Finding a balance between mind, body, and social media

In the world of loads of information and crowds of voices on social media, it often seems almost normal to lose ourselves, our peace of mind, and our voices. Social media can be as calming as it can be distressing. Much of it depends on knowing the difference between what our mind needs to experience to feel calmer and more joyful and what we feed our minds on a daily basis while randomly scrolling through social media. It is very easy to get swayed by thousands of content that social media offers us today. But being very particular about our consumption of heaps of daily doses of information, images, videos, and ideas is very important in ensuring our inner peace. It is also pivotal to be mindful of the amount and the ways of receiving those doses. We have to be mindful of the content that we engage with and check with ourselves often to observe if the content or people related to the content are distressing for us. Sometimes, we know that something is going to bother or trigger us, and we still allow ourselves to indulge in that sort of content or let that content control our senses. We might do it out of curiosity or simply from not being used to listening to what our mind and body want. We are so used to diving into the waves of popularity and trends or indulging in random scrolling that we become unable to realize how much of it is affecting our inner peace. There can be many reasons why a particular content, person, page, or opinion might trigger us. It varies from person to person, lifestyle to lifestyle, and point of view to point of view. So, we need to be careful and mindful of what and whose content we are engaging with. It is not possible to agree with every perspective of each individual. There might be some individuals who can be outright disrespectful (to certain communities or ideologies), so their content might be triggering. We can be sensitive to certain topics, noises, images, and visuals. Even after knowing that something or someone might specifically trigger us, we sometimes continue to follow them or watch their stories and posts and let our mind experience something irrespective of the fact that it cannot and does not want to handle that experience in the first place. Then a rush of different emotions like anger, discomfort, agony, and despair start boiling inside us and that heat comes out in many forms, in many places, around many people or beings. Let’s ask ourselves, what do we get from that? How is not understanding what or how much our body and mind can take becoming normal for us in our daily lives?

Asking these questions is the first step toward realizing that our body and mind are trying to tell us something we are overlooking. This endless scrolling that keeps us from listening to our body and mind might seem relaxing, but it actually makes us more tired. Alexander Den Heijer says, “You often feel tired, not because you've done too much, but because you've done too little of what sparks a light in you.” The mind and body both feel tired, not only because they have a lot of information to process from all that scrolling but also because they are not receiving anything that can make them feel invigorated, calm, and connected to something meaningful. 

While it’s easier said than done, it is possible to filter our social media in a way that provides us content that our body and mind will not only be able to take or handle but also feel rejoiced, at peace, and calm. Things we can do to make sure social media does not become another battle that we have to fight or another medium that pulls us down in life can be as simple as listening to what our body, mind, soul, and heart want. Sometimes, it might not be so simple, even though it sounds simple. Our inner world is somehow so numbed and toned down by the outer noises that it takes a lot of energy, persistence, and patience to pierce through those noises to reach what resides inside of us, which is perhaps silently sobbing in a corner and asking us to release it. It’s all right to take some time to really understand what makes us happy and what positively stimulates our body and mind. Staying or remaining positive all the time might not be possible, and that should not be the aim. Rather, we could allow our feelings and emotions to take their shape and space. It is equally important to make sure that we take steps and count each step, no matter how small, toward understanding how to create an environment that caters to the betterment of our body and mind. 

So maybe after we’ve spent enough time with ourselves or at least to an amount where we know what and whom our mind wants to connect to, we can peek at our social media again and start filtering. How about unfriending that person who never had any good intentions toward us? What about unfriending that bully who wouldn’t let us breathe in our school? That relative, that friend, that someone we came across in life but really do not want to associate with ever, how about letting them go from our social life? Not letting them have any access to our social life (which is a very big part of some of our lives right now) and allowing our mind and body to know that these people do not have to know what’s going on in our lives and we also don’t have to see what’s going on in their life (enter- a big sigh of relief). How about unfollowing certain pages or people because their content is no longer to our taste? It’s totally fine to choose what’s best for us, unapologetically and remorselessly. These might seem like really small acts, but these are the small acts that are going to create a butterfly effect in our lives. 

We can disagree on certain topics and still respect others’ opinions. But when a topic crosses a line or if its point is too sensitive for us, we can unfollow, unfriend, or remove it and find peace of mind in creating a boundary that protects our well-being.  

We can follow pages, people, ideas, and content that motivate us, help us to visualize the life that we want for us, foster our mental and physical health, align with our taste and vision, and soothe our mind by allowing it to experience things that are not forced upon it randomly. These slow and small changes can ultimately create a space where we feel connected to the world and find peace and a sense of belonging in some part of this world. 

