Page 19 - NAMAH-Apr-2016

Remember Me

Kelly Johnston

Abstract
No matter where we live in the world, the chances are that our daily life is one of high-stress,
exacerbated by external forces over which we have little or no control. This sensory overload gradually
becomes sensory deprivation, in that we slowly become numb to the onslaught, either by choice or
conditioning. The numbing not only threatens our relationships with family, colleagues and social
communities, but also with our inner self. We become cut off from our innate knowledge and desires,
and more easily succumb to media and social media’s dictates of who we should be — generally a
fantastical creation that only exists in the delusional mind of cyberspace. Increasingly fatigued and
demoralised, how do we resist falling prey to the opiates of the external world and instead rally as our
own strongest advocates for our inner selves?

Hitting the wall which we’ve become so accustomed.

When stress and strife smack us in daily Going inside
waves, we often find ourselves breathless,
wrung out, desperate. Sometimes we hit the If we’re fortunate, thoughts normally relegated
wall from sheer physical exhaustion, from a to the bottom of the pile begin to bubble up
health, career or relationship crisis, a loved in those spaces. They may seem new, but
one’s needs that must be tended or the dark more likely there’s something familiar about
shroud of depression coming round again. them. We sense they’ve been tucked away
As painful or extreme a state as this can be, in a soft corner of memory, sleeping deeply
it often is the only means of bringing us while we’ve been working away so diligently
back to ground, where all we can manage at being busy. Thoughts such as, ‘Does this
are the most basic tasks — waking, bathing, life of mine, as it is, truly feel right?’ ‘Do my
eating, working, the bills, sleeping. As our relationships stimulate a sense of emotional,
dervish-like spinning is forced to slow down, intellectual, spiritual kinship, or do I hang
the spaces between our thoughts likewise onto them out of insecurity and dependence?’
lengthen, no longer crammed with the ‘How does my work reverberate deep inside
second- and third-tier mental priorities to my heart?’ ‘Why do I have so much disdain,

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