking how a problem happened must always come with the forward step of how it can be solved. Problems that are emotionally huge can be minimized by a bit of thought.
At the height of emotion, it seems that, “intellectualizing” the problem is not addressing it. But if we feel that way, we would also grasp that this same feeling came from a series of thoughts or words that we tell ourselves.
We talk ourselves to feeling lonely, unimportant and other false beliefs. They are false beliefs. False and harmful beliefs that serve to perpetuate their own reality. If one is alone in their room thinking loney thoughts, he or she would not be able to go out and meet people at that instance. If they are thinking of how they can get back at someone, they cannot be thinking of ways to make amends to a broken relationship by healing someone else’s hurt. Trusting that people are good and that they mean well can go a long way to securing our own well-being.
Beliefs only exist inside our memory, which is as soft as clay. Memory is completely moldable to any form we choose for it to take. We should end that negative memory the way we would have wanted it to end. Make this memory more real, more concrete, more vivid and more emotion-filled than the old figment. In this way, our mind now has a new reference to bear upon when we go through events in your life.
Difficult circumstances that used to trigger not just the present pain, but all the pain that came into our lives, will now be miniscule in our eyes. Words that used to cause us great anxiety or anger and even situations that keep repeating themselves just have less effect.
We then would heal the hurt that was buried deep inside our hearts. Once we courageously return to that hurt and heal it by forgiving ourselves and others, we will make a new ending for that memory. We will begin to feel the strength of perfection that was given to us as a child.
We are perfectly capable of molding our minds in the way we want. We all deserve happiness and freedom from crippling negative emotion. Start looking at negative emotions like pain and sadness as a tool we use to see the problems. Use them to get to where we want to be or who we are inside.
Pain, heartbreak, loneliness, frustration, anger, hate, desperation and all those negative emotions–all are like a flame. We put our hand on the flame and we can feel that it is hot. As long as it is hot, we desire to remove our hand because the longer it stays there, the more it will hurt. When you feel the pain, remove your hand from the flame.
Does anyone put their own hand to the flame and cry but not remove their hand? That one believes that they deserve sadness, or are afraid that to be happy. Even beliefs like these can be exposed to the light, and melted away by grounding yourself in the firm, unshakable truth that you are a perfect child of God, meant to be blessed and meant to be happy.
Maxene Mamba describes herself as “just a girl struggling to express some semblance of divine nobility in this little world.”