The Hugs of Safe Harbour

My Mum told me something, yesterday, that had me with tears in my eyes, while talking to her on the phone, sitting in the light of a golden Sunset, in the middle of Wheatley – the village I moved to a few months ago.

One of my childhood friends, Mandy, died last weekend, at the far-too-young age of 41-years old.

She’d had a lot of health issues over the years, along the same lines as my oldest brother, Paul: chronic kidney disease, resulting in the need for dialysis, then a kidney transplant… and there are so many issues that result from this… it really is like the medical equivalent of spinning plates.

The thing is, Mandy had been through some tough times and had been very ill, but – doing quite well, of late, it seems – out of the blue, she had some internal bleeding and when surgeons operated on her, her aorta ruptured, and there was effectively nothing they could do to save her. (I’m not sure of the exact details, but my Mother told me this.)

I hadn’t spoken more than a few words to Mandy for more than 20 years, I guess, but she was such an important part of my childhood. She was three years older than me, and our families were so close, she was like a sister to me… back then.

It was a real shock to hear the news. It still seems impossible. I can only hope that (and I do feel that), after all her suffering, she’s in a better place… and her family will be reunited with her, at the right time.

The thing that really got me, yesterday – the day of her funeral – was my Mum telling me that she’d been across to see Mandy’s family a few days ago. She gave her mother and sister a hug.

Mandy’s father… who was always a reserved kind of guy and not the most tactile of people… gave my Mum a hug.

This was a surprise.

She told me on the phone that he’d ‘never been the hugging type’, and he said to her that, before last weekend, he hadn’t even hugged his own sister – in his whole life - but all that had changed, through their shared ordeal.

He said that he didn’t realise what he’d missed out on, until then.

Hugs are such a beautiful gift, in times of joy, sadness and overwhelming grief.

Don’t wait until it’s too late, and you wished you could hug them…

… and if you can’t hug them, pick up the phone and tell them you love them.

RIP Mandy – Corby Hill’s Steffi Graff, from my early memories.

Teenage Suicide & Reaching for Help

I received one of the most gracious and humbling emails that anyone has ever written me, this morning, from a woman who left a comment on my blog post, ‘The Woodpecker at the End ofthe World’ (where I write about a close encounter with suicide, when I was ‘saved’ by the sound of a woodpecker, which pulled me away from my dark mind and back into the light of the moment).

The comment read:

Followed your link from twitter. You and your story were my woodpecker today. Thank you for being there.

I told her to email me if she needed to, and received this, today:

Hi Les!

I follow you on Twitter and saw your post yesterday about the woodpecker. I'm the one who left the comment. I hope I didn't alarm you.

I just wanted to say that you never know who is reading your posts and how much you are helping them, even if they leave no comment at all. And you are very special to share your stories with others.

The truth is, I'm not okay and I haven't been okay for a very long time. I try to sound positive and upbeat when I am posting and corresponding with others but some days are worse than others. And yesterday your link to the post about the woodpecker helped me through the day.

Again, I hope I didn't startle you or worry you.

Thank you for being there. You mean a lot to many, even if we've never met in person.

[Name Withheld]

I was intending to write a blog about just this (after asking for the woman’s permission)… and not to massage my own ego… but to remind us all that, sometimes, the things we say or do can be all that’s needed to help lead others out of very dark places.

I write stuff. I do hope it helps, but it’s always great to find out it does help. It compels me to keep writing, because now and again, my words seem to be read at just the right time… which is also the reason I persist in spamming my poor Twitter followers with repeated and rotated blog links a zillion times a day.

The Woodpecker blog was written more than 14 months ago. Barring a few breaks I’ve taken, I’ve repeated it about twice a day ever since, and though this has pissed a relative handful of grumpy people, hundreds of others have appreciated it – many of whom have thanked me for sending out those words at just the right time for them. It’s certainly been the blog I’ve received the most emails about.

I write about my experiences. Sadly, too many people can relate to those experiences, but by sharing these details, they help to remind others that they’re really not alone.

I recall quite a few people, over the past year or so, who have told me they’d like to write a blog about their own experiences with various debilitating conditions and illnesses, but they worry that nobody would want to read them.

