Kimberly Steele

As silly as it may seem, the next 25 minutes determine who and what you are going to be.  

I don't miss being young, because I felt burdened with the gravity of my potentials at all times.  Much of my young life was eaten up in fear of trajectories I deemed not good enough for the likes of me.  Motherhood was one of them: I saw motherhood as near-unadulterated suffering.  Though I grew up near more than anyone's fair share of stay-at-home moms, I was confident I would not have the luxury of staying at home if I became a mother.  When I wasn't dreading the future, I was mired in cringe about the past; either my own or someone else's.  This is the curse of our era: we are taught to indulge the human tendency to marinate in the negative.  There is no better way to marinate in the negative than to amplify the past and future at the expense of living in the present moment.  An unhappy, unsatisfied ingrate will always fall for the ruse that the past was shameful and the future is bleak.  Such an unsatisfied ingrate is an easy target for advertising and a buffet of hypochondriac and genuine conditions that lead to a state of dependence and indentured servitude.

Many of my essays contain information I wish I had been told as a young woman, and this is true of the current essay.  Back in the late 1980s, I was desperate trying to finish high school.  Though I had completed a bunch of required courses by my junior year, I still needed a ton of science and math credits to have any hopes of graduating.  The school district I was in was considered one of the nation's finest: all young adults needed STEM.  Meanwhile, I was going through a horrific breakup with my first real boyfriend and the deaths of two grandparents.  I was plagued with depression and night terrors.  So of course the single worst thing happened: the school forced me to dissect a cat.

I made many sincere attempts to get out of the cat dissection.  I claimed a religious exemption: no dice.  I tried saying it was against my morals as a vegetarian.  Nope.  In the end, I was forced.  Of course the female cat I dissected was pregnant.  The sights, smells, and general awfulness of the experience left me with zero recollection of the anatomy and physiology I was supposed to learn.  Instead, I can call up the hideous sight of arterial and venal grit into memory like it was yesterday.  The only thing the experience instilled in me was a homicidal rage towards the teacher at the helm of it all whom I will call Mr. Murray.  I honestly hope he rots in hell and that all the smugness and materialist comforts he enjoyed are just out of reach as he drowns in a stinking pond of formaldehyde... not forever, but for long enough to matter.  

Little did I realize it then that I had multiple opportunities to walk away and utterly improve the trajectory of my life.  When my religious exemption was denied, I could have woken up the next morning and said "I am now done with public school".  In Illinois, parents don't need to explain why they are pulling children out of public school for homeschool.  The laws have never been strict.  I could have easily walked.  

In hindsight, I should have quit public school somewhere around age twelve, when my debilitating and embarrassing periods arrived and it became abundantly clear I could learn more by messing around on a primitive IBM computer or reading for 30 minutes than spending the day at school.  All that time, I labored under the delusion school was mandatory.  It wasn't... at least not in Illinois!

I'll never be grateful for being forced to dissect a cat, but I am grateful for the way things turned out.  There are certain turns of fate that could not have happened any other way.  In the movie Peggy Sue Got Married, the protagonist Peggy Sue goes back to her own past to explore what would have happened had she avoided getting pregnant in high school.  Spoiler alert: in the end, she chooses not to change anything because to do so would mean she would miss out on the experience of having her beloved children.  I feel the way about my life the way Peggy Sue ended up feeling about hers.

I have no regrets and neither should you, however, the past can inform us that the next 25 minutes have the potential to shape our destinies.  We may want to alter our situations but we can still be grateful.  The foundational change you can make in the next 25 minutes is not what happened to get you here but the attitude you have towards what got you here.  The choices of the past are now beyond affecting, but you can affect your attitude now by focusing on what was good by being grateful.  At any given time, if you are not laboring in a prison camp or dodging bombs and grenades, you have a lot of choices and that in itself is a blessing for which to be grateful.

In my own teenage case, I should have looked at the 25 minutes that stretched before me where I had to dissect a cat -- an activity that I found revolting from the spiritual level -- and used my two working legs to walk away from the school and back home where I belonged.  My parents would have been angry but they would have gotten over it.  I would have discovered homeschool laws were on my side.

Let's say I faced more opposition: I still could have walked away.  When we push it to extremes, there is a core version of me that will happily fight to the death rather than do what is against my spiritual will: I am ready to be a hardcore nasty person, as should all of us when faced with a true enemy.  I am grateful I don't have to invoke my innate, latent serial killer to get what I want.  This isn't North Korea.  I am glad, because if it was North Korea, you could probably number me among the disobedient dead.  

I'm Bored!