So we can follow that page that has aesthetic images of books along with book recommendations and reviews, that cozy coffee shop page, that person who visits interesting places in a country or city that we really want to visit, that singer or writer who inspires us to become a better artist and a better human, that professional who has plenty of resources on healing from grief, trauma or anxiety, pages which have beautiful, tranquil and breathtaking pictures and videos of cottages, nature, mountains, and animals, that artist who paints the world with imagination and that gives us relief from the chaos of the world, that page that posts quotes from books, series or movies! We can connect with those whose content, philosophy, and vision connect or match with ours or inspires us to grow and broaden our thoughts about life and people constantly. This is our social media. This is our life. We have the right to choose what we want to experience on social media. We can choose something we find value in, or that adds value to our life. Let’s engage with words like disengage, disconnect, sever, or tether to find our true connection in this world. Having these terms in mind can be helpful in building a strong boundary that does not keep us detached from social or real life but helps us to understand our needs, to connect with ourselves, and make both real and social life meaningful and mindful. 

Amari in the land of giants, encroachers, and creepers

 Everything looks so beautiful! The ice-glazed mountains, greenery everywhere, birds chirping and flying away in the sky that looks more open and freer than anywhere else. As if this part of the sky is different. As if this place is different. So serene, so free, so relaxing! Amari couldn’t hold all this beauty, all this calmness inside her. She’s not used to such silence, such peace, such order from where she comes from.

Giant mammoths, rhinos, and several crawling and creeping bugs kept Amari on her toes. She kept running, trying to catch her breath but failing each time. 

“Run, Amari! Run!” the voice sounded familiar to her but also fading. Her heart felt like it would explode any minute. Her lungs couldn’t receive the air they needed, resulting in her organs retaliating and demanding that her feet stop running.

The sky was still so vast, so free, so beautiful, so clear, so blue, but simultaneously so mysterious! As if it could engulf the gigantic mountains, the mammoths, the bugs, the rhinos, and the girl who was desperately running without a direction. Could the same sky that looked so captivatingly liberating be incarcerating, too? Could being engulfed by the vast sky save Amari from those giants and creepers? The lush greenery that looked so bustling slowly encroached on Amari to take over her body like a shroud, to send her to oblivious death. What would she choose? Being mauled and trampled or being totally devoured and imminently engulfed? Are these choices any different from the ones she had to take back home? 

“Where? Where do I go? Where do I run, and for how long? Wherever I look, there’s danger, possible threats, impending death, and impeding roads and destinations. Perilous! It’s a perilous death trap. This place is a death trap!”

Amari kept repeating these words again and again. But the noise around and outside her was so loud that she could barely hear anything she was saying. Even the noises in her head were dead, buried in a corner of her ever-chaotic and deafening mind. 

Silence! Silence!

Amari took off the blue and green embroidered jacket she had brought from home while escaping. A jacket that contained her childhood, her nostalgia, remnants of what she called home, her parents' warmth, her siblings' laughter and company, and the scrumptious aroma of homecooked meals. It was the only thing that she could take with her while escaping. She tied it up around her waist as tightly as she could. She couldn’t afford to lose it. No! The only thing that symbolized a home that once kept her safe and let her sleep without the fear of losing people to destruction, chaos, and atrocity. The blue and green jacket had a beautiful scenery embroidered on it. Her mother embroidered the sky, and her father the green trees. A sky unlike the one that wanted to engulf her. Green trees, unlike the ones that tried to shroud her into oblivion.

Amari could see that her running would come to an end soon. No, not because she had a destination that would keep her safe or a safe place where she could hide herself from danger. That’s the thing about this place: you can never hide from danger! You can die or keep running until you end up where Amari would end up soon while crossing many obstacles.

A dark abyss, an infinite dark chasm that looked just like a black hole. All Amari could understand was that if she jumped, she would escape this place. But at what cost?

Where will this infinite dark chasm lead her to? What even is that? 

The creepers, giants, and encroachers were coming closer and closer…

The bottomless chasm was right in front of her. What would she choose? Is death escapable? Is death inevitable? Or is this a new beginning in the ending?

Right at that moment, she looked at her jacket. Something's inside the pockets.

What are those? Do they save her? Do they give her any clues? Does the jacket, the last symbol of her home that she escaped from, save her? With so many choices, a limited time, and a life-and-death situation, Amari has to make a decision.

Ah, childhood!

Auro watched a clip on Instagram today. It was a clip from the movie The Namesake. A father holding his son’s hand, taking him close to the sea. The mother with her daughter in her arms keeps telling him, “Don’t go so far that I can’t see you. He’s too little.” As the waves wildly crash on the shore, the father waves his hand in an assurance that he has listened to her concern and that they are safe. The child is safe. The child is safe with the father holding his hands. They are safe! The child is safe. The child is safe. The child is safe.

As they reach closer to the crashing and roaring waves, he suddenly remembers that there is no camera. They left the camera in the car. “What to do?”, the father asks his son. “The camera, it’s in the car. All this way and no picture, huh?” 

