...and scroll down to read Learn to Feel.

My name is Nisse, and I grew up in an angry world. A world where people yelled at each other out of fear and worry and though many of us felt the same, nobody really knew how to talk about it.

Many of us tried to say what was wrong with our world. And sometimes it felt close, like the truth was just behind the next sentence. But when we tried to speak it our words fell short and it escaped again. To describe what was wrong with our world was like to grab the air with our bare hands. It just slipped away. Like we had lost some piece of a puzzle.

In this angry world there was a home. Though, the home was abusive. So it was more like a house. This house was where i lived for a long time, and where i got treated like a trash-can by my biological parents. If they were angry they screamed at me. If they had something i needed they got mad if i asked for it--like they felt it was rude for a child to ask for help. And if i didn't get bullied or manipulated out of my needs, i got completely ignored. Because of this i disconnected from reality and played video games when other kids made friends and grew up.

About a decade passed like this. At around age fourteen my biological parents divorced and left me alone with the house, because they both moved away. It was nothing new to me since i had always taken care of myself, but now i also had to take care of a house. I had already not been given a childhood. And now i wasn't able to be a teenager either. But since i had always been treated like an adult i never noticed that this was wrong.

A lot of people around me noticed how i hurt. Some even tried to bring it up with me. But since the world was angry and nobody really knew how to say what mattered i never got the help i needed. This made it easier for me to scurry away and dive back into the safety of the virtual worlds where i was able to have a better life.

At roughly age 18 i was finally allowed to quit education. It had been a very tough time where i had switched from one line to another but fit into neither. I was finally free to try what i had always wanted. To entertain over the internet. But the pressure of the world around me didn't go away--so I also had to try to and have a traditional career. And a driver's license. And a completed degree. And a house i wasn't ashamed of. All while I still had to take care of myself, a person i didn't know, who had never gotten to be a child or a teen or a young man or even really anybody at all. The house of cards continued to stack higher until i woke up one day--and had gotten very ill.

I didn't understand what had happened to me. My body's insides were suddently very loud. Days passed and eventually weeks and yet I still didn't feel well. I didn't understand what had happened to me. This didn't feel like a normal illness. After even more time passed I asked my biological parents for help but they didn't understand. They just wondered when i might decide to act normal again.

Like a prisoner in an empty cell, i had nothing to listen to but my guilt. What had i done wrong? Hadn't i done everything the world asked of me? For maybe the first time in my life I was left to listen to my body. I wasn't able to sit or lay comfortably no matter what i tried. My breaths felt loud. It was like there was a weight over me at all times which made it difficult to breathe in fully. It was as if my whole body twisted in agony and no matter what i tried i never found peace. It was too stressful to look at videos on my phone. Even if i took several deep breaths and settled myself internally i wasn't able to watch more than maybe a minute of a video at a time, even if i set the play-back speed to well below the default 1x-speed. I didn't realize that everything i had done in my life had only happened with permission from my body. Now my body needed me to slow down. 

I spent around four months in bed or on a sofa until I was well enough to go to a doctor for help. I had to make it happen myself. My biological parents only helped me a little after i had battled them over it. Once there the doctor told me pretty bluntly that i wasn't actually physically ill. Somehow that explanation fit. So the doctor sent me away with a newfound relief. But without any real help. And no clearer explanation for what i had experienced. Maybe the doctor didn't have the words either. But i was about to find them myself.

I slowly went back to a life i wanted and realized something. This loudness in my body wasn't something new. This was the shape of a voice i had always known but never been able to pick out of the chaos around me. As i listened closer to i noticed patterns. I took down the art i had hung up on my walls and suddently it was easier to breathe. I started to speak out when i was abused by my parents and i started to become somebody i really liked. Piece by piece my mental backpack was emptied until it was easy to walk again. And that's when i realized who the voice belonged to.

Conscience. It's what the white lily on this book's cover represents. Conscience. The unbroken flower which turned out to have the answers i needed once i had learned to listen.

