The world's a strange, dangerous and beautiful place...

Every single day I wake up and life hits me in the face with the full force of a speeding bullet-train.

Every single day I get out of bed and the world envelopes me with its arms in a death-grip-hug that doesn't let up until the days end.

Every single day I've explored the world so far, I've found that I can do one of two things; sit back and enjoy the ride or try with all my might to get off the roller-coaster of life. Of course the latter doesn't work and of course there are days when I want nothing more than to get off the roller-coaster so that I can stop the spinning in my head and throw up copious amounts of candy-floss, but that's not to say that there aren't days when I have a choice. I am fortunate enough to so far have had plenty of choice with how I face each challenge thrown at me.

There's a problem though. It comes in the form of that phrase "sit back and enjoy the ride." It implies apathy towards actually doing anything. It implies that the status quo is something that should just be accepted and that we should enjoy life as it comes no matter what form it takes and no matter how much it might be out to make us feel like shite. But still I'd rather sit back and enjoy the ride than try and get off the ride. Right? Wouldn't anyone want to do that if they had a choice? I mean it sounds pretty neat when you think about it, doing fuck all and enjoying everything; count me in.

But still I'm uncomfortable with the doing fuck all part. It's the beauty of the human mind that I can change my viewpoint to make almost any situation seem ok and if I really wanted to expend that much energy then I can just about envision a world where everything really was ok and where I did fuck all and enjoyed it. But no matter how much viewpoint changing we do there are always going to be inconsistencies. That and it's not a practical way of living your life. I mean you could make a convincing argument for the idea that gay marriage is not ok because the bible states that marriage should be between one man and one woman (and however many goats/concubines/slaves etc.) but a problem arises when you then try and consider the viewpoint that gay marriage should be allowed because people fall in love with whoever the fuck they happen to fall in love with and they should be allowed to declare this by law just like everybody else. No matter how much mind-bending you do there isn't a situation where you can come out as being 100% ok with both sides of the argument.

And this leads me to a question... if I'm not going to sit back and enjoy the ride and I'm not going to try and get off the ride then what the hell can I do?

The only solution I can come up with is "help others enjoy the ride too."

I mean if I'm trying to get as much enjoyment out of this bumpy, vomit-inducing, fantastically beautiful ride of life™ as possible then why wouldn't I want to help other people have as great a time as I'm having? I didn't get dealt the worst hand by a long, long, long, long, long way but I've not had it the easiest either and I certainly wouldn't want for people to have a journey on a ride that's worse than mine.

This is of course at the moment not considering the fact that we're all on different rides with their own twists and turns and no-ones experience of the ride of life™ will be the same as someone else's but the point still stands; I don't want anyone to have a worse time than myself on the ride of life™ (not matter what form it takes).

Considering, then, that I want to help people enjoy the ride of life™ the next question I have to pose is why is it any of my business? I mean some people seem perfectly happy with their ride and who am I to go interfering with their enjoyment of the things they choose to do?

At first it seems blindingly obvious that one should only go messing in other people's affairs when it affects them directly. But this poses some issues. Being anti-gay marriage directly affects LGBT people but being pro-gay marriage contravenes the bible and directly affects those Christians who don't want LGBT couples to marry. So who's affairs do we go meddling in?

I'm hoping that everyone reading this chose those who are anti-gay marriage. The reason? Because being anti-gay marriage negatively affects those who would like to marry their same/multi/no-gendered partner. Now I know for a fact that there's an argument that being pro-gay marriage negatively affects those Christians who don't want LGBT couples to marry. But I'm very confused as to how someone else's happiness can negatively affect your own life. It seems like a paradox that someone else's happiness could make you unhappy. Yes there are circumstances when someone else being happy could very well make you feel crap. Like the school bully, victorious from a fight may well be very happy but at the expense of another student who we can safely assume isn't feeling so happy. But most peoples aim in life isn't to feel happy at the expense of someone else's happiness. It's to feel happy whilst allowing other people to experience happiness at the same time.

So what gives you might ask? Why should we meddle in the affairs of those who are anti-gay marriage. If they would be happier in a world without gay marriage when why should we be interfering with their ride of life™ and trying to change the way they think?

