Bitterness: Savaged by the Black Dog

It can be a strange game, life. Sometimes things go your way, sometimes they don't. Some days you're right on your game, other times you can be just left floundering in the wind, not matter how hard you try. You can be brilliant in moments unheard or seen by others, or woefully poor or plain stupid in the presence of an onlooking crowd. These are the ups and downs, the stage we live our life on. It gives us moments of joy and riches of embarrassment, but it does give.

There is nothing so difficult for a human being to endure though, no feeling as debilitating to a psyche, to twist and tear the will of an individual and wreck lifes natural equilibrium, than internal bitterness of the mind.

There is often a root cause of these feelings, and a stage of development and maturing that comes from reflection. Mine came over a period of months, linked to service reviews ongoing in the organisation I work in. Where there are too many people and not enough jobs, there are always going to be casualties. I was one of them. That's hard enough, and yes, I looked around at those successful in maintaining their employment and thought I was better than most.

However, aside from the disappointment and the fact I was good at my job and had passion and ability to deliver, the bitterness was about how  I was treated afterwards (apart from one or two colleagues). It was like I didn't exists, I was a thorn, a problem that the organisation wanted to get rid of. Add in a manager who showed little will to get me through the next bit of the process and you start to wonder what you had done wrong, other than give your all and fall at the final hurdle. It waslike everything had closed  ranks around me.

It was a torrid time, and there was much water that passed under the bridge. I was swept away by someof the currents and felt smashed against trees and stones, dragged under to the point where I felt like was being drowned...being willed to drown.

All the time, I was reflecting, thinking, analysing. All the time, I was trying to work out why I deserved to be treated like I was. For the first time I felt like a number. Over the months that followed I felt like my dignity had been slowly stripped away. In local government the process can be long. I hung in. I told myself it wasn't any one individual, or group; rather it was just a sign of the times.

But it gets you, that reflection, when you live and question dawning everyday. When any certainty you once had about what was coming that day, waslost to you, and no plans could be made. When you robotically turn in at the office and try be you, when you no longer know who you are, give all that you can and it actually adds up to nought, because you're lost and drifting. That's the bitterness taking hold. It suffucates you, slowly squeezing the life out of who you were,  until you don't know who that person is anymore.

It all sounds very dramatic, doesn't it? And I guess on reflection it is. But there is light. For anybody going through something similar, whether work or life in general (and I've had scrapes there too), leave the bitterness behind.

It's easy said here, it's harder to do in real life. But you've got to do it, otherwise it will destroy - it has that power! What I can say is that, I'm winning. I'm taking all that angst, fury and negativity and seeing a new me. I'm off my backside, going to the gym, writing, playing with the kids, enjoing my time spent with the wife. For every positive emotion I generate through this, and I started with very little, I push a little more bitterness out. One. Small. Piece. At. A. Time. For every step on the treadmill, every weight I lift, the exchange rate is quickened - positive in, negative out. My mental state is changing, my  creativity is coming back, my will developing, my staminer for the fight building.

Do I still feel bitter? Of course I bloody do. I think there will always be some bitterness there. It's how we use it that counts, how we recognise that this can't go on for ever and something must be done to change our world.

Read what I've started to do, by looking at some of my earlier blog posts, or My Health Chart. Take what you've read here, and use it as context for what I've started to do. Follow my path, or your own, but don't follow the path of bitterness, or the black dog might savage you.

I'm going to post more on how I internalise things, and how I am starting to release myself from them, and other feelings detrimental to my health and wellbeing.

'IF' is the most important word I know!

I don't know if it's strange that one of my biggest inspirations is a poem, but it is. 'IF', by Rudyard Kipling pretty much says it all to me. Over the years it has acted as a mantra, if you like, to the way I want to live my life. It is difficult to quantify the power of words, and  I can't say that the whole poem inspires my ways. However, there are elements that act as inspiration for truth, others as a reminder to be strong even if that means to do so in silence, and there are parts that are a reminder that man is feeble.

Yet, I have recognised my own feebleness as a man, in that there are elements here I still endeavour to master. They fit with so closely with the way I am as an individual, and are the very things about me which I am trying to change.

Read the poem, in my opinion it is both beautiful and dark, attainable through hard work only, with little room for laziness if its goals are to be achieved. It requires physical action of the individual to complete it; the capacity of the mind to understand its doctrine is not enough, you must give the mind strength and energy through physical application of making your body healthier. Then, and only then, can your mental wellbeing and strength of personality begin to shine through.

This is difficult for lazy man, but I'm working on it. The poem in full I have put below, the lines I am focusing on are these: "If you can dream - and not make dreams your master. If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim"

I dream of being in control of myself and have done for many years; I'm starting to gain that control now as I venture forward on my mission to better physical health, mental health, and all round wellbeing. I have thought about many things I would like to do (write, paint, create, maybe have my own business one day), and these thoughts are becoming more about possibilities, real opportunities, all through this greater sense of a developing wellbeing and self worth, because of my physically and mentally taking control of me, rather than some kind of weird societal control exerted upon me!

Enjoy 'IF', by Rudyard Kipling 

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise: If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!