Now that i knew it's name the lily of my conscience rose out of the chaotic sea inside of me and shone like a lighhouse over the waves in the storm in my life. I saw our world with new-found eyes and realized why we sometimes find ourselves with the same issues over and over. In how we treat eachother. In how we treat ourselves. Because when we tried to explain what was wrong with our world we only had half of the words. The words for reason, words that describe deductions which follow a logical line and lead to a conclusion. But the other half of the words don't appear in our mind. Like i had just learned, they appear in our bodies.

What had happened to me a few months earlier was that i had gotten burnt-out. My internal 'battery' had been drained to zero. But now that i had been in recovery for a while i was ready to re-start my life again. But when i slowly returned to the kind of life i had before i realized much of it was completely upside-down. Without an emotional compass i had been incredibly harsh to myself. When i look back now i might even wonder how i didn't burn out earlier. But what truly hit me is how much the newly-awoken voice of the lily had to say about the world around me.

Conscience doesn't speak with a spoken language but with how we feel. And the world around me seemed to not feel at all. I went over my life with a fine comb and saw how much sense there was to what i had found and realized very quickly that other people might benefit from this too. I had burnt out because of how difficult my life had been. I didn't know my body had limits. I figured my body just did what i told it to do. Now i knew better. I assumed everybody else lived this way so it must be the right way. Now i knew better.

About a year after my doctor's visit my biological father wanted to sell the house i grew up in so me and him and my biological mother and my brother cleared out the house together. The attic of the house was absolutely overfilled with items and junk. What stood out to me about it was that these items often seemed to represent something which wasn't entirely resolved. They were up there because they weren't needed but they weren't properly stored or disposed of because they still had some emotional connection like broken telephones or blunt ice-skates. Among these items I found many which reminded me of who we were as people when we lived in the house together. It was a massive relief to be reminded that i am not the person i was then.

But as i've emptied out my mental attic i've found the opposite to be true. The relief has often been that i instead see who i've always been--somebody with an almost uncanny ability to love people. To listen to people. To console and to comfort and to give advice and to sometimes just listen without the need to say anything at all.

If our mind is like a house then the experiences we don't properly feel about end up in our mental attic. Many of us seem to throw almost everything we don't absolutely need right now up into the mental attic and then forget about it. I suspect it's a common reason for mild anxiety and or depression. Or why some of us just feel kind of vaguely bad about our lives. Because when we live with an attic full of junk it steals the space we need.

I have come a long way in my recovery now. I often go outside, talk to real-world friends, speak to complete strangers, and though some parts of my life are still tough i live an overall very good life. The video games i have put many thousands of hours into i now sometimes go back to and enjoy, but i no longer  need to live inside the games instead. And as the storm which has stood over my life for so many years has begun to clear i see that on the ground there is a little white flower which stands eternally unbroken. Even when the winds and waves of the storm blow at it and the world around the lily is thrashed, the white flower simply bows in the storm and waits. And as the storm clears the lily just as gently leans back. 

And as i've gone on i've wrote down what i've learned so that you might benefit from it as well. If some part of you wakes up when you read this you might have learn much from this book.

Because I wrote the book for you.

So this is why Learn to Feel exists. It's a book which lets you know there's an answer to every question you have. It's a book which consoles you and which listens to your struggles and might offer a little help on the way.

Every chapter here is a piece of wisdom which might help you understand other people and or the world better. And if we're lucky you might find that it helps your conscience get a little lighter. Because that is to Learn to Feel.

Welcome home.

- Nisse

1. To Name The Elephant

There is an elephant in modern society. It may have something to tell us.

2. We Are Not Our Thoughts

An observer is unable to observe itself. Who made your thoughts?

3. Karma Is Not An ATM

The reward of good deeds is not money. It's something more valuable.

4. What's Worse? A Pacifier Or Endless Tears?

Maybe it's not just children who need pacifiers.

5. Addiction Is Artificial Love

Why do some people take heavy drugs?

I once heard Björn "Natthiko" Lindeblad say that in Thailand, it's enough to get other people to stop if you say "this doesn't feel right". People will listen to that. You won't be ignored, or hear that you're weak because you let your emotions "get in the way" or "get the best of you".

This might seem trivial. But trivial matters sometimes reflect deeper truths. And the truth i feel in this is that the Thai people understand what emotion really is. Emotion is not a limit. Emotion is a way in which the wisest parts of us speak to us. Many of us seem to have forgotten about this language. But there is a way to remember it. And that is To Name The Elephant--to learn to feel.