The answer comes down to the fact that on this ride of life™ numerous things can exist at the same time. It's wonderful that we live in a world where many different "groups" of people can all exist in the same country and not have to have their lives cross-paths should they not wish them to. Should gay marriage exist there is nothing that is going to force anyone to marry someone of the same/multi/no-gender. That would be preposterous. There is also nothing that is going to force you to be around people who are have married their same/multi/no-gendered partner. Of course you might have to put up with more LGBTQ+ people holding hands as they walk down the street and you might have to *gasp* work with LGBTQ+ people but in a world where certain people have to put-up with bigoted behaviour I'm sure you can put-up with occasionally having to see LGBTQ+ people show their love for each other. I mean hell, if it upsets you that much you can quite easily move to some remote southern state of America and live out your life surrounded by people who are anti-gay marriage and quite possibly never have to see an LGBTQ+ person again in your life.

Basically what I'm trying to say is that in a world where multiple different things can co-exist peacefully why should we settle for a world that is less inclusive and thus make the ride of life™ difficult for anyone? That would be silly right? Unfortunately not everyone seems to have grasped the idea that they don't have to let something interfere with their lives as much as they make out it will. Expending energy in pointing out that something might interfere with your life is about as pointless as a lactose intolerant person drinking milk to point out that they shouldn't ingest milk. By pointing out that gay marriage might affect your life you're letting gay marriage affect your life. Of course there are going to be times when gay marriage affects your life in situations beyond your control but it's the same with lactose intolerance; sometimes there's going to traces of hidden lactose that you're going to accidentally ingest. Except of course that the analogy of lactose intolerance doesn't really work because that's it's not a choice unlike being anti-gay marriage which is a choice. But you get the picture.

This is where I shoe-horn in my next point. The status quo. First of all let's see what that actually means... The existing state of affairs, esp. regarding social or political issues: "they have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo".

The existing state of affairs. From this phrase it isn't a leap of logic to understand why we have a status quo. Of course no matter what journey through the ride of life™ we take there is always going to be a majority in some areas. And even if there isn't a clear majority (as is sometimes the case) there will always be some things that come out on top because of the way that history has progressed. In the UK in 2013 monogamous, straight relationships are considered to be the 'norm' because the UK has for a very long time existed under the premise that anything outside of that would deviate too far from Christian doctrine and thus the idea that straight, monogamous relationships are 'normal' has been ingrained into people minds through many years of social conditioning. If you've never known anything outside the experiences of your life then it stands to reason that you would believe certain things to be 'normal' and other things to be 'not-normal'.

But as understandable as this is, I still find it hard to fathom the ferocity with which people will defend the status quo. Upon discovering that there are ways of thinking different to their own many people will revolt and put far much more energy into trying to defend their cosy, familiar way of thinking than they will into trying to understand this new situation that they are confronted with. Surely it would be much more productive for people to use their energy in trying to understand people rather than trying to force their horribly misguided and harmful ways of thinking on others?

Alas a large amount of people will still try and defend their tiny, little piece of life and will get very arsey when their viewpoint is challenged. And I'd say that I don't blame them if it weren't for the fact that every time I try to change someone's viewpoint the solution offered always allows multiple situations to co-exist whereas the solution offered to me usually only allows one situation to exist with someone (read: the minorities) getting the raw end of the deal.

We need to move past this black and white thinking that only one way of life can exist at a time. I mean truthfully I'd love it if I could wipe out homophobia, transphobia, bi-phobia the fear of polyamoury, and the fear of BDSM relationships but I know that it's going to be a very long time before we achieve all of that. It doesn't mean that I'm going to stop trying to wipe out each of these things but until the status quo changes  I'd totally cool if people were up for letting multiple world-views and situations co-exist at the same time so that nobody ended up getting the raw end of the deal and everybody could be as happy as possible in the current society that we live in.