The thing is, us humans have so much in common - when we forget to hold on to the things we believe set us apart - that pretty much whatever you write or otherwise communicate about your problems and triumphs to the world outside your mind, there’s going to be someone who understands… who can empathise and perhaps relate to their own experience… people who you can help, or who will help you…

So don’t be afraid to speak out about the things that are truly important to you.

Don’t be embarrassed to write it down, paint it, sculpt it, dance it, or whatever… as long as you are creative, rather than destructive, send your message out to the world, and then don’t hold back on promoting and broadcasting yourself, because you may just be the big difference in someone else’s day, to help them see another day.

That’s the beauty of humanity… we’re better when we care about and share with each other…

And this would have been the end of my blog, but something else happened today that I want to write about.

My friend, Georgina, from @M40Offices, posted a message on her business’s Facebook and Twitter feeds today – an appeal to find a young girl, Molly O’Donovan, who had been missing since Sunday morning.

She’s a ‘local’ girl, from Banbury, in Oxfordshire -  not far away - and M40 has business connections in that area, too.

I help with M40’s social networking, so I did a few retweets and shared the information to my own pages, and I kept looking in on Thames Valley Police’s missing persons page, because I felt sure that they’d update it in the day to say Molly had been found, alive and well, and then all the kind souls who shared those messages could stand down with a sigh of relief.

Late in the afternoon, Thames Valley Police did indeed update the missing person’s page, with this:

Missing girl - Banbury - update

07 August 2012, 3:51 pm

Thames Valley Police can confirm the body of a teenage girl was found in a wooded area near Foscote Rise at 11.40am this morning (7/8).

The body has now been formally identified as that of missing 14-year-old Molly O’Donovan.

The death is not believed to be suspicious at this stage and enquiries remain ongoing. There is no further information to release at this time.

The family of Molly do not want to speak to the media and have asked that their privacy is respected at this extremely difficult time. Members of the media are asked to respect their wishes.

I don’t mean to offend anyone with speculation, but the fact that Molly was found in woodland, and that there were no suspicious circumstance, infers that she took her own life.

She was 14-years-old…

A childhood friend of mine, a beautiful soul named Mandy Thompson, died on Saturday from internal bleeding. She was 41-years-old, and she’d had kidney problems for most of her adult life, but this was such a mean, totally unexpected curve-ball and her family are obviously crippled, now. She’s a sister and a daughter and an auntie. My own family are devastated, but I can’t imagine what Mandy’s are going through.

I think the only positive I can find in Mandy’s death is that she’d been seriously ill in the past, and her family must have considered the possibility of her passing, even though they’ll have been praying it wouldn’t come any time soon, so there would have been that knowing of love… that whatever happened, that love was never far from heart or mind.

Molly O’Donovan was 14-years-old. She went out of her house on Sunday morning and didn’t come back, and bless the poor girl – if she did commit suicide – she would have felt so alone and so afraid.

I almost hope that it turns out she’s died in some freak accident, because at least that would be easier for her family to eventually digest.

It breaks my heart… that someone so young and with so much life ahead of them could face that same moment of personal Armageddon as I did, back in Woodpecker Woods, and lose to their demons.

We have to break the stigma of talking about our feelings; of communicating that catastrophic sadness and confusion to those around us… who care for us… and despite what we may think when we watch or read the news, there is so much love in this world of ours, if we just look right, without fear of embarrassment or the crippling reluctance to show that, yes, we are sometimes weak and need help.

Better still, let’s sweep the stigma away completely and allow ourselves the freedom to feel we can speak up when we need to.

Until that happens, love and cherish all who are dear to you, because none of us are here forever; but together, there’s always the shine of something so special… of life… and life is to be lived to its fullest…

RIP Molly O’Donovan

RIP Mandy Thompson

Syria, War, Peace and Armageddon

Kofi Annan – the former Secretary-General of the United Nations – has resigned his position as UN-Arab League joint special envoy to Syria.