Elephants

When I was a child, I felt there were many people around me who had elephants in their rooms. Imaginary elephant which embodied people's dissatisfaction with their own lives. The kind of elephant few of us like to notice. Even if they trumpet loudly.

If child-me had asked the people around me to describe their elephants, I may have gotten a reply along the lines of "My elephant tells me I might not be very satisfied by my life, but I'm not sure I want to listen to my elephant because I suspect that I might get overwhelmed by the truth". The description of this particular elephant is a little long, so we might name it 'Rupert' for short.

An Elephant Named Rupert

Rupert might be a very common elephant to have. Rupert may even be a "normal" elephant. There have been moments when i've suspected that many people--maybe even most people in modern western society--don't actually feel too happy about their lives. That most people actually have a Rupert. These Rupert-havers may not be unhappy, but they may also not wake up and feel good about their new day. And maybe these Rupert-havers ignore their Rupert because they feel it might make their lives worse to acknowledge him. But what if this is to misunderstand emotion? 

What if life actually gets easier when we name our metaphorical elephant? Even if it's not "Rupert". Maybe this is what i sensed was so wise about how Thai people respect emotion. Maybe the Thai understand something about emotion that we don't. But what? Perhaps it does come from the elephants. Thailand does after all have wild ones.

What Do The Thai Know That We Don't?

Maybe quite a few of us in modern western society live a in-the-quiet-moments-a-little-doubtful-about-how-much-we-really-like-this-life kind of life. And one big reason for why we don't want to "rock the boat" too much on what we already have may be that it feels worse to name our Rupert than it does to continue to ignore him. "Sunk-cost-fallacy". That we've ignored our dissatisfaction for long enough that we now don't want to stop, because if we stopped it would hurt even worse to admit how long we've ignored it.

And this isn't evil. It's human and understandable. If the truth hurts us--why look? Isn't it human to be tired of pain? Why would we cause ourselves more pain?

If one of the emotionally wise elephant from Thailand heard this he might emphatically nod his head in response. "Pain is a real bummer", the elephant might trumpet, "even elephants tire of it". But the wise elephant may also add that if we ignore our pain we may blind ourselves to it's source--and that it's impossible to drain a river if you don't know which well the river pours from.

"But", the wise Thai elephant may further toot, "though the elephant in your particular life may represent the quiet pain you feel, it doesn't need to hurt to name it and to learn from it. The pain may not be what you feel but how you feel it".

To Hurt A Little Less

How do we name elephants? Maybe we simply listen to them and they might tell us on their own. The only question then is what way to like to listen. Most people have favorite ways. But not everybody knows theirs.

Some people may feel better if they are able to talk about how they feel. Maybe to other people, or to a phone, to a recorder, or simply out loud. But others people might feel exposed or uncomfortable if they spoke about how they felt. Speech may not be a good emotional language for them.

Some people may be able to talk about how they feel only with people they deeply trust. Some people might only feel better if they are alone when they reflect--or if they're in a place they feel feels safe. Some people write or type about how they feel. Some people feel better if they are able to say what they feel visually, like to draw or paint an image of what they might feel their emotion looks like. To look at an image or a symbol from your subconscious might help you understand what your body might want to say.

Not everybody finds a good way to feel right away. But if you at least find a way you prefer to others, you may be able to find out what elephants you may have in your life. Maybe you have an elephant like Rupert, because you're not entirely comfortable in the life you have. Or maybe your particular elephant is called "i often feel lonely". Or maybe it's called "i dislike my home". Whatever the name might be you've already gotten very far--you've already learned to feel.

Great wisdom is often simple. One wisdom like this is "We Are Not Our Thoughts"--which can seem silly at first glance. If we form our own thoughts, don't they represent who we are? Who would form our own thoughts but us?

We can absolutely form our own thoughts. But if you've ever listened closely to your thoughts, you may have noticed that not every thought is one we manually formed. Have you ever experienced that a non-logical thought stuck around--even if this thought seemed to be contradicted by other thoughts that felt more reasonable? How could this be? It might be because one the contradictory thought wasn't "yours". It may have been your subconscious's thought.