The child doesn’t move his eyes from the sea. 

He keeps looking at the sea. 

He doesn’t care about the camera, 

about the pictures, 

about the lost opportunity to capture a perhaps once-in-a-lifetime view. 

He is in the moment. 

The father scrunches down, gets closer to the child, smiles at him, and says, “We just have to remember it then, huh? Will you remember this day?” It is then when the child speaks as the intensity of the responsibility suddenly pulls him back to reality. But his eyes still don’t move. Eyes affixed on the sea, the child asks, “How long do I have to remember it?” “Ah, remember it always. Remember that you and I made this journey and went together to a place where there was nowhere left to go”, the father replies. 

All Auro could think was, “How long has it been since I left my father’s hand? How long has it been since my mother lost me from her sight? How do they feel knowing that they had to let go of my hands, let me go out of their sight? How scared have they been, for how long?

Am I scared? I don’t think so. Not since that night. Now I’m more afraid to let them see me. What do I tell them? How do I tell them? 

        I’m not your little girl anymore! I can’t be, not anymore!”

Auro can’t tell them that. So, she just sends this clip to her sister and writes, “Ah, childhood!”

She tells herself, “No, it doesn’t break my heart. It doesn’t break my heart.

…

As if it doesn’t break my heart.

As if 

it doesn’t revive the silent sob screeching in the corner of my heart 

that desperately, 

violently, 

brutally, 

inhumanely 

dumped my childhood somewhere without telling me, 

without letting me know where to find it if I ever needed it back, 

if my parents ever needed their little girl back!”

Humming in love, humming with love

 

 

Love looked at me like Van Gogh looked at the sky

With hope, with grief, with attention

With expectations and magic in eyes

With no space for condescension or pretension

With a sense of belonging that is too far to reach

And a little bit of longing that hums in a silent screech

rootless branches

 

That sheer feeling of despair that comes from the feeling of rootlessness. You know you don’t have roots, so you try your best, you keep trying your best, and in doing so you frantically try to branch out to as many places as possible. But at the end of the day, you know that you have no roots, so it does not matter how many times and much you branch out. It might all come off at the end of the day if just one storm comes. So, you are always careful, too cautious about not getting every part of you ripped out. You panic even at a minor inconvenience. What if this time not having roots cost you all the branches that you worked on so hard? And when these thoughts encroach your mind entirely, you either try to branch out more and more until you literally cannot carry the weight of them anymore or you go deep into the ground, searching for your roots or maybe just sit there with the despair of realization that no matter how much you search for them, they are just not there. That light feeling or the feeling of weightlessness from being rootless… you try to cover it up with the cumbersome branches. But when nothing works out at all, you curl yourself up under the ground and in an effort to not see anyone or to be seen by anyone, you let everything go

...

until you remember your branches are waiting for you. So, you pick yourself up and give life to your branches one more time, again! You let them grow. You decide you’ll wait until the storm finally comes and takes everything away or until you see some sign of life breathing under the ground. 

Till then, you keep branching out, keep growing, and keep giving life. Until when? 

You don't know...

You don't know...

You don't know...

Where’s the sky?

“Look mama, balloons! So many balloons! I can’t see the sky mama. I can’t see the sky mama!”

“But why are you crying, honey?”

“Because I can’t see the sky mama. The sky mama, I can’t see it. Please mama, the sky! Please, mama!”

The child kept crying and pointing at the sky. She kept pulling her mother, trying to somehow (anyhow) transfer her desperation and fear to her mother by pulling her hands and tugging her clothes. She kept asking her mother for help. Engulfed with despair, the mother didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t understand her child’s cry for help, she couldn’t see why not seeing the sky was like a life-and-death situation for her child.

“Mama, I beg you. Please, the sky’s almost gone. Do something, mama.”

“What can I do honey? I don’t know where the balloons are coming from!”

Slowly, there remains no sky, just balloons. Balloons everywhere!

“Mama…”- last cry for help.

The child sits down on the ground.

“Mama, shouldn’t I be happy to see balloons? I’m just a kid. Why is not being able to see the sky so scary to me mama? Why can’t I be happy like those kids?”

Both looked at the other kids following the balloons with a smile on their faces, childlike joy in their running feet, wonder and excitement in their eyes, while the mother and the child held each other’s hands with bewilderment and vulnerability.

Her mother replies, “Look at me! Don’t you see my helplessness?”

“I do mama. Do you want me to run after the balloons like the other kids? Would that make you a little less sad mama?”

“But what about you honey? What about what makes you happy?”

“Oh Mama, I think I have no hope at all. The sky, I can’t see the sky mama. I’m, scared! Not seeing the sky is scary mama. It shouldn’t be this way, right mama? Something’s wrong with me, right mama?”

The mother looks up, cheeks dampened, eyes questioning something or someone up there, while the child lets go of her hands and runs anyway.

