We live in a instantaneous and fast-moving culture with five second videos, fast-food, same-day deliveries and instant communication. We want dopamine and we want it now. We want quick fixes and instant solutions to all of our problems; hungry? Order fast-food. Bored? Scroll through countless five-second videos. Need anything you could possibly think of? Order it and you might just receive it hours later. Hate what someone tweeted? Tweet them abuse in an instant.

When we listen to quick-fix advice for healing, we do ourselves and our histories a significant disservice

Humans strive to understand. We want to know how everything works because when we don’t, we become confused and anxious. Our abilities to simplify complexities help us in some ways and hurt us in others. With this yearning to understand comes short cuts. We want to understand therefore we simplify everything to make it comprehensible and to make ourselves comfortable. Of course it’s fantastic that we have more than what people a generation ago could only dream of. However, when we attempt to simplify what shouldn’t be simplified, we run into problems. Not everything is simple, our lives included. I see many people online, on TV and in person spout instant fixes to life’s problems including trauma, pain and depression. The problem with this is that our pasts are extremely complicated and our interpretation of our pasts are murky at best. Our consciousness is not a reliable guide to what occurred yesterday, let alone a decade ago. Thus I worry deeply when individuals whittle these complex and idiosyncratic experiences down to something that can be fixed with quick techniques and warm thoughts. Trauma is a deep, deep wound that festers the more we ignore it and therefore it’s depth is directly corelated to the difficulty of healing such traumas. We cannot heal by forgetting or distracting ourselves from it. When we distract ourselves from the pain we are feeling with warm, cosy and comfy thoughts, we are ignoring the wound and allowing it to fester.

We cannot begin to heal from trauma and pain until we face it voluntarily. We cannot find our place in the world with cosy and warm thoughts but we can by accepting that the world and life itself will be hard and burdensome and hectic and painful and a struggle and anxiety-ridden. We heal not by ignoring the suffering of the world, not by convincing ourselves that it doesn’t exist to spare us fear, but to couragesly accept that pain and struggle onward. When we listen to quick-fix advice for healing, we do ourselves and our histories a significant disservice.

Keep On Struggling

Gregor

Live Album I’m Enjoying - Hans Zimmer & The Disruptive Collective Live

I came across this whilst browsing new music and it is sensational. Most of the songs you’ll know from famous movies such as Pirates of the Caribbean, Inception and The Dark Knight however these version have more grit and distortion which I loved.

Comedian I Seen Live - Jim Jeffies

I seen Jim Jeffries for the second time this week at Edinburgh’s Playhouse and he was just as good if not better than the last time. He is one of the best comedic story-tellers out there. His new Netflix special ‘High & Dry’ is out now which I’d definitely recommend.

Quote to Ponder

It is very important what not to do - Iggy Pop

References

1) Jim Jeffries Image - Jim Jeffries YouTube

2) Image Credit - Rawpixel

3) Hans Zimmer Image - Apple Music