Which thoughts do we form?

Thoughts we form ourselves can be called "Reason"--a logical and manual chain of connection from one point to another which can often end with a conclusion. These Reasoned thoughts are a bit like math. But if you've ever listened closely to your mind, you may also have noticed that the Reasoned thoughts often live side-by-side with other thoughts. Thoughts that don't seem to be yours--thoughts that seem to appear from no-where.

Reasoned and Spontaneous thoughts

Where do these "from-no-where-thoughts" come from? One clue can come from how these thoughts seem to appear in our minds on their own--almost like an association, like when a thought spontaneously appears in your mind the way a recommended video was suggested to you based off a video you saw previously.

These "associative" or "Spontaneous" thoughts can be like when we see a cool car for the first time, then suddently notice the thought "That's the kind of car Jesus would drive". It can be Random. Surprising. Honest. And often very funny. Even if we've never thought about the topic before, the thought may have spontaneously surfaced anyway--and while the Spontaneous Thought may have seemed completely random, the way it may have instantly crystallized a truth about the way we feel could also point at something deeper.

The Well of Sub-conscious Thought

If the thought knew us so well, who thought it up? One clue is that these thoughts can seem to combine and create new ideas as freely as dreams can--because these Spontaneous Thoughts often seem to come from the same place. The sub-conscious--A place of pure and abundant unconscious creative energy. These thoughts can be visually likened to a bubble rising up to the surface of water, and the sub-conscious can be visually likened to the well that's full of this water.

You may have noticed this Well of Spontaneous Thought if you've ever meditated. The place isn't similar to a factory which has manifested a thought piece-by-piece--instead it's more like a well that simply allows thoughts to surface like air-bubbles on the surface. It seems to be a deeply emotional source of thoughts, which digests and re-digests the thoughts until they're either dissolved or returned as better thoughts. These Spontaneous Thoughts seem to simply arrive when they want to--especially when they feel like kind of thoughts we ourselves would never form. Much like in a dream. Which is why this matters. Dreams may have meaning. But not every meaning may be true.

And this idea can let us have mental distance between what we experience and what we feel may be true. Thoughts that have hurt us may have been experienced because our subconscious happened to let it bubble up in front of our attention as the thought was digested. It doesn't mean we caused ourselves any potential hurt the thought may have caused by thinking the thought. It doesn't mean we have caused all our own mental suffering with Reason. Instead it means that we don't have to believe every thought. Because while they may have been in us, they were not us. While we may have our own thoughts--We Are Not Our Thoughts.

Once i gave a compliment to a store-clerk. On the way home a thought came to me which asked why i still didn't seem to feel good in life even though i seemed to be a good person. It might be because Karma Is Not An ATM. 

Even if we feel we've caused objective good in the world--let's say we have saved a child's life--that "good" action isn't necessarily like a crop which could have a guaranteed harvest. Even if we have saved a child's life, there is no requirement for the child or the child's parents to re-pay you for the life you saved. Heroism is not required to be rewarded whether under natural or human law. Any "reward" for heroism is really a bonus. One wisdom in this is that knowing you've saved a life can actually be reward enough.

But man cannot live on heroism alone.

The idea of saving lives for free can seem cool. But "saving lives for free" is unlikely to pay for food--and it may be especially unlikely to pay for any potential brand-new luxury-car that the hero may secretly dream of. This may understandably mean that the hero who feels under-appreciated may prefer to save innocents who realize the value of a reward over the innocents who don't.

Isn't this very understandable? If we were in the hero's sandals, and had just sacrificed our own safety to save an innocent, and the innocent now can't even muster a simple "Thank-you"--why wouldn't we feel that we'd much rather save the innocent next-door next time, who we know has previously rewarded us with ample thanks (and maybe even money towards our dream-car)? All of us have items we need, and items we like--even if it's "just" a warm meal or "simply" some words of encouragement. (Interestingly it can often seem like simple words of encouragement mean the most of all.)

If the hero that saved you was "only" the plumber who showed up in time to prevent the costly water-damage in your home, it's wise to remember that even a hero as "simple" as this one needs food. And money for fuel. And maybe even a hug once in a while. In addition the world doesn't seem to be over-flowing with heroes at every moment, so appreciating the ones we *do* have when we *do* have them seems more than prudent--if nothing else to encourage the plumber to want to come and save you again.

