No, you can't blow up pineapples with your mind, but thinking happy thoughts doesn't hurt, either.

I know I just bashed positive thinking, so what I want to talk about today might seem a little hypocritical.  I could spend a paragraph (and I just might) telling you about how it's not (hypocritical, that is) but that would be a waste of words.  You're going to decide for yourself, whatever I say, and that's the beauty of being an individual.  But what are words for if not wasting, so yeah, there's a bit about why this is different than my rant on positive thinking.  Just roll with it.  Anyway, here I go...

Last night I had what you might call a revelation.

The night began with business as usual; I was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, unable to find a position that was comfortable for more than two minutes, and generally feeling horrible.  While most people (I presume) are able to drift into a vaguely comforting and blissfully thoughtless pre-sleep state in a timely manner (read: not two hours) after they get into bed, "sleepy-time" does not translate for my brain.  My thoughts do not slow down and I am not able to turn them to counting sheep or visualizing numbers 1-100 or floating in a void.  Most of what I do is worry.

I have resigned myself to the fact that I am a worrier, like my mother and my grandmother.  I try not to worry about what I can't control, of course; for the most part it works pretty well.  I would even suggest that I sometimes adopt a rather devil-may-care attitude.  However, all bets are off when I go to bed.  It's not that I worry about things I can do nothing about, but the opposite; I worry about things I would normally have a hand in but don't because I'm trying to go to sleep. Key word: trying. When you're in bed it doesn't do you any good to think of what clothes you're going to wear tomorrow or that the due date for your next tuition payment is coming up or that you have to read 100 pages for class in two days, because you're in bed.  It's like these things pounce on me when they see me mentally vulnerable, because there is one thing I worry about that I don't really have control over: getting enough sleep.  It's my very own encyclopedia illustration of "The Vicious Cycle."

So I was lying there listening to my classical music when I thought, "what if jI just eliminate "should" from my thoughts?"  So I changed every "I have to..." and "I should..." and "I need to..." to "I want."  And it worked.

Instead of "I should get up early and go to the gym tomorrow," I thought "I want to get up early and go to the gym tomorrow," and with that small substitution I felt better.

My worry about getting enough sleep was mostly coming from that, so instead of listening to classical because "I should listen to something quiet so I'll go to sleep soon" I changed my ipod to pop rock because "I want to go to sleep but I don't have to so I want to listen to the music I feel like listening to."  My mom always says, what's the worst thing that could happen if you don't go to sleep?  You're tired the next day.  Eventually, you're going to be tired enough (probably the next night) to go to sleep.

I do want to go a little bit into the difference between this and the positive thinking I was talking about earlier.  I feel like this whole "power of positive thinking" thing is way out of hand.  I see people expecting job prospects and other people's ideas and even actual physical realities to change just because they wish really, really hard on that star or believe everyone is born with an angelic conscience.  This is delusional.  Jobs will open up to you if you do the legwork, and a lot of the time even after that they don't pan out.  You have a chance of changing someone's mind if you argue your case convincingly, but even then it's like that person is an arbitrary judge with the final "yea" or "nay."  And influencing physical things with your mind?  Even now psychologists and physicians are undecided as to whether your thoughts influence your biochemistry or it's the other way around.  Influencing things outside your own body: forget it.  Delusional.

But your thoughts are all words; try to think of the last time you didn't have a spastic inner monologue (or dialogue, or poly-logue) continuously running through your mind?  Bet you can't.  The human experience is defined by language.  And before you protest, when you were a baby (without language) your thoughts and experiences were still framed with communication (probably, because it's not something we can really know).

So if words make up your mind and, by extension, your perception (which is really what we're talking about, because perception is reality and experience and emotion and thought), couldn't you affect your own mind through control of words?  Words and language have an intimate power, and since emotions are thoughts (perhaps unconsciously) and thoughts are words, then you can control (or at least shape) your emotions with words.

Okay, so in theory it works.  Try it with me. (I honestly have no idea if it'll have an effect on you.)  Pick something that stresses you out: impending exams; looming bills; that report you have to get to your boss by next week.  Phrase it with an "I have to" or an "I should," eg "I should study for my test next week."  Ugh, even knowing I don't have a test next week, that makes me feel all slimy inside.  Okay, now change it to "I want to."  eg "I want to study for my test next week."  Maybe add a "because," like "I want to study for my test next week because I want a good grade."  Look, another "I want."  We're on a roll.  Now, does that make you feel better?  I feel better.  Now, even though my test was hypothetical, I feel better about it and better about hypothetically studying for it.

I just wanted to share this with y'all, because I think it's so awesome.  I didn't necessarily go to sleep faster after that, but I am an insomniac...

Anyway, to finish up I just want to emphasize that this is not what I would call "magical" positive thinking.  As my parents have always told me, you can't change anyone's mind but your own.  In the same vein, you can't get a new car through wishing, Dad's Alzheimer's isn't going to go away even if you pray, and $30,000 isn't going to appear in your bank account just because it would be really, really awesome.

It would be awesome.  Oh well.

NB The title reference is from "Accepted."  Good movie.  I recommend it.

Songs in the Key of Dreams

Sorry I haven't been writing lately, but I have been having a rough time of it.  School is wicked and it's Yule season and everything's crazy and such.  Hopefully I will be writing more, as that usually is cathartic for me anyway.

So I've been listening to a lot of Christmas carols and seasonal music.  Yes, I listen to Christmas music, even the sacred stuff.  Well, I grew up with it, and since it's harder to unlearn something than to learn it I listen to a lot of Christmas music.  Besides, music can have different meaning for me; my whole family is all about the music.  I was thinking about this yesterday, about how I grew up with music all around me and as such an important part of every day, whether it be singing, listening, or playing.  I was at my dad's house the other day and though I've noticed the radio in every room before it really occurred to me the reason for a radio (sometimes multiple, and often portable so you'll never be without sound wherever you go in the apartment) in every room.  Yesterday my housemates and I were singing Christmas music in the car and I knew more of the words than anyone else.

What I'm trying to get at is music is just that to me: music.  Yeah, I take issue with the words sometimes (I almost erased all my music with a reference to "God," "Lord," or "Jesus" yesterday because I was so fed up with it), but music is about the music to me, not the lyrics.  And going back to the whole "I grew up with it" thing, a lot of the melodies really resonate with me.  Many Christmas carols are quite beautiful, and if you actually listen to the lyrics they often sound like a hasty translation (which they probably are) and they sound very hurried and artificial, like someone needed to fill space.  Short story: the lyrics suck.  Not all the time (I love "Angels We Have Heard on High) but often they feel forced (first line of "Three Kings");  in the end it's really all about the melody.  And the best melodies (in my opinion) are in a minor key.

As young as 3 I felt the magic of minor (bc I told my mom I liked "Carol of the Bells" because it sounds "sad").  Are you ever listening to something and you get a chill down your spine as all the hair on your arms stand up?  Does music ever make your heart ache and sing along, like you're pining for a perfect home you knew once but not for many years?  It feels like being in love but far away, like seeing your little cottage on the shore while in the surf in a little skiff and the tide is hurrying you out to sea.  I can only compare it to how I feel, and my dreams usually have a faery-tale theme, full of castles and queens and knights and ladies and chivalry and honor and adventures.  And princesses, obviously.  "Gawain and the Green Knight" kind of stuff.

It's not just Christmas music that feels like magic.  It's mostly stuff in minor keys, but pretty much anything Celtic does it for me.  I can see the trees, dappled with emerald sunlight, the colors dark under the canopy, the surety of faeries in the sparkling air.  I listen to music for the chance to hear magic from songs in the key of dreams.