The most offensive statement in existence and the unfortunate saying of our times is "I'm bored".  Delivered in a whiny voice by a child or someone acting like a child, it is the epitome of lack: not for things to do, but of gratitude.  I was watching a documentary on an Australian six year old who refused to go to school.  In one of her daily battles with her mother to stay home, she won.  The girl marched up to her mother, who was trying to work, and wailed "I'M BORED!"  The mother was all excuses and "Mommy needs to work, darling."  If I was the girl's mother, I would have replied "You're bored?  Go clean the bathroom floor until it sparkles and shines.  Don't forget to thank it for its hard work when you finish."  If my daughter failed to do the task or tried to push the envelope by whining, I would ignore her until she either found a way to constructively entertain herself or died.  This is why I did not become a parent.  I did not feel it was my job as some parents do in this era to entertain or instruct my child their every waking minute.  I am of the opinion that there is no human being (aside from infants in the cradle) who is owed constant coddling.

When people who depend on you become parasitic and attempt to steal your time in an entitled fashion, it is OK to say "find something to do and educate yourself."  When you detach, you gift them with the next 25 minutes by refusing to become an enabler.

Sow a thought, reap an action
Sow an action, reap a habit.
Sow a habit, reap a character.
Sow a character, reap a destiny.

Maybe you have to spend the next 25 minutes at a job you don't like where you only work for the money.  It becomes your duty over the next 25 minutes how to brainstorm a change of life.  Imagine a life where you can thrive on earned wealth (perhaps less of it) but does not include working your current job.  How do you make that happen?  Perhaps it seems impossible as getting out of the cat dissection by walking away from public school seemed to me in 1989.  I would remind you that it is possible because once again, you're not in North Korea. This is not to blame you if you feel stuck. Nevertheless, if you are going to change it, you will have to try.

Every soul incarnated onto this planet is extraordinarily good at one thing at a minimum.  We've all got an opportunity to shine.  In my case, the main things in this incarnation are finally fairly cut and dry as music and writing.  I also have plenty of other skills, such as an affinity for caring for cats (while they're alive and well, thank you very much) and cooking.  When life conspires to keep you from developing your true talents, such as when Mr. Murray wasted my time that should have been spent learning domestic arts and caring for companion animals, it is your duty to find away around.  You build your unique strength until your power topples your enemies for the trifling weaklings they always were.  All you have to do is change the next 25 minutes.

Dysmorphia

When a person cannot play the Glad Game with her own appearance, she becomes dysmorphic.  I have been dysmorphic about the lower part of my face and my weight for most of my life.  Instead of appreciating my braces-straightened teeth and having no health problems with chewing or swallowing, I have often wanted to change what my lower face looks like out of unhappiness.  Instead of appreciating my powerful legs -- I can leg press 300 pounds! -- I fixated for years on my chubby, flabby knees and my assortment of cellulite patterns.  Lots of people are dysmorphic whether or not they admit to it.  Celebrities and influencers of our era put it all in the open.  They get ghastly surgeries and procedures.  Last decade, the trend is to get your fat completely removed via liposuction.  For awhile, the trend was the Brazilian Butt Lift, which lifts nothing and involves having body fat removed from the belly area and re-injected to create bulbous mounds on each butt cheek.  Another current trend has people reinjecting butt or belly fat into their faces, which means whenever they overeat or become hormonally imbalanced, their faces will swell.  Yikes.  I am extremely relieved I didn't have the money or the wherewithal to go down the slippery slope of "treatments" for my flaws.  

There is no money to be made on a person who looks at her face, sees acne, asymmetry, overlarge or over-small features, and shrugs and says "Meh.  My nose may be funny looking and my teeth may be 3 different colors, but my smile is genuine and puts people at ease.  I'll ignore my nose and try to smile more."

All advertising depends on people who are dissatisfied with themselves and their lives.  Home Depot would be out of business if average people chose to make the best out of what they were given instead of lusting after shiny, giant kitchens and vaulted ceilings in the master bedroom.  In the Boomer era, a family of six often lived in a two bedroom house with a single shared bathroom and was not considered poor.  The modern counterpart of the same family of six is dissatisfied because their house lacks an in-ground pool and a three car garage.  

Weaponized Shame

Women especially tend to wallow in shame and regret when playing the Glad Game is too subtle or too much work.  This is not to say men don't wallow in shame and regret too, I am just writing what I know as a woman.  Women live in fear of being shamed and outcast from groups.  The most awful among us use shame as a weapon to keep others in line.  As William Blake said, you become what you behold.  Those who use shame as a weapon are usually running away from their own shadow selves and are afraid to face their own shameful acts.  Women tend to have a monopoly on weaponized shame because mothers are the setters of limits for their children. Scolding ensures a child's survival -- without it, a child easily becomes a dysfunctional, depressed, dopamine-addicted brat.  Shame is a form of self-regulation: when in balance, it inspires diligence, creativity, and productivity.  Those who do not or cannot play the Glad Game become self-toxic and self-hating.  The self becomes septic because it is our biological predisposition to remember and amplify negativity.  Shame is pushed outward and as a consequence, travels inward.  As above, so below.  The heavy lifting of all work from physical to spiritual involves identifying the good and amplifying it until it becomes a mighty fortress unto itself.  Imagine if the shamers actually developed talents within themselves they could actually be proud of...

