Thought Picnic: Escaping the avalanche of woes

The questions that linger

Sometimes, we never really get the answers to the conundrum of the how’s, the what’s or the why’s in the lives of others that things have happened.

In the storms of life, we are like people out swimming, no one any the wiser that some of us might be swimming naked until the tide runs out. In other scenarios, it might be as fatalistic as with a skydiving adventure where you never know what the conclusion will be until you have jumped and sadly the parachute never opened.

There is nothing like the catalyst of the seemingly inconsequential, the probably irrelevant and the quite insignificant to trigger a set of emotions and decline in serotonin levels that you settle into a recluse and abandon essential communication hoping that the day passes to the next until that dark cloud over you moves on.

These silly little things

On the burdened mind, but in discrete compartments over the last few months were a number of events far away at home but significantly troubling to lose sleep over, worries as to how to face some challenges out of one’s control, at work; I found myself saying, “I love my job, I am just up against those trying to make me hate my job.” That covered issues from disrespect, poor management to the dishonesty of the agency handling my contract.

Home life was in disarray and a mess, I had become less house proud and had literally grown tired of the hole I was in. Then I was making no headway in building any relationship or companionship of any significance. I was in every engagement looking like I was being used and abused, tossed about in every stormy situation and protesting to deaf ears. Someone chasing bills with a robotic voice – this is not life.

One disagreement here, the absence of support there, an unnecessary argument, an expression of anger, a memory of the dearly departed, a forgetting to celebrate with others, a hope somewhat forlorn – it all piles up.

Then I missed a train

Breaking away for the catharsis of travel brought no lasting fun or respite, it was like a case of painfully plucking the feathers of a bird in the bleakest winter.

All this was brought to a head by the least significant of events. I made for the train to work on Monday where we usually had the option of buying a ticket before boarding the train or getting the ticket on the train. It so happened that as I hobbled to the train, I was waylaid by revenue protection officers one of whom was a lady so grey and lacking in charisma who refused that I get on the train until I returned to the concourse to get a ticket.

I did get my ticket and got to the door of the train when it closed, the conductor not particularly disposed to being helpful for the time it took for the train to pull away, gleefully chatting to me about my running out of luck for a service that ran on an hourly timetable. I missed that train. I walked back to the concourse where the once enthusiastic revenue protection officers refusing my access to the train earlier were now not bothered to check if I had a ticket.

Then I saw that fine and uncharismatic lady, “Thank you, very much. I missed my train.” I said to her as she gave me one of those stares that signified if she had a heart, it was made of stone and were she to have a soul it was betrothed to perdition. But for other aspects of good fortune in my life, she would have been Medusa and I would have turned to stone.

Escaping the avalanche of woe

I took in the moment, allowed it to link up the many angles of my turmoil and returned home to rue the many different things that brought me close to self-pity. Then one caring and lovely friend’s engagement has signified a dawn is surely coming after this long night of nightmares.

Sometimes, I wonder how I have functioned with all this hanging around me with the visit to South Africa, acceding to atrocious ideas and requests and yet trying to chart a course to the freedom to be myself in a better way.

One answer, I have been blessed and I really should not allow the swirling curses to get a blow at me. I will rise.

Beyond planting a suicide in the headlines

Mere mortals at NASA too

Hardly 100 hours had passed since the horror of Virginia Tech when a seriously troubled young man first gunned down two people in a dormitory, then posted a multimedia package of his thoughts to NBC and returned to snuff out another 30 including himself; another saga was playing out at NASA.

A man who had been a NASA contractor for 12 years took two people hostage and ended up kill both himself and one of the hostages. He had a bad job review, but is that all there is to it?

In the passed few months it would appear there is an underbelly of troubled NASA personnel who till recently had probably been sent to the NASA sanatorium but are some are now escaping detection and playing out their desperately flawed humanity for all to see.

There would be inquiries as to how security was breeched in a premier Ministry of Defence location, what psychological frame of mind the man was in, what triggered it and how to avoid such embarrassing shows of instability.

The fear of dying unsung

However, there is a deeper issue to be reviewed here which is now beyond the right to bear death (arms), this is the way fragile people with a grievance now seem to assuage their troubles with a suicide mission and a suicide.

Suicides occur everyday, but are seriously under-reported and they never allow for a decent professional analysis of why it happened as the fear of dying unsung and uncelebrated clouds the mind of the person. So, it has been become a standard activity in America for suicides to include innocent people in their demise as if to properly highlight why they killed themselves.

Whether that gets adequate airing as others grieve for their lost loved ones and recriminations fly as blame is apportioned all around is left to be seen. But a good study of why and the social underpinnings of what lead to the outrage and carnage has to be objectively taken to be able to see the early signs of a disintegrating human before they take out themselves and innocent bystanders.

David in Thoughts of a Naija man begins an analysis of what could have lead to the massacre at Virginia Tech.

References

Inside Cho's head