He authored a six-point peace plan for Syria – intending to bring a halt to the atrocities in that country - but he realises, now, that his vision has little or no chance of coming to pass…

This isn’t because of the actions of the Syrian people.

This is because of the bickering of the international community; the member states of the United Nations – an organisation which was founded in 1945 (taking over from the League of Nations), in the cauldrons of shock at the end of World War II, to ‘to stop wars between countries, and to provide a platform for dialogue’...

… essentially, to support world peace, after the war-loss of roughly…

… and I’ll put this in caps, and embolden it…

SEVENTY-ONE MILLION PEOPLE

… in the first 45 years of the 20^th Century, in two World Wars.

World War II was a NUCLEAR WAR, which a lot of people don’t grasp, so I’m capping that, too.

I’m not casting blame on the USA – which, it’s true, is the only country to deploy nuclear weapons in anger – because if Germany, Japan or even the United Kingdom had been able to utilise that technology first, then history would have been very different.

Now, in 2012, we have this situation where the five permanent members of the United Nations (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) – which have veto rights – essentially cancel each other out at nearly every opportunity, because of their political affiliation to a country in question.

It’s a political power play and generally never considers the actual people of a particular country, or the deaths they endure; rather, it’s posturing… for the governmental benefit of the super-force of the day…

Iran used to be friends of the West, but now they’re our enemies.

Iraq used to be enemies of the West, now they’re our friends.

Afghanistan fought against the Russians, then they fought against the US, and now they’re friends of the West.

In a nutshell, it’s fucking crazy.

It’s like George Orwell’s ‘1984’.

Read it and you’ll understand, if it doesn’t burst veins in your head while you try to consider how quickly Big Brother decides to change sides, and you can then equate it to our own non-fiction governments and their own actions.

In Syria, the ‘West’ is backing (and very likely arming) the rebels, who have been cutting off the heads and otherwise executing captured Syrian soldiers, and these soldiers opposing them are only fighting because, if they don’t fight, they’re going to be shot by their own side, or because they’ve heard stories about the soldiers on their side having their heads cut off, so they’re so incensed and afraid and compelled to kill these people who will, they believe, cut off their heads, if they’re captured.

The ‘East’ is backing (and very likely arming) the Syrian ‘regime’, which is fighting against perceived rebels that are cutting off the heads or otherwise executing captured Syrian soldiers.

The thing is, the ‘West’ are backing (and very likely arming) many of (not all, by a long shot) the same sort of people they’re fighting in Afghanistan, and have been fighting in Iraq… just as they did to groups in Libya, when they decided that Gaddafi was no longer their friend, after being his friend and taking his oil in the decade previous - until which he wasn’t their friend - despite knowing his record of dictatorial abuse against his own people, before they decided he was no longer useful to them.

We – the ‘West’ – are fighting the same people in Afghanistan that we’re (very likely) arming in Syria.

We’re killing the fundamentalists in one arena and arming them in another.

We’re playing them like pawns.

I don’t know what the ‘East’ is doing, because I can’t read their newspapers, but I suspect the same sort of games are going on there, too.

And the people who are dying, right now, are Syrians… just normal people, who don’t want to be in a Civil War… who have become lost in the anger of seeing their loved-ones die, and are taking up arms because they’ve been swept along by games played in ‘corridors of power’, thousands of miles from their families and their homes, which are decimating their families, killing them and their children, and destroying their homes.

We – the ‘West’ – have done this over and over and over again, and I’m not differentiating: so have the ‘East’.

When’s it going to stop?

I can tell you one scenario – which isn’t too far-fetched, sadly – but you’re not going to like it…

Here it is:

Syria have already alluded to the fact that they have chemical and biological weapons - and they have the ability to arm them on delivery systems - but they won’t use them internally, against their own people; so the threat there is that they’ll use them to external forces that interfere with the Civil War that they’re now embroiled in.

So, when the Western-backed rebels crush the Syrian ‘enemies’ into the position where they know that, even if they’re captured, they’re going to die, they decide to go out with a bang and launch whatever chemical and biological munitions they can against targets in Israel.

They may have got these weapons into the Lebanon already, so there will be launches from there, too.