But there are no guarantees.

The unfortunate truth for the hero is that the natural world doesn't actually have any guarantees. And as far as i know it's rare for innocents to draft legal contracts which promise rewards to heroes--perhaps unless the contract concerns a missing cat.

But since it doesn't seem incredibly rare for life to sometimes have us be the hero, a big potential cause for misery seems to be when our heroic actions hold the expectation of reward even though there is no guarantee of reward--and this may simply be because Karma Is Not An ATM. But what is Karma if not external reward for heroic action? The image of Buddha could maybe explain it.

Did Buddha have good Karma?

From what i understand, the Buddha was born as a prince to extremely rich parents. We could call this "Karma" in the sense that the Vedic traditions from where the term "Karma" came from may see the fortune of Buddha having been born into a noble and rich family as a "reward" for how Buddha may have lived his previous lives. But there may also be another word that could describe Buddha's cosmic fortune. "Inheritance". Buddha had good karma. Buddha had good inheritance.

Karma as what we inherit.

What isn't understood is inherited. This may be equally true for us, and for those we may have inherited from. A short temper may surface in one of life's tougher moments, but the roots of the short temper itself may stem from how your ancestors never knew how to explain what they felt in a way that could have resolved what they felt. And how could you then know what you don't have, if you've never had it? This can be one reason as to why it can be unfair to blame people for how they feel--the emotion may have laid non-understood for generations.

This may be what Karma looks like in our individual lives. Karma is what we have with us in our metaphorical "baggage". We ourselves can add to the baggage by not helping our emotions to resolve, or we can detract from it by understanding ourselves and letting ourselves let go of baggage.

What is Karma if it isn't an ATM?

Karma is the world's conscience. The equal opposite of our inner conscience. Karma is what every drop of water remembers about you--in part because it's what we feel about ourselves, mirrored back at us. If you've ever watched "Ouldeboy", you may recognize this story.

The Dachshund and the Border-Collie

Once upon a time, a Dachshund-dog met a Border-Collie-dog while on a road. The Dachshund felt nervous, but the Collie cheerfully introduced himself to the Dachshund and shared how he had just been to a marvelous place--a place full of other Collies who were just as happy to meet the Collie as the Collie was happy to meet them. The Dachshund and the Collie spoke for a while, and when the Collie left the Dachshund felt much less nervous and like he wanted to visit the place the Collie spoke of.

So, the Dachshund walked down the road until he saw the place the Collie had talked about--a huge and colorful tent. The Dachshund cautiously stepped inside and was surprised to see countless other dogs inside of the tent. But the Dachshund was surprised--where were the Collies that the Collie on the road spoke about? The Dachshund felt more nervous when he noticed that the other Dachshunds also looked scared. The single Dachshund followed his instinct and growled at the other dogs to show them that he was no push-over. In the same moment the countless other Dachshunds growled back. The single Dachshund was so scared by this that he ran clear out from the tent with his tail between his legs--so quickly that he missed the sign outside the tent that had text which read "Hall of Mirrors".

You may have heard this story before. I like it because it's about dogs. But it's also a story which says something deeper about emotion. The messages-in-bottles we release into the ocean also often seem to be what eventually comes back to us. Like the line roughly goes in the movie Ouldeboy that i previously mentioned "Laugh, and the world laughs with you. Cry, and you cry alone." But since the natural world doesn't seem to come with guarantees, maybe this "karma" isn't so much about whether others laughed or not. Maybe karma is about whether you laughed.

The inner moral compass.

A different non-religious or non-spiritual meaning that the word "karma" can have is "the color of the water of our minds". If our conscience is the water we're metaphorically bathed in by life, what may the quality of our personal bath-water be like? Maybe the water of a mind free of worry is see-through and very pleasant to touch. But if this mind was exposed repeatedly to moments that make the mind feel bad, the mind-water might eventually turn cloudy and unpleasant. Maybe that is karma. Maybe that is conscience.

