I’m sitting in a quiet room with just the soft dripping of my mist-maker next to me and the sounds of cheery conversation in the corridor outside. I’m trying not to feel a thing, but the stupid tears keep relentlessly falling.

My insignificant little world has finally imploded and I am left with the guilt that I feel so awful right now while people back home have such larger problems. I’m certain their larger problems are contributing to my ‘world’, so I suppose what I’m really feeling is an implosion of my world and theirs by proxy.

Still, homeless people and disabled people and people with no family, all of this can’t compare. How dare I sit here with tears streaming down my face and a coffee mug on my living room table while typing on my Mac under my warm cosy duvet. How dare I?

Funny that, the shitty feeling isn’t gone yet. I’m intellectually aware of the ‘mechanics’ of what I’m feeling – that it is merely my ego making me feel this way, that I have no right to feel this way with so many blessings in my life, and that I am an observer. Yet, in such moments of implosion, sometimes all we want is a frikken hug or something. For someone to tell us ‘it’s going to be ok, this too shall pass’ – right?

Thing is, there’s no-one here.

Because really, at the end of the day, you can have as many friends as you like and a loving family and people that dote on you when all is well. But when the chips are down, when your little world is picked apart, word by word, snide remark by snide remark, bad decision by bad decision – who is there to help you stay okay for the few minutes where you finally realise that you’re falling apart?

Nobody.

Few *actually* know and so, few *actually* care.

And so the reality of it all is once again thrusted upon us in such moments:

We only have ourselves and God. You can insert whatever you want where it says God. The principle remains the same. Best we get along with ourselves, we’re all we’ve got. That has to be okay and it’s going to be okay because we are always stronger than we think we are, especially when the Singularity approaches :)

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Stop for a second and think of something good – anything. Sit still and feel the tingling in your fingertips. There’s blood running through your veins. It means you’re alive! I’m sitting here typing this and I’m wondering what to say and wondering why I feel like writing in the first place and what the point even is. But in the end, what really matters is that I’m alive and that’s a good start.

Lately things have been complicated for people dear to me. Those I love have been in great distress and saying so soon that there’s a positive to it all would be treading too near to disrespect for the situation. But what has been gained since it all began can be summed up in one word: perspective.

That little fingertip feeling exercise up above had method behind its madness. It’s what you can do whenever things seem to be spiralling out of control. Maybe life seems to be falling apart at the seams and you can’t figure out how you got to where you are and how you didn’t get to where you were supposed to be.

It’s my birthday today and I spent quite some time contemplating how wrong life went. But you know what? My life went right too! In many, many ways. Who would have said I’d be working with a Ferrari F1 car’s lap data in my lifetime? Who would have said I’d have ever sung Mozart’s Queen of the Night in my lifetime? I certainly didn’t think much of each little achievement in my life at the time that it occurred. But take each little accomplishment you’ve made and sum them all up in retrospect. Do it!….you’re not doing it….ok you’re done adding? Cool. Read on.

You will find that those achievements are really actually quite incredible. All of them. All the tiny ones you thought were nothing – they weren’t nothing, they were something akin to little miracles. Considering you were just a little blob of baby mucous at some point chilling in some blood and juice-stuff in someone’s stomach. Mmmm…. perspective, no?!

My point? Well, life is exactly what it is and there’s not a damned thing you or I can do to alter the choices we have made over the years.

I can affect the repercussions though.

I can mitigate future risks.

I can choose to be happy, regardless of what drama might be going on in my headspace.

I can choose to move forward and not dwell on yesterday’s cockups.

I can choose to feel the blood run through to the tips of my fingers.

I can choose life.

I hope someone will read this and remember to appreciate the little things in life sometimes, particularly when everything seems to be or really is going wrong. We don’t all have to walk around with Cheshire cat grins painted on our masks. Sometimes life seems to suck and that’s all there is to it.

Try bounding up to a depressed person and teling them to ‘look on the bright side – you’re *alive* Jonny!!’.

As if.

I don’t mean to belittle anyone’s problems in my words here. Our problems are both large and small depending on who’s perspective you’re looking from. What I do intend to say is that it is important to go back to basics once in a while.

