Contentment

Do you ever feel completely content with life? Do you ever just have one day where everything seems okay, everything seems to have fallen into place. Even if it’s just for one day.

Even if it’s 1a.m. and you’re lying in bed and looking around your room and just for the moment, everything seems right.

The problem with feeling content is that it never lasts too long. I see a lot of people saying they feel content and the next day it’ll be the opposite. It’s funny that you can feel so content one day and the next you may feel like you’re falling apart; I feel like we should live for that content feeling, we should remember how it felt and that it’s possible for everything to be okay.

I know that it would be hard (but not impossible) to constantly feel okay, to constantly feel at peace with your life - this is why contentment is such a great feeling. You know that you’re okay.

Perhaps you’ve started something new and you’re succeeding at it and it’s making you feel good; maybe you stuck to your schedule; maybe something generally amazing happened that put all your worries aside and you just feel happy. Anything can make you feel content, it’s just what breaks that feeling that I find to be the problem, so I prefer not to focus on it.

When you feel content, it’s almost like life has come to give you a hug and pat you on the back, as though you’ve achieved something; even if you haven’t. It’s that moment where you just wish everything could stay as it is because you wouldn’t mind feeling that for the rest of your life. 

Contentment is defined as ‘a state of happiness and satisfaction’ which, in truth, can be found in mostly anything, so why do we feel it so little? In my opinion, it’s because the more we get, the more we want. It is said that the richer you are, the less giving you are with money because you have more so you want more; of course I am not saying this is true for everyone. I feel like we should all realise that we could have nothing, or a lot less than we have now and just appreciate what we have. It would be hard for me to say ‘look, your life is good, appreciate that’ because I know I’d be a hypocrite to say such thing because, my life is good but sometimes I don’t appreciate that.

It’s only moments like this that make me realise I’m fine and I’m okay and one day I’ll be sat in my own kitchen eating breakfast at 11am on a Sunday morning and regardless of whether I’m alone, with a partner or a family, I’ll have made it. This is how I get through the hard times - I think of contentment and how one day I will be content with life and what I have and I will have made it. All the hard times, all the worries of ‘will I go to uni?’ or ‘will I make it through college?’ will one day be over. And, in all honesty, I think it’s what everyone should live for. Don’t live for your best friends or your pet dog, live for the day where you look back and feel happy that you stayed. Live for the feeling of contentment every day.

Dreaming

I love dream theories and when people look up the meaning behind their dreams and take things from it. I love the idea of writing your dream down as soon as you wake up and then being confused three days later. It’s something I aim to do next year.

But, the best thing about dreams? In my opinion, it’s that, even now, scientist don’t know why we dream. As I said, I love dream theories, I love reading about why people think we dream, however out of blue or well thought out they are. I thought I’d share some with you. (If you’re not into science I really hope these make sense and you enjoy these because it may get very science-y).

1) Wish Fulfilment.

This is a theory that claims that whatever we dream, happy, sad, scary or dull, is us granting ourselves wishes we have now or had in the past. I like this idea, the idea that we once wanted (or currently want) something that maybe we cannot get in reality so instead our brain functions whilst we sleep in a way that allows us to create a scenario in which we achieve that wish. We get what we wanted.

2) Dreaming is a random by-product of REM sleep.

In which dreaming serves no actual purpose. REM stands for rapid eye movement, it is characterised by quick, random movements of the eyes and paralysis of the muscles, therefore dreaming occurs as a by-product of this. It is not necessary, it serves no purpose and has no meaning in the long run.

3) The"reverse learning" theory.

This theory suggests that we dream to be rid of undesirable connections (or associations) that build up in our brain. As if our dreams are a garbage collection mechanism. It says we dream to forget, to eliminate information overload. If there is something we do not wish to remember, it goes in the ‘garbage collection’ into a dream and is forgotten. (Which seems odd to me, seeing as we remember our dreams a lot of the time).

4) Consolidating what we’ve learnt.

Contradicting the previous theory, this one says we dream to remember. It is based on many studies and explains that we retain information better when we dream about what we’ve learnt. If there is something about our day, or week, that we ‘need’ (or want, I assume) to remember, it becomes a dream and we remember it.

5) Painful emotions = symbolic associations.

To me, this suggests that our dreams help us to link certain emotions with a thing. So, your dreams deal with certain emotions, but emotions do not specifically cause dreams. It means that when we go through a certain emotion we are more likely to have a dream related to that emotion, or an opposite emotion.

I feel like that was as least science-y as I could make it.

Whilst personally, I cannot identify with many of these theories, I am not dismissing them. They all intrigue me and make sense in their own right and maybe they all have impacts on us. As someone who enjoys the science behind everyday things and also researching things, I find it fascinating that such an obvious thing as dreaming does not yet have a definitive reason or explanation.