Fearful Freedom!

 

A bird flew far from a tree to my window

a withered tree, a lifeless tree

It struggled to fly with one of its wings clipped

How? How?

How did it manage to fly?

It kept pecking at my window

Every morning I would wake up to the noise

I looked at it from my bed

struggling to get up

I would look at it as it stopped pecking

We locked eyes, quite a few times

each time I would look away with an urgency

Fear, there was an inexplicable fear

there were unspoken stories

radiating through the window

I dared not open the window

Scared, if I open it,

the bird,

it’ll vanish

or ask me to unclip its wing

it might ask me to pet it

to trust it

to let it in

it might even ask me to get up from the bed, when it’s hard to do so

only to not be there the next day to do the same

What if it asks me to look it in the eyes and not look away?

and just when I get used to it,

it asks me to let it go…

I got tired,

tired of the questions

I opened the window, looked it in the eyes

unclipped its wing, took it in my hands

Silence, deafening Silence

complete surrender on both parts

I asked it to fly away

it wouldn’t

it circled back in my hands

then sat again near the window, unbothered

An open blue sky

a bird free to fly

but rests near my window instead

when I touched its unclipped wing

it turned back

looked me straight in the eye

then flew away, still struggling

as if it forgot how to fly without one of its wings clipped

Up it went in the sky, slowly, fearfully

I woke up again the next morning

at the pecking noise

a bird with one of its wings clipped

a different bird this time

each time

every morning

it’s like a ritual now,

letting these birds fly

Until one day they all come back,

rest near my window and ask

What will you do with us now?

What do we do with this freedom?

How do we make sense of a world without struggle?

How do we fly fearlessly without anything holding us back?

the juncture, where home and I meet

 

Rustling trees and an open sky

Reminds me of my home,

a home that doesn’t exist

here or there,

that only exists in nostalgia,

in the soft pain inside my chest, that erupts every now and then

A home that is as alive as my childhood

Breathing gently into the corner of my youth, holding on to my growth

Loving the parts that are yet to heal, making space inside me to embody foreverness...

I am the rustling trees and an open sky

I am my nostalgia, I am (my) home

Light curve

 

When the lights went out,

I could hear them shout

Struggling to stop my mind and body from a deafening fight

I looked in the mirror

to get relief from the agony of the horror

Standing and basking in my own light

I recognized myself,

“There I am!

A lovingly crafted body, a beautifully crafted mind”

 

Neonstrous!!

Pumba kept thinking if he would choose a different life if he could. He kept looking at the triangular-shaped black box kinda thing until he finally decided to touch it. Once he touched the box, a neon-colored screen appeared with bold letters telling him all about the box.

“Dear you, who is now the owner of this remote. Push any buttons you want. All you get to know is that this is a remote control that comes with no instructions at all. YOU do whatever you want with it. YOU bear the consequences and cry, laugh, lament, regret, or rejoice. We just tell you that this is a triangular remote. Make smart choices, or not. We don’t care. That’s our slogan.”

Pumba already started to regret his choice. “Why did I touch that stupid box? I mean the remote. The rude, mean, and nonsensical remote. Has it started already? I’m regretting everything already. But I didn’t push any of the buttons yet. What if I don’t have to and it’ll still act like a bad nightmare? Should I just leave it? What if it gets worse? What if I am the only one who dies out of regret? Is that even a thing? Should I press the green button? Or the red one? What about the blue one or the yellow one? What if I press all of them together? Should I just throw it away? Destroy it maybe?"

The moment Pumba tries stepping on the remote to destroy it, the neon screen reappears!

“Foolish human! Look at yourself. Who’s destroying whom?”

Embrace me woman!

 I saw the red flag at the end of the road. I moved forward but it moved along with me. I moved as fast as I could. The red flag! It was still there. Glaring, grinning! Haunting every part of my body, dissecting my skin, creeping through the cells, reaching my veins, poisoning my blood. I couldn’t breathe. I felt like I was drowning and the only thing I could hold onto was a rope that was so thin that it would cut through my skin. Painful, lethal either way!

I kept running. I kept running until I couldn’t anymore. My legs and lungs gave up. I heard them scream in an asphyxiated voice, “We can’t do this anymore. You’re on your own.” I urged back, “Please I beg you. Don’t give up on me. Don’t give up on us. It’s coming closer. Please, I can’t do this by myself.”

“We’ll see if you can!”

I saw no other way but to let it reach me. It kept creeping and coming closer…and closer…and closer…

The red flag and me. Face to face.

“Embrace me, woman! Embrace me! Look at me. I’ve become a part of you. You can’t escape me. You can’t get rid of me. I’ll follow you wherever you go. How long can you run for?”

I stood my ground and replied with a smirk on my face, “You’re right. No more running. Look me in the eye. Do you see fear?”