The once-Buddhist-monk Natthiko speaks on his moral compass in the book "I May Be Wrong", and how he feels that his emotional life feels better when he mainly listens to the voice of his own conscience. This is shared with a story from one of Natthiko's monk-friends, who was offered an alcoholic drink which would have been against the rules of the monk-friends monastery. The monk-friend said he didn't want the alcoholic drink. The monk-friend was then told by the person who had offered him the drink that "nobody from your monastery would know if you drank it". The monk-friend replied "but i would know".

If "karma" is the magnetism in our moral compass--how we feel that the world of mirrors reflects us back at us--then the color of our mind-water might be the arrow in our moral compass. Together these items may form a voice we can listen to not to be judged--but to understand what may have clouded our mind-water so that the mind-water could be clear once again.

Rewards are not guaranteed to be given to us, but they seem both wise and appreciated to be given to others--even if it's "just" a simple "thank-you". The smile we give off can often be reflected back at us, if nothing else when we see the smile in our own reflection. How honestly we can smile at our mirror image may reveal the clarity of the "water" that is our inner mental world--and while having clear mental "water" may not protect us from everything tough in life it may still lighten some moments to know that Karma Is Not An ATM.

I once saw a man who seemed like a picture of the struggle in modern life. The man had large tattoos, held a nicotine-device in one hand, a designer beverage in the other hand, and in his ears were wireless ear-phones which seemed to blast loud music. The world outside the man was pleasantly sunny. But the world inside the man seemed to radiate the kind of energy a martial artist might radiate when they've stepped into an arena. It felt to me as if this man's every-day life was a battle.

What may have stood out to me the most about the image of the Modern Warrior that i felt i saw were all the items. Why? Maybe they weren't just items. Maybe they were also crutches.

What Is A Crutch?

To me, Nisse, a metaphorical crutch is like a physical crutch. The crutch supports us in our life. It holds us up. A crutch isn't the shame of someone who can't stand without it--it's the smile of someone who can stand because of it.

The Warrior had nicotine, a beverage, music, and tattoos. But were these items crutches which gave him strength? Or was it the weight of these items which made his life seem like a battle?

Crutch Or An Addiction?

It's not always clear what makes life hard. What might be a healthy crutch for one person may be an addiction for someone else. The difference might be that if a crutch heals us, an addiction might be a crutch which hurts us more than it heals us. What often seems tricky about addiction is that for some people the part of the addiction which heals might be so needed that the person can't say no to the part which hurts. This may be deeply understandable. If it was phrased like a metaphor, it might be better if the leaks of a boat were plugged with poor material than if the boat was left to sink.

It may not be possible to know, but even if the Warrior was a very strong man his life may still have been too hard for just one person. The items the Warrior held may have been the crutches that lent the Warrior the extra strength that he may have needed. Maybe the drugs were the Warrior's only help in life--as if the Warrior's life was like a survival in a pitch-dark coal-mine and the drugs were the Warrior's only lantern.

Plight Of The Coal-miner

Imagine you had to be a coal-miner for a year. Away from anyone you love. Never quite clear of the coal-dust. Bread and soup for every single meal. For a whole year. Does this seem like fun to you? No, right? 

But what if you got something in return?

What if you got a brand-new luxury-performance car--like an AMG-tuned Mercedes-Benz or a fully decked-out Audi? Or, how about a year of free time? Maybe you'd like a home. Or some person's love. The gleam of these treasures may not make the imaginary year of the coal-mine feel worthwhile--but it might make it feel better. It might even feel bearable.

Though who knows if a coal-mine year is all that bad? If the something-in-return was nice enough, some people may feel strongly tempted to sacrifice a year of their life--if not far more. A year in a coal-mine to make their parents love each other again? To have enough money for the next thousand years? To have world peace? To make their spouse come back to life? A great enough reason might even make it seem easy.

The How and Why

The image of the coal-mine might picture how the tough parts of life often feel better if they have counter-balance. From what i've found Jordan B. Peterson once paraphrased Nietzsche as "He with a great enough Why can bear any How". If the image of the coal-mine is the How, then the something-in-return might be called a Why. And maybe this balance of value already is what life might be to many people. Some people seem to not particularly mind the sacrifice of several hours at an office if they are simply able to return to a home filled with love afterwards.

