You can't unsee that

You can't unsee things.

This is probably one of the main tenets of my life.

Say what you will. I firmly believe that our brain records every single thing that we see. There is some research that corroborates this. I'm not going to find it for you, but it's there. It's part of how dreams can be explained. All the weird shit and random people. It's not random at all. It's something or someone you saw during the day. And you don't remember. But your brain does.

It's why I hate movie previews on TV and think that horror movie previews, especially, should have a warning at the beginning. I object to being subjected, against my will and without any notice, to alarming and disgusting imagery. Because it doesn't go away. Ever.

That creepy frog suit in that Japanese movie that one time? The one where some asshole hired a prostitute and then tortured her with a hair dryer? Yeah. That's not going away. Ever.

Once upon a time I was an older sister to a brother ten years younger than I am. He was of a sensitive nature and he did not know, for a long time, the difference between what was real and what was on TV. Scary stuff was seriously scary to him. Creepy things were real. It was all real. It used to tear me up inside when other members of the family would make fun of him and completely disregard this condition. It makes sense to me now. Nothing "sensitive" was allowed in our household. He was taunted, told to get a grip or whatever. I don't remember the exact words used, but no one ever made an effort, let's say, to avoid scary, violent, or gross things so that this kid could catch a break.

My little cousins of about the same age as this brother thought that horror movies were funny. Yeah, I know. Tons of people do. Haha. Hilarious. I do not. I despise anything gratuitous and 99.9% of horror movies fall into that category. We do not need them. They open doors we do not need to open. And we cannot unsee them. At my grandparents' house, my deranged cousins (we are talking less than 10 years old here) would turn on a horror movie - my grandparents would do nothing - and my cousins would laugh while my little brother would witness in, well, horror. I would beg for them to turn it off.

Mostly, my pleas fell on deaf ears.

And they still do.

Ya'll. You can't unsee this shit. Ever.

My boyfriend watches YouTube and I told him I don't appreciate the video compilations that do not give you any indication if you are about to see something funny, weird, gross, violent, what? I asked him not to watch them around me. I don't like being surprised with something abhorrent and degenerate that I cannot unsee. I can't help this. It's the way I've always been. Keep it away from me.

Once upon a time I lived in California. A boyfriend and I went to San Francisco and walked through the Haight-Ashbury district. At that time anyway, there was a string of seedy shops selling demonic-type merchandise. You know, I can handle some of it, skulls and dragons and whatnot, but the way these items were presented, it was grungy and scary. I had to stand outside with the homeless people.

This was years ago but I've never forgotten it. I can see the store displays in my mind's eye. That night, we went to a club. It must have been close to Halloween. It was the first time I ever saw someone wearing those very realistic devil's horns. Creeped the shit out of me. As it was meant to, I get it, and in the flickering orange and black light of the club, with the music pulsing, it was very effective. I admire a realistic costume, yet at the same time I apparently have a stronger belief that costumes should look like...costumes. Not real. Maybe it's that same line that my little brother had trouble crossing. They merge together, the real and the unreal, and it's too disturbing for me. The first Halloween I spent with my second husband (yeah, just don't even try to keep up), he warped his face into a zombie costume. It was so effective, he completely transformed his appearance with just a couple of devices, and no longer looked at all like the man I'd married just a few months earlier.

It did not do wonders for our love life. Not then and not after. I couldn't get that out of my head.

Most of you think this doesn't bother you. I know. You agree or disagree that your brain records and remembers everything. You think that the violence and gore and creep factor present in our daily lives is not damaging and does not affect you in any long-term or negative way.

I think you are wrong. 

Now I do not put sex into this. Rape scenes, yes, of course. Forced sex, yes. But consensual sex, no. I'm not a prude. And I think that those parents that freaked out when their children saw two seconds of porn on a highway billboard are stupid and ridiculous. Part of the problem with this country is how we shield our children from sex but flood them with violence. How is that okay? It's sad, is what it is.

But that's leading into a whole other topic.

The message here is. Be careful what you see. You cannot unsee it. To that end, think about what it is we as a society are allowing ourselves to see, what we think it's okay to see and for our children to see. Think about the huge mental health problem we have, the kids in juvie, the people on the streets.

Connection?

Why not choose beauty?

Plato believed that humans were so pliable that we should only subject ourselves to things that encouraged us to be our best selves. He believed in censorship. I don't want anyone determining what I can or cannot see - but I do want to be able to make the choice and not have it made for me.

My little brother has led a troubled life. And I will always remember those days when I begged my family to turn off the horror movie on the TV. I don't say that I knew best. But I knew better.

You can't unsee those things. Ever.

I discovered that I'm hygge

So I read that book. You know. The one everyone is reading. It's like the new Kon Marie but with books allowed. All things "hygge" by the CEO of the Happiness Research Institute in Denmark, the happiest country in the world, and aren't they the lucky ones?