Start from life. Blood flow (err, so long as it’s still *inside* you and all..) is a good start. Sit with that for a while. Any reprieve from drama is better than none at all.

And then smile.

…Fake smiles work too  if mustering a genuine one is asking a bit much (hey, it happens) :)

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Tonight I had the good fortune of walking home in the pouring rain. I am not being sarcastic, there is something almost ‘meditative’ in the act of walking in the rain. And yes, here I actually have to walk everywhere or get on a tram/train/bus …but those are pretty far apart so you land up walking a fair amount in a day. To a European this is of course completely normal and they probably think I’m a little , err, touched that I bang on about walking so much.

Nonetheless, tonight I felt a sort of peace about me which I would like to document. An inexplicable sense of happiness. Sure, I am a happy person, it just seemed like tonight was special. Probably because I was alone on a Friday night. I sat watching the Swiss from the outside, totally extrapolated from their laughs and conversations and group-think. I have grown to really like the Swiss, as a generalisation. For anyone who knows me well enough, it was a somewhat near-obsession of mine to be with a German. Don’t ask. I am proud to announce, however, that I got over *that* thing, a certain pretty insanely hardcore German President first bodyguard helping a little along the way. Aaaanyway, enough on that.

After my little nerd night out skyping my sister, reading about the quantum nature of the universe under a ‘floating’ bookshelf spanning an entire hall, filled with Rudolf Steiner works; and drinking my organic, Fairtrade, sweetened-with-agave rooibos iced tea… I figured it was time to get home. That and the fact that my phone was about to die. Can I also at this juncture mention that it is categorically one of the most liberating feelings to NOT have that surge of sheer panic come over you when you realise your phone is flat and you are nowhere near home. For me it’s not a deal at all, just get on the tram and walk home. Alone. In the dark. This is life.

After I left my nerd-haven, I sat at the bus stop, pretty much externally drenched, with AWOLNATION’s ‘Sail’ on repeat in my ears. Don’t ask. I sat there entirely in my own world, yet completely a part of it, simulatenously. And I looked up and saw such a beautiful, majestic sight: The 13th Century Basel Rathaus in all its glory with rain pouring in front of it shining through the street lamp far up in the night sky.

Somehow, looking at the light through the rain tonight comforted me. It was beautiful, it was powerful. And it was wet.

Sometimes the wave we’re on in some period of our life might be all of those things. Beautiful, powerful. And wet. Ok, I’ll stop. Jokes aside, your wave might not be what you want for now. But it is beautiful and it is powerful. It has power to transform you for the better. And its beauty will spread to you.

Use the light to look through the rain.

You will see great things in that moment, feel awesome power and find profound peace.

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Someone doesn’t have to be literally telling you what to do to be ‘telling’ you what to do. It can be slightly more insidious than that. They could use passive aggressive behaviour to subtly let you, as a total stranger, know that if you ever try to pet their fluffy Husky in the streets of Venice again you may land up sleeping with the fishes. For real, true story. Anyway, dog petting aside, threats arise in all manner and form and best we all be wary of their possible sources. Ourselves included.

Is someone making your life that little bit more uncomfortable because you aren’t doing what their idea of the correct thing is? More importantly, are you making someone else’s life a little bit more difficult because they aren’t making your idea of a correct decision?

For sure, there are times when it’s fairly obvious by society’s general standard of living, what the right thing to do is. Feeding someone that’s hungry is generally a nice thing to do, slamming someone’s foot in a door not so much. Compromising within a relationship context or at work is useful, where an overall goal literally is more important than team members’ individual egos and life fulfilment goals. There’s a time and a place for every hypothesis.

But do be sure to apply the principle to everything from ‘should I take that job because Sarah thinks I should, even though I’d rather chew on rusty nails?’ to ‘Beer, Vodka, Coke or gluten-free Beer?’. The choices should all come from within YOU. And nobody else.

You are the person that has to wake up in your skin everyday, with your soul, with your dreams and aspirations or comfortable lack thereof and with your conscience. We can’t possibly begin to truly contribute to society until we are content in our own skin. Let’s all try remember that next time we bend to someone else’s will unnecessarily.

The trick is finding the balance between necessary compromise and unnecessary bend-age.

No unnecessary *bend-age peeps!

*Totally a new word, woo hoo…

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