Israel – a nation with a great deal of nuclear weapons, though they’ve never signed up to agreeing that they have them – see thousands or tens of thousands of their people slaughtered by Syria, which they know is backed by Iran.

This is perceived as Holocaust Part II.

In their anger, they launch their nuclear weapons against both Syria and Iran, killing millions of people who never wanted to go to war at all.

The rest of the world waits, in agony…

Then we have China and Russia against the US, UK and France, as permanent members of the United Nations…

… with enough firepower to wipe out all life on the planet.

You may think I’m being unpatriotic, but my nephew is in Afghanistan at this very minute. My brother spent 30 years in the Army and retired this year.

I’m supportive of our troops, because they believe they’re doing the right thing, and they genuinely do care about their missions.

What I’m not supportive of is the same mechanic and dynamic of ‘dark corridors’ in government that puts my nephew and my brother in the same position as the millions of people in both world wars, where many were forced over trenches towards certain death by the fire of the ‘enemy’ machine guns, just as their ‘enemies’ were forced to do the same, on pain of execution.

When are we going to understand that most of us really don’t care about global domination, and we’re more than happy to live our lives without the threat of being shot at?

I really do believe that, without the mass-hysteria of the governmental and political systems of World War II, and the disgraceful assumption that the people of any land should work for their perceived leaders (rather than those leaders work for their best interests) it would have been Adolf Hitler and Winston Churchill having a punch-up in field somewhere, and the majority of German and British people would have left them to it, with the afterthought of: “Fuck ‘em.”

Nobody that fought in World War One or World War Two, or any other War, didn’t want to go home.

They were terrified.

In the midst of battle, they didn’t want to be there. They wanted to go home.

They wanted to be with their families, to forget war, and to live…

There was a ‘great’ moment, in World War I – on Christmas Day, in 1914 (the first year of the war) – where British and German troops put aside their troubles and played football (soccer) on what would have been their killing fields.

Despite having previously tried to destroy each other, they played together and had fun, just for a while…

Then, their ‘superiors’ put them back to killing each other.

What can we learn from those people who kicked a ball about, with joy? Who seemed to have something so terrible to fight about, but who laughed and played together?

… that there is no difference between Conservative/Republican and Labour/Democrat; that there is no difference between black and white; that there is no difference between gay or straight; that there is no difference between disabled and abled-bodied; that there is no difference between Christian/Muslim/Jew/Atheist/Humanist/Agnostic and every other faith or belief; that there is no difference between auburn, blonde and ginger; that no noses or bodies are the wrong shape…

… that we’re all human beings, trying to be… throughout all the heartache and agony and joy and triumph…  the best we can…

… then we’ll finally understand this one thing…

… we are the same.

And then there’ll be no more fighting.

War will end.

Peace will liberate us to explore and advance the greatest aspects of our species, and we’ll build, together, rather then focus our technology on new ways to kill each other.

You may be scoffing that this will never happen; that humans will always fight against each other, but consider this…

If one person can make that change of perception: if just one person in this world of ours can reject conflict and give their heart and faith and voice to peace, when the egoic mind would want for war, then surely we can all do that?

We are the same.

It could be you who starts that chain-reaction.

The Gift of Consciousness

Consciousness is the foundation for everything we have and do in our lives, but this gift of awareness is so often overlooked or overshadowed by the grumbling of the egoic mind.

You could live a seemingly blessed existence, surrounded by luxury and comfort that few people can even dream of, yet still find a multitude of things to worry and complain about.

In contrast, there are those that seem to have very little in terms of monetary wealth or possessions, but they lead – by and large - happy, fulfilled lives.

Is the awareness of consciousness – the ability to see and feel life for what it really is, not the illusion our minds create - the key to contentment?

No matter what faith or belief you have - maybe you feel certain we’re reincarnated; that we go to some magical, happy, gated-community in the sky, or somewhere a bit hotter; that we’re here as a spark of life, surrounded on both sides by half an eternity of nothingness - one thing is for sure: we will never walk this Earth in the same form again, once we pass the moment of death.