However, not everyone might have a love-filled home to return to. The reality for some people may be that their How is filled with unbearable pain. And if they have no help to bear the pain it can be very understandable to turn to a crutch. The Warrior may already have had a Why--but the items he held may have been there to help him bear a heavy How.

Maybe this is why people like the Warrior might bring every-day drugs with them. Whether the drug is a phone or music or drugs or something else. It might feel easy to negatively liken these items to pacifiers for adults. But maybe it becomes less easy to shame people for their emotional needs if we remember the moments when we ourselves felt scared, hungry, alone, sad, or angry. And maybe we can also remember that there have been items that made some of those moments feel okay again--maybe even crutches that let us walk again.

What's Worse? A Pacifier Or Endless Tears?

Maybe many of us are like the Modern Warrior. Our life and environment may be a heavy How to have, but many of us seem to also have good Why's--good ground to stand on, good crutches to hold us, and maybe even love. 

But society also seems to have people with very heavy How's--and who at least in part seem to make their life harder than it might need to be.

Homeless people sometimes seem like a central point for conversations about addiction. People without homes might have it as tough as anybody possibly might be able to have it in a modern society. Yet it doesn't seem uncommon that homeless people take drugs. But don't drugs make your life harder? Why would you make your life even more difficult if you're in a position like this?

It might not actually be that difficult to understand. We might be able to understand it simply with imagination.

Life Of A Homeless Person

If you were homeless. If you had experienced decades of physical abuse, emotional torment--and perhaps worst of all--the total neglect of a world which hasn't cared about you. What might make that life feel okay? 

If you had suffered a life of horror, what might heal you to the point where you were okay to forgive life and the people around you for what you experienced?

Maybe an answer in one word is "Love". Boundless and endless love. If you had lived a life of total pain then a reasonable something-in-return for all what you had to suffer might be an equal-but-opposite life. A life in a world of love. A life in Paradise. A place like a totally free hotel, where everybody cares who you are. Where the people treat you like family... kind of like Home.

Why People Might Take Drugs

Maybe this is how life can seem to a homeless person. Shut out of the warmth of Paradise and left in the cold marsh-land of reality. And perhaps the reality is so dark that even the simply hope for Paradise hurts more than it helps. In an imaginary place as dark as this--doesn't it seem reasonable to want light? How many cold nights are okay until you want warmth? Maybe this is why some homeless people might take drugs. Maybe drugs are like a glimpse of Paradise to those who need Paradise most.

But Does The Drug Help?

If we imagined a tough enough life we may eventually wonder why the imagined person in it didn't take drugs earlier. If the drugs were the only person to ever love them, why wouldn't they want more of that love? One answer may also be a definition for addiction. Because "an addiction is a crutch which hurts more than it heals". 

A drug might make someone feel better for the moment. But every high seems to eventually wear off--while the desire for love often seems to remain. And if the drug wears off, it's not a sustainable source of warmth the way that a home might be. But to suggest this to the person with the addiction might only hurt--since the person with the addiction may already know this. It may come across as if it was a suggestion to go and fall asleep to someone who can't fall asleep.

So how do you quit the only love you've ever had? How could anyone quit their last source of happiness? One answer might be that it's hard before you've found other sources of love. But once you have other sources of warmth, addiction no longer becomes everything. It's "easier said than done"--but not impossible. It has happened before. And it can happen again. As long as it's believed.

Nietzsche wrote roughly that "Stare into the abyss and the abyss will stare back". Jordan B. Peterson added to this with "But stare long enough and you will see the light at the end of the abyss". If homelessness is a modern abyss then what is the light at the end of it?

He with hope is unbreakable. Even decades of the worst kind of treatment imaginable can't kill a human outright. There are people among us who have survived un-imaginably excruciating Hows. Perhaps because their Whys were the hope to be loved and healed in the end. A hope to reach Paradise. A hope to come Home. And the easiest way Home might be to slowly lighten our How.

The Way Out Of The Deepest Mine

Maybe not everyone can quit everything they have. But maybe they can find a better crutch? Like with the picture of the "something-in-return"-item for an imagined year spent in a coal-mine, there may exist something which could help balance your life and heal you with less hurt. It might still not be love, but it might be better than what you had before. What might this look like?

