King Basil

Don't know why I have the feelings that I do...

Feelings of despair...
Feelings of wanting to throw myself in the river...

Been giving myself a hard time.

Looking at the world around me and thinking to myself - why is everyone and everything so much better than I am?

Why am I so worthless? Why do I have so little in the way of redeeming qualities?

What were the tricks I missed? What were the paths that I didn't take in my life for things to end up like this?

Feel so sensitive sometimes it is as much as I can do not to just curl up into a ball and burst into tears.

2011 another year. Nights beginning to get lighter and from Sunday they will be lighter still as that is when the clocks go forward.

Frightens me that I can spend so much time thinking that I wish I was somewhere else, that I wished that I was not where I am. Same old situation that I have always had in other words. And that is simply not being to get it out of my mind that the time and place I find myself in and the people I am with are somehow not good enough; that I deserve something better and because I don't get the things that I want I feel sad, feel depressed, feel like hardly wanting to say a word to anyone. Been here so many times before.

In Buddhism this is what is known as the basic suffering of having what you do not want and not having what you want.

Having what I don't want. Guess we can keep this simple and say well, I don't want to spend my life working in Ilford. But that is the experience I have and have had for the last 10 years and which will continue into the future for as far as I can see. Day in day out, working in Ilford, in a falling apart office that I always feel could be so much cleaner and tidier than it ever is.

Not having what I want - and what would that be? A place in the country a job in a nice quiet place say at the end of a lane by a stream of clear running water where the winds gently blow. That would be nice. Those are the things that I want or at least those are the things, the visions that run through my mind when I sit in my office in Ilford and of course as a result of having those desires I suffer because of them.

At the end of the day it is all down to mind. More than possible that someone could step into my shoes and think by contrast they are luckiest person in the world to have all things in life that I have. More than possible...all to do with mind and how you see the world.

Mind. Those feelings of jealousy which are so easy to arise when I look around and see people living in nicer places than I do, leading fuller lives and in general just being a damn sight more capable at making their way in the world. Difficult not wish them, all those countless numbers of people living and breathing on this earth right now, having some kind of nasty accident. Crazy, pathetic of me I know.

At the end of the day though the fact of the matter is that I have come to where I have come to simply because of me and my own actions. So easy to sit back and in my mind blame it all on others..."oh yes, I didn't have that but had this when I was a child and therefore that is the reason why I am what I am..." Not good enough to think like that I know but at the same time very difficult to shake myself out of it. So very difficult.

Another spring time coming along, some nice sunny days thrown into the bargain and yet again I find myself thinking just how great it would be if I took off disapearred and lived a life in the sun...but with what? It would turn into a crazy pathetic setting sun kind of existence and would inevitably only cause me more pain.

Yes, I look at myself, look at what I have and feel like curling up into that ball again. Why do I have such a small penis? Why do I have no DIY skills so that I could at least keep the house in which we live in good shape? Why do I feel so full of fear when any potentially confrontational situations come along? Why do I feel the sweat on my palms when I imagine confronting people who have upset me? Why do I feel such despair over thinking that they know I am an easy push over and that they can do what they like with me? Why does that lump in my throat grow so large it is as much as I can do to squeak the words out? Words of rage and helplessness...

These kind of thoughts have been with me the whole of my life, now at 48 soon to be 49 I feel just as far away as ever from solving them, from being able to accommodate them in such a way that does not end up in visions of me just wanting to kill myself, of wanting to do myself in simply because that is the only way I can see to get rid of these feelings...crazy thoughts I guess but then what is the alternative? To live with them and suffer the feelings they engender for the rest of my life however long that might be? No, no, no...if possible it is best if I try to understand them, to see that they have not come along without a reason, that they are not just some dirty trick being played upon me. They are the reflection of my inner state of being and they are 100% rock solid in their formation, they could only have come about by what I have done in the past, how I have behaved towards others and how in my mind I have treated this sacred gift of life.

Seems like this life and the situations it throws my way is telling me that if I ever want to have any hope of getting at least to a decent level of happiness and contentment, to shake out all this frustration that I feel then I will eventually have to do something pretty drastic as regards to taming my mind. To opening up to the fact that it is no accident that I am where I am and that if I sit there in the corner wishing things were different I am missing countless opportunities to expand into this life and actually learn something from it.

If I don't manage to do that then it is just going to be more and more of running away from it, head full of dreams and on the sure road to even greater tragedy than what it feels there is now. So buck up Basil, it is entirely up to you how you want this flash in the pan to play out.