It seems a terrible waste of life to wrap ourselves in a blanket of discontent and fear… to let concerns of how others perceive us be a barrier from taking action and setting out on a journey to achieve our dreams…

Our own minds judge us through speculating on how other people judge us. It’s a bizarre mental interplay that holds so many of us back.

If you had no life or consciousness, then you suddenly flashed into existence, wouldn’t that be a beautiful thing to experience? The colours, sounds, intricate details of the world around you… the heat of the Sun, the scent of the trees… it would be an awesome, magical adventure of discovery.

We all have that ability, to experience the world afresh, every moment, but as we become accustomed to what once filled us with awe and wonder, we fall back to a robotic unconsciousness and lose sight of the greatness of life.

Look around yourself and take in all the things you should be thankful for, whether it’s your children, your pets, your partner, your parents, your siblings, the roof over your head, the food in the fridge, the water that runs from your taps, the amazing communication devices that hook you up with the rest of the world, the light from the Sun or the clouds in the sky…

We should be dizzy and drunk on the joy of life, not – instead – focussing on all of the perceived negatives we can find, which cloak the beauty we’re both surrounded by and also an integral part of.

Whoever or whatever caused us to have it, consciousness is such a precious gift.

Cherish your present.

The Denver Shootings

First of all, I’d like to express my heartfelt sorrow and deepest, deepest sympathy to everyone affected by the truly horrible killings in Denver, this morning…

… to those who were killed; to those who were injured; to those who survived, physically unscathed, but who will have years of torment ahead of them as they come to terms with the horror of this atrocity; to the families of the dead, the injured and the traumatised, as they gather together and scream and cry and shout and try to comprehend what has happened; to the community, the emergency services and even the journalists sent to the scene to cover this awful story… and to everyone whose hearts are aching, right now, willing with futility that events could somehow be unfolded and made right.

It would be easy for the rest of the world to dismiss this as just another ‘only in America’ mass-murder-by-firearms, but it was two years ago, on the 2^nd June, 2010, that 52-year-old Derrick Bird raced around the quiet, country lanes of rural Cumbria – my home county, in England – and left a trail of incomprehensible slaughter, killing 12 people, including his own twin brother, and injuring 11 more.

I didn’t know anyone killed or connected to the Cumbria rampage, but there was an almost tangible sense of shock that it could have happened… here… of all places… so close to home… in such a quiet and peaceful community…

It’s not like we have the same level of access to firearms in the United Kingdom, as is a ‘right’ (I believe?) in the United States.

There were two previous atrocities which brought about massive changes in the law regarding the possession of guns.

The first, in recent history, was 27-year-old Michael Ryan’s rampage in 1987 – know as ‘The Hungerford Massacre’ – where, armed with two semi-automatic rifles and a handgun, he shot 16 people dead (including his mother) and injured another 15 before turning the gun on himself.

This incident sent shockwaves through our society and led directly to the ‘Firearms (Amendment) Act 1988’, which tightened controls on the possession of firearms in the United Kingdom (except for Northern Ireland).

The UK has no ‘constitutional’ right to bear arms. Our police forces (in England, Scotland and Wales – which, along with Northern Ireland make up the United Kingdom), by the large, never carried firearms, and nor do they to this day, so why should the general public be allowed such ferocious weaponry?

The second atrocity, in 1996, was probably the most cowardly and disgusting act of internal slaughter in the history of Western society…

Thomas Hamilton, 43, a former Scout Leader, took four handguns into a primary school in the Scottish town of Dunblane, and executed 16 children and one of their teachers. The children were, with the exception of one six-year-old, all aged five. The teacher, who tried to protect them, was 45.

Hamilton shot himself dead soon after, amidst the corpses he’d made of his victims, who simply went to school that morning; pupil and teacher.

In the wake of this, the Firearms (Amendment) Act 1997 and the Firearms (Amendment) (No. 2) Act 1997 were enacted, which effectively made private ownership of handguns illegal in the United Kingdom.

Yet, in 2010, Derrick Bird still murdered 12 people with legally licenced and owned shotguns and rifles.