If you research a little deeper, you can find so many websites with their own explanation, or a list of explanations as to why we dream, but why do we not have one that everyone knows? Mainly, of course, because science has not yet developed the technology to discover such thing but as science improves and new things appear every week, what happens when we do know? Won’t it be scary to know what is causing these dreams that are so abstract and often weird? Will it be exciting, perhaps we could create our own dreams, further than lucid dreaming¹, beyond anything before? I feel it could be somewhere between the two but I feel like it won’t be too long before we truly know the science between dreaming.

¹A dream in which you are aware you are dreaming, you can learn to lucid dream and therefore chose your dreams, I believe.

You Are Art

Have you ever looked deep into someones eyes?
Have you ever looked at your veins close up?
Have you ever looked at human tissue or a cell under a microscope?
Have you ever just taken a second to look at how beautiful humans are?
You probably hear this a lot, especially if you’re on tumblr; but honestly, I find every part of a human so beautiful and artistic. I’ve noticed the connection between the human body (inside and out) and the sky or the galaxy. Honestly, they’re not different at all and once you notice this I feel like you can take a different view of the world.

Some people draw art, some people are art.

Everyone is beautiful and every part of a human is art, is poetry.

I cannot describe how it feels to look at someone after you realise that you’re just made up of so many atoms just like the night sky. There is all these tiny atoms, whirling around to make up a human and you are stardust. You have stars in your eyes and galaxies running through your veins. You are beautiful and nothing can take that away from you. You represent the galaxy because you are your own galaxy, your own infinity and this is all you should ever view yourself as.

I take biology at college and you wouldn’t believe how many cells there are just looking out for you, each doing their own thing to make sure you survive and to make sure you’re doing okay. Fighting infection, killing bad bacteria. They all just want you to be okay, they’re all there just to protect you and I like that.

These cells inside you (which, themselves, look beautiful under microscopes) work so hard to keep you looking healthy, to keep you feeling okay.

I think my favourite post on tumblr is one that compares human features, which are usually ‘looked down upon’ compared to flowers to show that you are beautiful. Have you ever looked at a flower and found it unattractive or displeasing? I haven’t. Similarly, humans are all beautiful, every single one of them. Maybe you find someone unattractive but that doesn’t mean they aren’t beautiful, does it? 

The great thing about the human brain is that everyone’s is wired differently, just because one person doesn’t find you good looking doesn’t mean no one else will and you’ll never spend your life being unattractive.

Please do not let anyone tell you that you’re not good enough because you have galaxies inside of you, growing and increasing, you are a human with a life and you will always be good enough; no matter what anyone says. All the time you’re making an effort to be a good human, you are a good human. No one and nothing will ever take the stars from inside you so never let anyone take the glimmer from your eyes as you speak about something you love. Don’t let anyone tell you that sparkle isn’t enough; everything about you is good enough.

Never forget that.

Spring

As February draws to a close and March is just around the corner, spring appears to be breaking through. I like these last weeks of February, you still have a  slight windchill factor but the sun is out and the clouds are minimal. Whilst the weather is mostly unpredictable and you can never tell one day from the next, I feel like the end of winter is the best part, the calm of knowing that soon you will be surrounded by the perfect blossoms and warmer weather.

March 20th shows the start of spring and whilst that is still just under a month away, preparation is key. Spring is beautiful, everything is alive and well. Flowers bloom and the trees grow again, it’s as if everything has come to life.

Spring is the best time for walks along the beach, it’s not overwhelming heat but it’s nice enough and the sea still looks beautiful. Waking up in the morning isn’t dull and dark, there’s a light that awakens you and brings you out of bed without the thought of wanting to go straight back to your slumber.

I sometimes struggle when the ‘what’s your favourite season’ question comes up, usually I say autumn but when spring comes around I question myself and wonder what is so beautiful in the death of the trees when you can see the rebirth with the warm weather; the happiness that comes around with no fear of an early darkness surrounding you.

Spring is the time to put all your words into action; plan in winter and move forward in spring. Use the better conditions to make progress in your projects; take motivation from the way everything is growing and use it to grow for yourself. The air is fresh and clean, with plants working for us so work with them.

With an extra spring in your step, anticipate summer and be prepared for the break it brings. Remember how you felt in winter and improve on it. Spring and autumn become the ‘in between’ seasons, waiting for summer or winter, but I feel that they are the nicer seasons, somewhat calmer.

It’s strange how the seasons change slowly but they’re so different and each so beautiful in themselves. But spring, spring the start of new life, it brings around new beginnings and you should embrace them in every way you can. Embrace spring and be at one with spring.

A great excerpt I’ve found from an Ernest Hemingway book is:

“With so many trees in the city, you could see the spring coming each day until a night of warm wind would bring it suddenly in one morning. Sometimes the heavy cold rains would beat it back so that it would seem that it would never come and that you were losing a season out of your life.”

I find it so accurate, sometimes it feels like spring is never coming but if you wait, it will come, it always comes and yet every year we await it.