Why Allopathic Medicine is Mostly Useless

Aside from getting an ingrown toenail excised or a broken arm set, I would rather die of whatever ails me than visit an allopathic doctor's office for treatment.  Allopaths largely view Nature as the enemy.  They think that manmade replacements of Nature's failures are the answer.  They fetishize avatars of human beings: unrealistic caricatures of what humans should and would be in a perfect world. Babies and little children are pumped full of brain and body damaging vaccines because of the aforementioned beliefs.  "Tech will save us!" rallies the allopathic ignoramus, and he refuses to see the lights of intelligence blown away into darkness when he administers triple and quadruple vaccines into a child's arm.  He refuses to watch Vaxxed for fear of a mild itch that indicates he still has a conscience.  Of course vaccines aren't the only way innocents have their potential for normal, fulfilling lives stolen away by collective allopathic ignorance.  

Nowhere is allopathic medicine more damaging than in the arena of chronic disease.  A healed patient is a non-existent customer and everyone, especially your doctor, knows it.  The allopathic answer to a heart attack is a stent or series of stents and a pacemaker.  Kidney disease?  Get on a list for a transplant and have a machine take the job of cleaning your blood via dialysis.  Diabetes?  Metaformin and synthetic insulin.  Cancer?  Declare war and use chemicals that resemble napalm to "cleanse" the body.

The first rule of good health is YOU MUST BUILD STRENGTH to overcome disease.  It is sad this needs to be said, but you don't build strength by eating crappy, factory-farmed food and Jell-O after being drugged up and having chunks of organs removed from your body.  You begin with cleaning up the patient's diet and then grow from there. Allopathic medicine is obsessed with amputation and replacement.  Healing, as Hippocrates said, comes from food first.  Removing a body organ or part should only be a last and final resort.  

Allopaths have completely lost the ability and knowledge of working with the patient's existing strengths.  Instead, they lap up whatever is thrown their way from pharmaceutical companies.  They are of a lower class than whores.  At least prostitution is a somewhat honest profession that provides relief to its customers every now and then.

Framed Another Way...

I am a piano teacher.  Imagine if I took the same kind of negative approach to my job as an allopathic physician.  Instead of recognizing my student's natural ability, my interaction with them (for which I would be paid handsomely, of course) would consist of five distracted minutes where I mumbled some nonsense about the magnificence of Chopin and blamed them for their current state because they weren't practicing enough. My sole contribution to helping them learn piano (other than the five minute diagnosis) would be a prescription for Adderall sent to their local pharmacy to help them concentrate.  Nice!  No wonder they would want to sue me.

Parents who ignore or punish their children without recognizing their achievements are jerks.  When a parent constantly berates a child for his shortcomings and cannot lift a finger to help that child discover his unique talents, the parent is considered abusive and rightly so.  

Instead of fighting in self-dug trenches, I seek to build what is good in myself, for I am a better person than I was yesterday, if only by the slightest amount.  It does not matter how small my goodness happens to be, how awful I have been, or how retarded I am in general.  I find the goodness and I focus on it after a brief acknowledgement of the negative.  Said the drop of water that became the trickle that became the river that carved the Grand Canyon... "You've got to start somewhere". 

Talking to the disembodied beings generally called spirits is all about noticing other things. By paying attention and ignoring the outrage du jour, sensitivity and awareness increases. I believe anyone can talk to the spirits. I am not special. If you have ever talked to yourself, and this includes talking to yourself both silently and aloud, you have most likely talked to spirits. I don't mean to freak anyone out here, but you've probably spoken to at least one dead person. The difficulty is not in talking to fairies, elementals, dead people, demons, gods, and everything in between. No, the hard part is discerning who you are talking to and when you are doing it. Mostly via discursive meditation, I have discovered how dumb I am, and to a lesser degree how smart I am. Too little sleep and I become irate, depressed, and nihilistic. Too much caffeine causes delusions about how great things will be in the near future. My own voice is recognizable by the jokes, a habit passed down from my late Dad despite not having the benefit of heredity (I am adopted). I am always making jokes at inappropriate times, which invokes my father but also is because I was a traveling court jester in one of my more memorable past lives. Just as you can learn the tolerances and symptoms of your body, you can learn to pick out your own voice in the crowd of voices in your head if you work at it hard enough. In my own experience, my own voice is only dominant twenty percent of the time. The other eighty percent of it is the crowded ecosystem of entities I speak with on a daily and nightly basis.

Who You Callin' Pollyanna?