Nirmala Pillai
Guest blogger
Can any one of us say, “I am so happy the whole day! Forever and ever…”
How often we fall into the dark well of anxiety and fear for known or unknown reasons?
The body’s reactions drive us to tears and want to quell the negative voices in the head to experience the elusive calm from looping thoughts.
It looks like you were the only unlucky beggar in the world, seeking succour from your own created devils, schooled to make your daily life a total mess.
Only a person who has experienced this anxiety of mental distress knows why sometimes one is desperately driven to suicide. They don’t want to die but want to escape the negative whispers of the evil voices that sound like their own voice!
Happiness is a spontaneous momentary feeling like bubbles born out of one’s own positive actions and thoughts – A quotient of mental and physical emotions.
You cannot buy it or have it readymade.
Every piece of advice, guidance and everything written in books tells, ‘Be positive be happy. ‘
But how?
Meditate, do yoga, take tablets, see a psychologist and after all that, if it doesn’t work, you stand in despair with unending questions for which you wish to seek answers.
It is human to be riddled with anxiety, fear and frustration. No one is free from it as it has its purpose in the evolution for the survival and hope of the human race.
This very purpose is also what makes us search for happiness for ‘Seek and thou shalt find’ is a mantra like our heartbeat. The crisis we face every moment is Where? When? Why? What?
and how.
After the pandemic, the silent, dark, unseen creeping mass, called mental health has broken its silence and touched every breathing human like never before.
The need to talk about it, understand it and share it is the absolute need of the hour. All have to begin somewhere.
Every person has a right to be happy. An animal, person or thing who can give, even for a few seconds, a moment of calm happiness or smile, making one forget the inner anxiety or turmoil or pain, has knowingly or unknowingly done his or her good deed of the day.
What is the first step in this journey today?
Culture, family values, and an individual’s personality, all have no meaning when you live in hiding from yourself. Fearing your own shadow, suffering from despair and anxieties which you need to share, understand and treat but cannot do so simply because you are ashamed and embarrassed; beat yourself to a mental pulp longing to escape and share your feelings to feel normal. Your ego and pride and false value system shuts your mouth without giving yourself a chance to be truly happy. Always remember you have a choice and you have not exercised it.
The feeling of true relaxation of the mind and body, experience the moment of being alive to the here and now.
Wellness is a state of balance of one’s body and mind. It keeps dancing and it’s up to each of us to find what is good for us to stay mentally healthy.
But how?
Break the old existing beliefs about mental health without fear of any backlash. Some will call you crazy. Others will either mock you or avoid you. So be it.
Drops make an ocean.
Only you matter. A mother’s selfless love for protecting her child is instinctive and well known. Don’t you owe it to yourself to be healthy and well to take care of others?
Start now. Start a movement, a self-help group a tiny gathering in your family, your relatives without fear or favour, to help the silent suffering ones living in the hell holes of their mind, to talk and express their sufferings, doubts and pain however small it be.
When you talk about it openly like birds you release them into the freedom of the self and external world where they will come to rest in some perch sooner or later like a bird. Never cage them.
Above all love yourself. The old value of ‘sacrifice’ needs to be reinvented and proudly used for creating a better happier you and a better version of you for a better future full of happiness. It’s not at all selfish.
Let’s start today. You don’t have to wait.
[Banner image by William Farlow on Unsplash]
Nirmala Pillai is an ex-Civil Service officer and now a full-time writer and painter. She has published three book of poems and one collection of short stories. Her novel is with a literary agent. Her works have appeared in various anthologies and print and internet magazines.
About A New You:
We all deserve to have everything in our life exactly the way we want it.The first step begins with believing that every moment is bringing an opportunity to be a new you. As a founder, I provide tools to elevate all dimensions of your life and I teach you the art of writing to reach to your true potential.
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