While living in a welfare state will not be a part of my existence anytime soon or ever, I did discover while reading this book that I am pretty good at hygge. Hygge works best as an antidote to whatever is stressful in life. It's finding - and deliberately creating - little pockets of security and comfort to get you through your daily life - your daily existence. It's not a "big fix" - it's everyday happiness, which apparently is what we should all be prizing a lot more than those big events/goals/rewards that we so avidly seek. Hygge needs the storm to be the calm inside the storm. It doesn't really exist without something to be sheltering FROM. And it helps if you already live somewhere where the weather is shite. As this naturally inclines you to stay indoors and practice hygge, to like warm clothes and warm drinks, and etc.

I do live in a place where the weather is perhaps similar to that in Denmark, yet a big thing not hygge about me is that I do prefer summer. Summer is less hygge but it is not impossible to be hygge in summer as you can still find those precious moments, still take in the beauty of the natural, still spend quality time with a few close friends or family. (Hygge is introverted not extroverted and Denmark is an introverted country compared to the U.S. which is highly extroverted. Therefore, the best hygge occurs with an ideal of 2-3 companions, no more).

To go along with my preference for summer, I am not hygge in that I prefer summer clothes. I love flip flops and summer dresses. I don't care about cozy sweaters or woolen socks (sorry happiness dude). In fact, please keep wool as far away from me as possible. If I can go without socks, even in winter, I will. I have a collection of soft socks, and I find them imperative to life, so that's hygge, but I'd rather take them off.

That's it though. Apart from that, I'm pretty hygge.

I love coffee and the smell of coffee. For the Danes, the number one hot drink is coffee and hot drinks are the number one way to enjoy hygge. FYI.

I combine landmark events with special purchases. Heck, these days, as my budget is extremely condensed, nearly every purchase is a special purchase. As in I plan for a month at least before buying something. In this book about hygge it is recommended to save special purchases for a time when you can associate them with something special that happened to you - so that ever after you will combine the two things in your mind. Every time you sit in that favorite chair, you will remember how you won that contest or made that big deal or whatever. I'm big into rewarding myself, which is how I would call it instead, so I make a purchase as a reward for achieving some goal post in my career, for instance. So I can indeed look around my house and associate a large number of my belongings with important events. Hygge.

While I don't care about winter clothes, I do love a cozy blanket. Cozy blankets and fireplaces are big in hygge. Fireplaces are a bit of a no-brainer and we are fond of them in the U.S. I have one now, and do spend hours sitting in front of it and playing with it. I'm a fire sign and I believe that women are attracted to fire as the outward manifestation of the fire inside of us. I once watched a little girl approach one of those garbage can fires around which several of us were gathered during a winter art festival. The fascination. The hypnotic pull. The wonder. The glee. It was all there. Then her dad pulled her away. I was so pissed. At that moment, grumpy stick-in-the-butt dad put out her fire.

Keep your fires lit ladies!

Anyway. Moving on.

I love quiet. Quiet is best for hygge because you can HEAR. I know, right? Hygge likes music, of course, music is cozy, but quiet is good for hearing the birds, the water, all the good noises. In the reverse, I require a lot of white noise assistance to block out the crap. The airplanes, the loud cars, the sirens, the talking, the dog barking, the TV....I love quiet and am very sensitive to noise. Complication arises since so many noises don't sit right with me and because, I think due to a maternal instinct, and apparently due to the lack of boundaries other people displayed around me when I was growing up, I need to listen in order to protect myself and others. I'm often conflicted between the need for quiet and thus the need to turn on a fan to block out the crap and my need to hear if anyone is sneaking up on me. Sigh.

I put wine in anything I can and enjoy sitting down for a glass of wine, in a corner, with a book - and a cozy blanket. If possible, by a window. Apparently, this combination is like the grand prize of hygge. Hygge prefers sweet food and adding wine to your entree counts for this. You also often add wine to a dish that has to simmer a bit - hygge likes food that takes time to cook. Now, I'm not that big into dishes that take a long time to cook. I don't care about sourdough or anything else you have to baby or monitor over a long period of time. So in that sense I'm anti-hygge. And probably just American. But I do add wine and I do drink wine, one glass, around dinner-time.

When I was a kid I thought bay windows were the gods' gift to mankind. I'm a reader so that's natural. Like any avid reader I seek out little nooks, and I do love to sit by a window but it doesn't need to be a bay window anymore. I'm over that. But I am still keenly aware of design - and good design. I haven't made a concerted effort to include good design in my life (apparently the Danes call their TV shows "furniture porn" and will happily drop over a thousand bucks for a good lamp), but I am painfully aware of its absence and I sure do know what it is. I think fluorescent lighting is a curse and I understand that natural is better than artificial. Everything around me doesn't need to be made out of wood, I'm not that into "the rustic," but I can wabi sabi you all day long. And I get that those artificial flickering candle things a friend just gave me for Christmas are fun - but they are not hygge. We are using them anyway cuz glitter and sparkly lights can still make you feel cozy and secure - Christmas is the favorite hygge holiday - so Christmas-y type lights must be ok (the Danes tend to light candles instead). Hygge is what makes you feel secure in an insecure world. So if it's artificial colored lights then what-have-you.