Last night I spent the entire evening with two people who mean an awful lot to me. As in I spent approximately 6 hours with the two most important people in my life right now. It was beautiful. And by beautiful I mean I spent 6 hours being more comfortable than I ever have been in my whole life. It was glorious. I didn't even feel this comfortable the time I realised that wearing women's clothes wasn't just something I did for drunken nights on the town (and was completely ok with it). We talked about all kinds of things that in most social situations would be frowned upon and we enjoyed it. We were open and honest and completely non-judgemental whilst at the same time being able to express clearly if we felt uncomfortable discussing something and able move onto a different topic of conversation. I wish the whole world was like this. I understand that it's not and that it's very unrealistic to believe even for a second that this would work in everyday life, but when wanting to be open and truthful about who I am in everyday life presents itself with so many difficulties I begin to wonder where the line between having unrealistic expectations and having to close off who I am is drawn.

Should I have to compromise my happiness because it's unrealistic for me to expect everyone to be so open and understanding? I'm not sure I should. Surely my enjoyment on the ride of life™ shouldn't be impacted upon by other people and their lack of desire to let multiple different situations co-exist at the same time. If my being happy doesn't affect them directly then why shouldn't I be happy?



And right now my happiness doesn't directly affect anyone but myself and the people I love.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that.

The new year began, as usual, in a haze; a wondrously delectable haze of smoked salmon, chocolate and Jools Holland. This haze was slightly different though. It may have been something to do with my exploits of the day before or the fact that at the end of this academic year (before the next new year) I will have left university (whether I graduate or not) and I will be living in the real world.

Truth be told this thought scares me. It really fucking scares me.

This fear is not misplaced seeing as

1. I have no desire to continue my education
2. The job I want requires me to be voted into a position already filled by someone who is more than competent at what they do by some rather fickle students 
3. My only career plan is to work in a very unstable industry

However justified this fear may be it still has a noose-like grip around my throat and for the first time in a long time I'm actually beginning to feel the changes.

I'd like to think that I abide by the philosophy of "Be the change you want to see in the world" but I'm sure we'd all like to think that and quite frankly I'm going to admit that this just isn't the case most of the time. Sure you get people who do altruistic things and who believe that if that old lady or man couldn't cross the street they'd help but seriously how many people actually do things like that. I mean seriously think about it, how many times have you walked away from something and realised later that this was your chance to shine? It's probably more times than you'd like to think and right now you're probably justifying it in your head with "but I was in a hurry" or "my bag was really heavy" or some crap like that. I'm going to point out right now that there's not really any justification that makes it ok unless you're happy to admit that you're not all that bothered about helping people cross the street. (Which I believe is a selfish but ok point of view, but that's a different discussion for a different time.)

I'm going to stay it. You don't want me to but I'm going to say it. STOP PRETENDING. Shall I put it in bold? STOP PRETENDING! Does that help get the message across? I hope it does because one of the things that's worse than not doing good deeds is pretending you do good deeds.

Now before you get all offended and storm off in a huff I'm going to openly admit that I've spent a good portion of my life pretending. I've been there. I've been there with the good deed all planned out in my head and I've walked right on past the opportunity. Of course admitting it doesn't serve to do anything except make me feel better but here's the thing; if the first step in conquering a problem is admitting that it's a problem, then well I guess I'm on the way to conquering this "problem".

Now recently I took a trip into my own mind and had a good, long look at myself, my actions and the way I acted within this world. Aided by a fantastic and moving blog-post by Amanda Palmer (here) and a few infuriating Facebook updates I stumbled upon the notion that negativity begets negativity. Now of course it's something that seems quite a simple concept to grasp on the surface but once you start digging a little deeper it becomes more difficult to grasp. In light of this I'm just going to leave the phrase here, in bold, with its own paragraph so you can have a think about it.



Negativity begets negativity




Done? All right. Lets de-construct this.

So we all get what "negativity" is right? (If not then google is your friend)
And if we take "begets" to mean "breeds" or "to bring about" then surely this phrase should be really simple to understand.

Negativity brings about more negativity. In other words, anything negative causes more negativity to spread and thus a near infinite cycle of negativity is born. Right? Surely it's that simple? I'm not so sure.

I mean of course the phrase itself is that simple (and can be de-constructed no further) but it's what we do with that phrase that isn't so simple. As humans we take simple phrases and try to find a far more complicated phrase buried beneath it. That phrase might be something like "actively doing negative/horrible/terrible things will cause more people to do horrible/negative/terrible things and this is bad" and this definitely does seem like a logical response that most people would have but from a purely lexical level the phrase has now been distorted from it's original meaning.

