Non-Fiction
Experiences, Reality
Facing my debilitating fear of the unknown.
“The map is not the territory” — Alfred Korzybski.
We see a lot of opinions out there on what one should or should not do in life, whether it’s travel, work, love-related etcetera.
Leaning on past lessons and history helps us learn from mistakes, tests and trials that have already been undertaken, but one thing I find which isn’t being said enough of is we don’t live in each other’s shoes.
We don’t feel the same exact thing another person feels.
I love hearing people say “in my experience”, I then get to understand exactly what they’ve lived through, witnessed, faced - what their reality felt like in those moments, but what I don’t enjoy is the generalized opinions of a place or experience — any happenstance some will/won’t go and suddenly everyone has the best opinion of it.
When I go to new places the first thing I pay attention to is the smells around, the spices in the air, the sense of the energy of a place. We all have this, more notice than others and it makes a great difference to how you perceive a new place and how it accepts you.
I’ve had to tackle a difficult decision in recent years, the most difficult decision I believe I’ve ever had to take.
Do we stay or do we go?
Relocating my son and I to another, bigger country, when we’ve been settled on a tiny island for 18 years.
I wrote about this previously:
What has made it so excruciatingly tough, is seeing the violence and unrest around the globe, the ugly hatred, wars, not having a home to get to.. I find the one thing that sets small places apart from these big first world countries is safety. I raised my boy in a very safe place — that’s not to say there wasn’t violence where I was, but it was safer than being out there.
In the big “bad” world.
I’ve studied much in areas of Psychology in recent years, I took it upon myself to self-study whatever I could get my hands on as the human mind is something that has always fascinated me, and Carl Jung has always been that one ‘giant’ who pulls me in to his words and experiences.
One of our other founders of psychology, is Abraham Maslow, who created a pyramid called the ‘Hierarchy of Needs’.
This is something, I always recall whenever I’m facing a difficulty, and the value of what he created through this pyramid is vital to us all.
It’s self-explanatory.
We all need these basic physiological necessities in life in order to feel some sense of motivation before moving forward, knowing this foundation and realizing the importance of it, has helped me astronomically!
Therefore, in summary, no matter what you set out to do in life, always remember that as long as you can access those basic needs, the rest will fall into place.
Along with faith ;)
Thank you to all my fellow Medium comrades for your lovely comments and motivations! They truly are words of significance to my ‘currently testing’ world and help me in ways I can’t describe!
Stay safe x
