I am not a person who is not very good with listening to advice from others; which does not mean I am a Know-it-all. I hear them but I just don’t always apply them in real life. I am not exaggerating when I say that people who are extroverted by nature are pretty confident people. When you ask for advice, they splash you with a water gun. We will never know if the advice was something they actually believe in. Everyone has tons of free advice available in stock which they have never tested or plan on testing it themselves. But they are ready to distribute with or without fee. So I am not a very listening-to-advice kind of person.
Now this is something about myself which I don’t usually share is that I have always been a pawn in my family. A chess master has always given me instructions on what is to be done and I have followed like a sheep; Not always but mostly yes. Whenever I tried to break out of the barn, my shepherd made sure that I always got caught. I was brought back to where I was believed to belong. Living in a barn seems to be safer than running around alone in the woods right? But in reality, when I think about it, did I get any knowledge living in barn? Did I learn how to feed myself? Did I learn to detect if the wolf was near or was he hiding under a fake sheep costume? The answer is a big NO.
Why did I bring up this topic? What relation does it have with stress or comfort one might ask!? Well, you’ll know soon. My life has always been decided by others for most of my childhood, which is still okay, but my teenage and adulthood shouldn’t have been restricted. That was a mistake which I made because I was trained not to oppose. I let things happen. Did that somehow work out in my case? Again a big NO. Like Keiko orca, I struggled to make sense of the responsibility bestowed upon me when I was thrown into the wild. There was no bridging course to blend in and understand the workings of the real world. There is no blame game here, only regret that if I had enough common sense, I would have asked to know more about the actual, real world,; the difficulties, the way to survive and succeed, instead of clinging to a false, fantasy world.
Now we are getting into the real talking point which is stress and how it effects a person. Every person has different level of tolerance. When met with an adversity or a problem, each person has a different way of dealing with it. Some just run away from it, literally. Well that’s what I did in the initial days, ran away. But when faced with more and more issues on a regular basis, I put on a brave face and tried to behave like everything was completely fine. I thought I was fooling others but it took me years to understand that I was fooling myself. Some might advise that I should have gone to friends, relatives or counsellors. But, in reality, people around you cannot aid you in any way, they are mere spectators. It is the survival of the fittest in every jungle; Our concrete jungle is no exception. It was pretty late when I actually realised that, in the course of me desperately pretending things to be okay, I was actually sedimenting stress in my brain slowly. This was bad. I realised this and I panicked. I became anxious as I was actually facing a deadly problem straight upon for the first time, with no where to run. Realization of the problem took a toll off me. Then came the part where I had to ask for HELP.
Asking for help requires a lot of courage. It wasn’t easy to bring up the topic. The fear of being abandoned by our own is not a very good feeling that one has to go through. Fear of being judged, guilt and embarrassment pulls us back when we think of proceeding forward and incinerate the problem. But I had to overcome that, with great difficulty, put on a usual brave-face and ask for help regardless. Things do not go as per planned 90% of the time, but the only thing that we can do is pray. Is that right? Well yes and NO. Yes one can pray to whichever God he believes in but he must also do an important thing which is to TRY.
Trying is not an easy step, it involves analysis of the problem, understanding the cause, figure out where the problem lies. This is the time when the stress is dancing in your brain and its definitely rapping. Now our dear friend stress, calls others for company. Hence he is joined by other feelings that are close relatives of him – guilt, negativity, flashbacks (which can create more damage than all others), and depression. All these dudes play havoc in our brain, which undergoes a complete transformation. This leads to us having horrendous mood swings followed by constant crying. There will be no sign of dry-eye for a long, long, and a very long period. The waterfalls in eyes has no dedicated triggers or time, it flows without any difficulty. In spite of all these parties going on in my head, I tried. I still am. In spite of judgments, people’s nasty looks and talks, I try. It’s not easy but yes I am not a domesticated orca who will die when released in Ocean. I can learn to swim in wild waters. I can learn to adapt. I can still turn things around. Just because a person goes through stress, doesn’t mean he is a failure. Trying is good enough for a survivor. Trying can help him achieve much more success than he intends to achieve.
Now comfort is definitely a jerk. He doesn’t come to meet often and doesn’t stay long. But aren’t we all longing for comfort in our lives? Everyone is working so hard to attain a comfortable and peaceful life. Sometimes I feel, we go through a lot of issues in our lives to understand the importance of the jerk team. The jerk team has happiness, joy, smile, laughter and better health as members. Believe me, they are definitely worth fighting for.
As human beings, everyone goes through different kinds of stresses in life. Its not adviceable to run away from problems as they will later come bite your butt. A general advice for parents, siblings, care takers of kids: Teach kids about the real world and not let them live in fantasy world for long. Thanks to highly advanced technologies, we are scared of the sound of sight of a mouse at night, why not teach your kids the real nature of mice. Its a scary world, so why not arm our kids with whatever knowledge and smartness that we can teach? Today’s Kids are nerds or gamers. Kids should be street-smart not screen- glued nerds. Let’s do whatever is necessary so that the next generation doesn’t turn out to be sheep.
Thanks for spending your time reading my blog and advices.
Yours Bluestar
Nazia’s Expedition 