This is not an ‘only in America’ problem…

I don’t believe in evil and I don’t believe that there are evil people, but, absolutely, there are people in this world who seem hell-bent on causing untold pain and suffering to others, and though I would have previously said that I felt  the availability of firearms was a catalyst to these slaughters, it’s a truth that the people who commit these atrocities would likely have found some other way to at least attempt to cause this pain, if guns weren’t available to them…

There were three incidents of mass stabbings of young children in a single month in China, in 2010.

It’s the person, not the weapon, that kills and maims, and it happens all over the world… not just in the US, not just in the UK, not just in China…

I just want to give some advice to anyone who feels they are becoming compelled to hurt others on this sort of level…

I am, I hope you realise, an advocate of the importance of communicating to others if you’re feeling down and depressed, especially if you’re reaching the point of suicide and you can’t see a way out.

Ask for help, always. Make it known that you’re struggling to cope; that your mind is torturing you and you just can’t imagine a future. There are people who will help you.

But if it comes to the point where you’re all set to actively go out into the world and destroy the lives of others… to go on a gun rampage… to slash up a class of kids… to rape and bury a child…

… do this one thing, before you take action…

… kill yourself.

If you are so determined and at the point of ripping apart the families of strangers or friends, do the right thing and end yourself before you begin their endings.

The Beauty of Clear Vision

Specky Four Eyes

I picked up my first pair of glasses today… well, as long as you don’t count glasses in a pub… and I have to admit I feel a little stupid that I haven’t sorted that out earlier in my life.

I had to get them for my impending driving lessons (yes, I’m 38… I should have sorted that out earlier, too), but have quickly realised that they’re a far greater benefit than I originally envisaged.

For more years than I can rightly remember, life has been a blur beyond middle distance, so, for example, I had problems reading street signs until I got close up to them, and the stars – which I’ve always loved - became a fuzzy soup of diffused light.

I went out the back of my office, earlier, with the glasses on, and nearly cried happy tears, just watching the clouds…

With a little help from modern science, my long-distance vision is now perfect; it’s like upgrading from watching television on a 1970s set, to a modern, widescreen HDTV system. Even the colours are brighter and more vivid through the lenses of these glasses.

The level of detail in the banks of clouds that I simply couldn’t see before is astonishing. It’s not that they didn’t look great before (I have a thing about cloud-watching), but the feathering and definition is so much clearer.

Yes, I am rambling, but really… if you were like me and dithered over whether glasses would improve your life, don’t hesitate.

Now, I’m waiting for the Sun to go down so I can see the stars clearly again! And I can’t wait to get back to the mountains, before too long.

The Myths of Ego

I inadvertently caused a bit of a hoo-haa on Twitter, a few nights ago, after I posted a Tweet saying that depression was a ‘myth’ of the egoic mind.

The context of the statement was that I was comparing my life ‘before’ I found my way out of more than twenty years of nightmarish depression, to the peace and happiness that’s threaded through my enlightened existence, now.

I want to clear a few things up… and hopefully people can read to the end of this blog and fully understand my viewpoint, rather than reading the next few lines, getting riled up and blocking me.

This is the ‘offending’ Tweet:

“Depression is a terrible, clinging myth, created by the ego, in the minds of those who choose to suffer it.”

First of all, I fully understand – from long experience - that depression is a very real and very dangerous issue for many people, and it should never be dismissed as a nonsense.

At best, it’s debilitating, frightening and makes life a misery, and at its worst… it’s a killer – one of the most serious on the planet, taking the lives of around a million people each year.

It is an awful realisation to understand that, statistically, in the time it’s taken for you to read these words, so far, two people will have ended their life.

I’ve attempted suicide, quite a few times. I’ve been that low and lost. You can read about that in these two blogs:

The Woodpecker at the End of the World

A Brief History of Depression

I feel very fortunate that I made it through that darkness. I am a happy man and my life is brilliant. I could have been old bones or ash, by now, and would have missed out on this adventure… but, thankfully, that wasn’t my fate.

I don’t want it to be the fate of others, either, so I write about my experiences in the hope that my words may be just enough to guide someone back from the brink, or, better still, stop them approaching it in the first place.