At this point I wouldn't be surprised if you're stating to yourself that you don't do negative/horrible/terrible things and scratching your head as to why the distortion of the phrase makes it any worse.

I'll put it this way. You might not do negative/horrible/terrible things and you may not even say negative/horrible/terrible things but chances are you've thought them. That's no crime though and I'm sure you're still probably wondering what I'm wittering on about so I'll explain further. Just because something isn't said out-loud or acted upon doesn't make it go away.

Here's another way of looking at it... If I leave an open can of beans in my kitchen it will eventually grow mould. The more mould that grows the faster it will grow mouldy and the more dangerous the beans become to eat. Plucking out one or two mouldy beans after the first signs of mould could save most of the can, if you have to throw away half of it, it's probably best not to even think about eating the rest. Now at this point the mould hasn't done anything except grow. It hasn't made me ill, it hasn't killed me, it hasn't spread, it hasn't started annoying me with bad puns, all it's done is grow. Now if I were to leave it there long enough and leave a slice of bread next to the can eventually the bread would become mouldy and eventually the mould would spread from one to the other.

"But I never let my negativity get that bad" I hear you cry. I call bullshit. You never intend to let your negativity get that bad but like helping old ladies cross the street it's something you wish you had more of a handle on and can "explain away" really easily.

Negativity is like mould. It grows, and grows, and grows and if you don't do anything about it, it eventually spreads. Now of course it spreads a lot faster and does a lot more harm if it comes into contact with anything.

Say for instance my housemate doesn't realise my beans are mouldy and decides (stupidly) to eat them (lets just pretend they're eating them cold and aren't looking, so don't see the mould). This would send the mould right into their stomach and would probably either make them throw up and/or become quite ill. Do you see where this is going? No? Let me spell it out for you.


Negativity is the same as mould, it will grow and grow and grow and regardless of whether someone comes into contact with it, it will spread.


So we've established that negativity breeds more negativity and along the way we've (hopefully) understood that this isn't a good thing. But what next? I mean this is already coming off as preachy but without a solution it's just going to go downhill right?


This is the point where I point out that every coin has two sides. If negativity begets negativity then surely positivity begets positivity.

Well yeah, that makes logical sense.

Unfortunately though here comes the difficult part. You might be thinking along the lines of "well I'm a generally positive person, I have my up days and my down days but I get along being mostly positive" and you'd be in the majority to think that your life was as such. Unfortunately though the reality is usually a little more harsh than that. Think about it. Really, think about it. How many times have you posted a Facebook/Twitter status about how pissed of you are at 'x' or how 'y' is a bitch but you're going to struggle on regardless. It's probably a large number.

That is ok though. I mean it.

It's ok.

We all do it.

It's like we've been bred as a society to respond negatively to everything (and no adding a positive clause at the end does not banish the negativity).

I have no idea where this negativity comes from but I'm goddamn sure we're not helping ourselves at all by wallowing in it. Currently we're rolling around like pigs in dirt, swimming in negativity and telling ourselves it's all ok because we know that we're grateful for our lives and that whilst 'z' might be bothering us everything's really hunkey dorey. The problem is, is that by telling ourselves everything is ok we're making it more and more ok to wallow in negativity and thus the near-infinite cycle of negativity continues.

We genuinely need to stop telling ourselves that despite 'w' everything's ok and just tell ourselves that everything's ok.

Case in point. The other day I was about to status update on how stressed I was about revising for exams but that it was ok because I have an amazing girlfriend and a fun night ahead of me. Then I stopped for a second. I deleted what I'd just written and in its place I put "I have an amazing night ahead of me with the woman I love" and right there everything changed. The revision didn't go away. Neither did the stress about exams. But in that singular moment revision and exams were no longer a problem because I had something so fantastical to look forward to that stress wasn't even on my list of things to think about.

"But how can it be that simple?" you cry. Trust me I haven't worked that one out yet but who cares, you just have to believe me when I tell you it works and put it into practise.


Negativity begets negativity.

So stop it. Stop it right in its tracks. Right now.

Delete that negative status update, delete that cruel blog/youtube/twitter comment and change it to something positive.

I dare you.


Peace

xx

Quote of the day: Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. - Martin Luther Jr.

Song of the day: John Lennon - Give peace a chance