Situational garb

If you're feeling a little choked by your situation, "wear it all like a loose garment", so they say...
Can't dance in tight pants.

Remembering exactly what you are

There are times when the task you have to complete seems too big for you to grapple, and you feel like you're being asked to carve the next David out of granite, underwater, with a toothpick. 

And maybe you feel really lonely as well, like you don't have a mentor through this ordeal and you're too caught up in trying to make the thing work that there isn't any time for you to stop and ask a friend for help. 

Well I don't have any nuggets of advice, except to say that sometimes I come up against these situations, and in hindsight it seems that a lot of the stress and fear is welded in the foundry of your own heart. 

I'm sorry... you're not an industrial work site, you are a human and your faults are human, remind yourself and remind anyone who expects something too far fetched from you. And love yourself.

Sometimes I think I'm too young to know so much and I expect to die soon

The people you love most will hurt you the most. Ask whether that pain, anger or sadness is the result of your own desire to possess. Realise that the sadness is the manifestation of your own ideas and let them all go. Forgive yourself.

If your negativity isn't the result of your own desires then let go of whoever hurts you so much. Forgive them and let it go.

Women and the never-ending walk

When women are appreciated primarily for a sexually appetising appearance, the rest of us are left feeling inadequate and wondering what real women do. There are conceptions that frame our understanding of gender: the femme fatale, woman as allegorical of a virtue, women as flighty and emotional, women as docile and concerned with commitment.

I'm sure I can create a similar list with masculinity, but my concern is with female experience because that's what I know. 

I accept that I don't fit into any of these limited boxes and that all people are different, but on occasion just the very existence of these stereotypes becomes so disturbing that they deserve my attention and concern. 

It's so sad that feminists need to justify their position against the notion that feminism equates to outrage and hunger for power. Equality has always been the benchmark ideal, and in that spirit men also should not be afraid to fight for the acceptance of multifarious masculinities, so few of the men I know are strong and emotionless. 

I don't think these stereotypes rule people’s lives but I know that in a way they shape our behaviour and attitudes.

Essentially, you know yourself best and you are the greatest spokesperson for your own rights. Don't walk unquestioning through the low-ceilinged fluorescent lighted regulation carpeted corridor of socialisation (a walk that lasts a lifetime).

The loss of phantasmal limbs in metacognative accidents

When difficult situations arise it's best to approach them holding your pain in both your hands (i.e. not shoving it in the laundry basket).

Acknowledging your inner pain cauterises you: you lose a little bit of something you loved, some history, some person, some part of yourself... but it's also a process of healing, becoming lighter and becoming able to move with greater freedom.

Zen from Manly Dam

The wind has no sound, but conjures those things it moves through into sounding.

Be like the wind, quiet and abiding in your direction, igniting discussion through your actions.

The ocean is not blue, it's just a mirror to the sky.

Be like the water, let yourself take on different colours but remain pure and transparent.

Hope springs eternal

It is a gushing rushing surging sort of feeling when you're hopeful against the odds. It does spring eternal and there's an infinite ocean out there to drift on... Got to remember you phone and wish for good reception.

In your head is a map that you seem to be able to remember, but truth is you're just making up the continents you hope to find.

There are real roads we travel, the kind made of bitumen, and walking down those roads is the way to stay afloat the ocean of hope in your heart which, at times, seems to leak out into the real world. Walk in the direction you need to go in and meet what you find when you get there.