My experience of those polar opposites – of being moments away from death, at my own hands, and, now, of living this life of happiness – affords me a perspective that I believe is useful to others who are still struggling, because it shows that, if you can just get through that moment of danger, then there’s the chance of a much brighter future, ahead.

One of the greatest lessons I’ve learnt over the past two years is to recognise the ‘ego’ – the negative, destructive, ‘unconscious’ thought process that causes all our emotional pain.

I mean, what is the most dangerous aspect of depression? What is it that compels people to even contemplate suicide, let alone go through with it?

It’s not the lack of energy, ebbed motivation, or the host of other ‘physical’ symptoms.

It’s that the ego begins to attack us. Our own minds effectively turn against us.

Often, when I write about depression, I get comments along the lines of: “Everyone experiences depression in a different way.”

That is likely very true, but the common factor in every flavour of depression is this mental attack – this self-abusive part of the mind… the ego.

I’ve described this before as ‘compulsive, critical over-thinking’. It what keeps you awake at night, for hours on end; it’s why, when you look in the mirror, you think you’re ugly; it’s why you think people are talking about you, pointing fingers behind their curtains, and you don’t go out of your house for weeks or months on end; it’s what takes a person into the woods with a ligature, intending never to come out alive.

The ego causes you pain by concocting myths and repeating them, over and over again, in your mind.

Here’s an example:

You’re walking along the street and you see an old friend. You’re just about to open your mouth to say hello, but they walk right by you. You stop and turn, but they just keep walking, so you don’t say a word.

Your ego kicks in: “That’s so rude! How dare they ignore me! What a stuck-up moron!”

Then you’re searching your head, trying to recall something that could have inspired this ignorance – you look to arm yourself with some information that can be used to defend your sense of outrage, and you’ll probably find some almost insignificant detail… a mole-hill that you turn into a mountain… which shapes your opinion of them from thereon in.

This story plays out in your head and is repeated, possibly for the rest of your life.

But what if that person simply didn’t see you? Or they could have been daydreaming. They could have forgotten to put their contacts in that morning. Maybe a relative was ill, or, worse, they were grieving?

So, the ego doesn’t need facts to form an opinion, but once it does form an opinion, it can be very difficult to dissolve it.

We do this to ourselves, too.

If you’re thinking about suicide or are on the verge of committing it, it’s because your ego has been attacking you, ranting at you, repeatedly highlighting all of your perceived weaknesses and failures, to the point that you don’t see any worth in yourself at all and you feel certain the future is not worth living for.

The future is unwritten, for us all, so the decision to slaughter ourselves is not reached through evaluating the facts. It is reached through being so lost in the ego that you believe the myths and stories it tells you.

Yet, the ego is nothing but thoughts in your head – a dance of neurons in your brain. It’s a phantom.

Becoming aware of this dysfunctional facet of mind allows you to interrupt and silence the destructive inner-dialogue.

Consider how many victims of suicide (and they are victims - of intense psychological abuse) would still be alive if they had known how to silence that angry, internal voice?

The truth is, nearly all of them.

Through the practice of present awareness/mindfulness, you can learn to dismiss the ego and dissipate its power over you. When you stop listening to its stories, it becomes benign and won’t hurt you anymore.

If you defend the ego… if you defend and personalise ‘your’ depression… it gets more powerful and becomes more dangerous. It’s like keeping and feeding a dog that you know will bite you. The more energy you give it, the stronger it gets.

Although it may not seem clear to some, we do have a choice on where to invest our energy. I know (and have experienced) it may be difficult to see that, especially if you’re in the depths of another depressive bout, but that choice really does exist. Even in your darkest days, you can switch on that light of true consciousness and chase your shadow existence away.

If you learn present awareness and reject defending the ego, you can change your life, as I’ve done.

I really don’t possess extreme willpower.

Being happy and at peace is not a hard thing to achieve. That’s the secret.

What is much, much harder is being depressed.

Life is good and always worth living. Don't let anyone - especially yourself - convince you otherwise.

If you want to read more about my journey, check out this blog:

The Cure to Depression