Different cats like different scratches. Whatever it is that may help you heal, it might depend on what kind of love you prefer. If we humans all have a different scratch then you may have a better counter-balance. If you feel that you have an addiction for something like vehicular speeds far over the speed-limit--perhaps you could get the same kind of love from a video game. It might not be true for you--but it might help you see a way that could be true for you. The comedian Jim Gaffigan once gave a beautiful gestalt of this with his joke "Instead of buying a Big Mac you may read US Weekly. Hey, that's still McDonalds. It's just served up a little different". If this is true then you may at least be able to find something better than what you had before--like the proverb about "Don't let better be the enemy of perfect".

Simple Ways To Heal

For milder addictions it can help to simply ask yourself if you feel like what you have in front of you actually helps you heal. It may also help to reflect about your experiences, or to write about them, or to share them with other people, or to express them visually with art. Since everyone seems to have a different preference and a different favorite kind of love, there may actually be as many ways to heal as there may be people on earth.

Simple knowledge may also help. One such piece might be the knowledge that one of the biggest reasons for why addictions can hurt more than they heal is that it's hard for an addiction to give anything but the illusion of love--and not actual love. The illusion might be easier to let go of if we know it's not real.

Love seems to also be able to heal--maybe even better than crutch might heal. But this may also be why it might be good to let go of crutches slowly. If we're very used to the crutches we have had for a long time in our life, it may be wise to let any difference in life pass slowly--some people's lives might be too tough without the help of their usual crutch, and it may be too hard to say "No" to a less-hard life.

Maybe it can feel like small every-day addictions can be the price some people seem to pay for their life in modern society. And it might be true that life in modern society may simply too much for some people--but if your life feels too heavy then society may only be one reason why. It doesn't seem like anybody can force anybody else to live an un-balanced life without the other person acceptance.

Most of what might feel heavy in life may stem from the weight of the How of our life--and many of these weights in turn can seem to appear when expectation of reality doesn't quite match the way reality actually is. Because of all of this it's really not always very easy to live a lighter life--especially if you don't have an abundance of the kind of love that might make you feel like your How is unquestionably worthwhile. Maybe one form of simple and natural happiness can come from a life without crutches. But it can also be good to go there slowly.

Why Doesn't Everyone Heal?

One last question to surface might be "If this was true--why doesn't every heal?". In a sense the question might be "Why don't we all bear a lighter How? If life is too hard, why not let it be easier?". It's a very good question. Maybe one of the best. And just like with ways to heal, there may be as many answers to this question as there are people on earth--or drops of rain in the ocean.

Some people may not see that their life could be easier. Maybe they've never had any form of attention or encouragement. 

Some people may not feel it's possible for life to improve. Maybe this "acceptance" has been the only presence to ever heal them. 

Maybe some people's Why is an image of somebody else's life. Maybe this image has made it hard to see the Hows of the life they actually have. 

Maybe some people are extremely aware of the pain in their life and the only help they see is to numb themselves until the pain wears off. 

Some people might not want to remember that the How of their lives may be too hard without their crutches--but they also don't feel that they can change their How.

However the reality of a person's tough life, it can often seem unique to them. If it ever seems like someone's life is so tough that it feels like they must have brought the toughness on to themselves, it can be good to remember that in a sense, all of us do the best we can in life. Perhaps this is why help might heal some of us most of all--because we can only do our best, and sometimes we might benefit from more than just our own best.

But no matter the source of a person's tough Why, all reasons may lead to the same insight--life is easier with a lighter How. There may be excellent reasons for why our environment is like it is, and for why we may have the addictions or the crutches that we do. But the life we have can only change for the better if we understand why our life is as it is, so that we can accept who we are in our life, and so that we can understand what kind of love our body might ask us for. Even if the physical dependence on a drug is deep, the deepest root of an addiction often seems to be the need for love. Addiction Is Artificial Love.

I'm Nisse. I'm human.

Like every other human I need food water air and love.

Because of this Learn to Feel is divided into five free chapters here on the website and several other chapters in the Patreon-supporter channel on Discord.

If you've enjoyed Learn to Feel so far please consider to join the Patreon to help me get by.

Read the rest of Learn to Feel here.