Also, pockets of light. My boyfriend is unconsciously hygge in that he has stocked his apartment with standing lamps versus overhead lighting. Hygge prefers diffuse and indirect light.

Books. Now, the CEO of happiness did not mention how many. I am guessing being messy with your books is not hygge. A well-stocked and artistically laid out bookshelf is probably best. Kon Marie only allows 30 books, or so says the latest meme. That's crazy to a book lover. So while I doubt hygge promotes having sloppy piles of books or tons of books you will never read, I'm probably hygge in that I have a healthy set of bookshelves that are arranged attractively - and I have read all of them or only have a handful waiting to be read.

It's a challenge to be hygge in an extroverted world. A lot of people need noise. My boyfriend has just come home from a breakfast run to Chinatown. That's hygge, I think. Making a special trip to get a specific thing for breakfast because you wake up craving it and because that food brings you comfort. He's gotten me a pastry that I like, totally hygge, and he got it ready for me. I made my coffee. And I will join him. My boyfriend has to have the television going at all times (yes, I said "television," the snob version of TV). On my own, I never watch TV. Many years I didn't even own one. So the constant TV is a constant threat to my hygge. I will go sit with him, because sitting next to him is my hygge. I will enjoy my pastry and coffee and get as cozy as possible. Probably I will try to zone out some other way by playing a game on my computer* (I never use sound), so that I can block the TV out; but eventually, I will retreat to the bedroom, turn on the air filter so I can get some white noise, get under the covers, sit in my pocket of warm light, drink my coffee, and be as hygge as possible.

*technology is not very hygge by the way. Hygge needs in-person social contact and technology generally promotes being alone. Facebook can make us happy but it's on the bottom of the list.

Sometimes I look forward to going to bed so I can wake up and have my coffee. Reading this book made me realize that hygge can get you through life. Give you something to look forward to.

Damn. I think the Danes are onto something. And I thank goodness that I was able to get onto it myself.

My hygge reading nook is coming along. I don't use it all the time, yet it's comforting to me just to know it's there.

Things you don't know until you know

It has come to my attention over the past year or so that one of the irksome things about being a human being and the challenge of the hundreds of decisions we make on a daily basis - is that oftentimes we don't know if we've made the right decision until AFTER we've made it.

Do you know what I mean?

Let's start with how do we make decisions in the first place? Some are obvious, obviously. We rely upon past experience, what has worked and what hasn't worked, what we like and don't like, what we need and don't need. But there are a lot of gray areas. And how do we have integrity within those to both ourselves and to the people with whom we may or may not have obligations?

For a certain period I studied martial arts and one of the main tenets we were taught in my dojo was to follow through. What I took this to mean was that if I agreed to do something, I should do it. Period. Regardless if I change my mind later or "don't feel like it."

Yeah. Well.

This doesn't always work. Perhaps I participate in a committee for a few sessions and then I determine that we do not really have shared goals. Or that, no matter what my input is, the head of the committee is determined to push the project in a certain direction - in other words, my input is practically meaningless. At that point, I am just a name on a program - if that. Do I keep attending? I sort of kind of have a "gut feeling" that I don't want to. I hem and haw wondering if this commitment of mine will payoff "one day," what impact it will have on public relations related to my work, and various other way too heavy thoughts. But the kicker is that until I actually say "I am not attending the meeting today" and hit "send" on that email - I have no idea if I made the correct decision.

Afterwards, I feel good or bad, depending. Usually good. Thankfully. I do trust my instincts.

Sometime after that stint in martial arts I started a different practice which was this: if I am more than 50% in doubt, I don't do it. This seems selfish at times. You just don't do the things you don't "feel like" doing? Actually yes. I'm a damn grownup! Surely there has to be some benefit to that sometime! And guess what it is? You can say no! You can change your mind! There are so many unwanted things that as adults we already "have" to do over the course of our days. Why do more?

But again, until we actually take the plunge and make the decision - and share it with someone else - we don't know if it was the "right" decision or not. It's like when you decide to give something away to the thrift store. You think you maybe want to get rid of it. You know you haven't worn that shirt in years or that you never will. You know that it was given to you by someone with whom you are now estranged and that just looking at it, never mind wearing it, makes you unhappy. But until you actually hand the item off to the guy at the back door of the thrift store and step on the gas, you have no idea if it was what you needed to do.

Weird, isn't it?