THE PHILOSOPHY OF LIVING, WORKING, BREATHING!

IT SHOULD BE THE ULTIMATE PHILOSOPHY! Post No.14 (A 20 minute read) 

Good morning to all! This morning I feel like neither living, working or breathing but in spite of that, I am going to try and do all three and all three at once! That is how life should be as I see it! Every moment of our day we should be living, working and breathing. Not really noticing where they all inter-twine, they all flow together naturally without interruptions. The ideal world!

MY SURROUNDING RURAL AREA!

What is it to live? What is it to work? What is it to breathe? What is it to do all three together simultaneously? If you can see this as I do, the answers to those questions could have a vast variety of notions. Your answers would depend totally on your own perception of yourself and your own perception of the world that you live in. From there, how you fit into this world! We all need to see where we fit into our picture. We all need to have a picture frame to begin with in which to place ourselves.

Then though, we need to fill in that blank canvas that lays within the frame, that picture that is our life, our very own self. Within all of your chosen pieces in that picture, where do you fit? How many are really sitting pretty in the centre of their picture, truly comfortable with their surrounding pieces? Or are many of those pieces rubbing and chaffing you, causing the picture to buckle? Those kinks that need permanently ironing out, diverting positive energy after negative energy?

How many of us though are trapped into a picture frame that we would rather not (putting it mildly) be in? How many of us feel cramped, pressured and simply long to jump this picture frame and start building another? INFJ´s, that is the typical run away tactic! Go try and build another perfect picture from scratch? It will not work my friends, it will not work! As you will see reading my trains of thought, which I am writing down with a view to trying to help any other TURBULENT being in this world who may feel as helpless as I do.

To let them know that they are not alone. I myself found that after reviewing my whole life lived, I knew which pieces absolutely had to be in my picture in order that I could know happiness, peace and stability. I could see that it was all of these pieces that had SOMEHOW? been pushed to the margins of my life and had now SOMEHOW? become as the framework of my picture, the border of my life picture. Everything that I loved, cared about and valued, was out of my reach!

I stand in the centre of my picture with my `ROCK´! No wonder I threw my book out to deep sea in a glass bottle!! I see myself as if on a desert island, sea all around and ever more distant to my fading eyesight, that framework of my life that was in effect my solid ground, that solid ground that I was building upon, slipping away over the horizon. Never a great swimmer, the fear that I will never touch any part of my real core again is what instigates my every action, every day!

I will not let go, I will strain and strain my eyesight and even though those solid foundations are no longer in physical view, I will never lose sight of them whilst my inner eye can see them. I will, as an eternal nomad, ever be able to find my way back to my clan! But I have got to go back a long, long way before I can go forward again to that future.

That future where I will be living, working and breathing each and every second of my day and night! I was a pretty disinterested student at secondary school, much depended on the particular teacher of a subject matter. It is International Teachers Day today and I know some lovely ladies who have dedicated their lives to teaching. 

There are teachers who are well able to engage with their pupils. It is these who will find that their pupils are all, as a group, learning at a consistent and uniform pace. The personality of a teacher is paramount. Their character is absolutely definitive but what about their attitude towards children?

Do they like children? Well, my very first teacher in primary school, I can assure you, loathed children and in particular, infant children! We suffered far more than we learnt with this woman! I myself, was slapped in the face and on the bottom, systematically most days of the week. Imagine it? I am a four, going on five year old child being hit so hard that on many occasions, the marks would still be visible on arriving home in the afternoon.

Well, I have told you that my mother is a DEFENDER! This is my first recollection of my own fierce mother´s defence of her daughter. Now I was not the only child who was being hit, oh, no! But I was definitely the one who was being hit more often. That teacher had it in for this little INFJ-A/T from the beginning. Please note the A for Assertive and T for Turbulent. She herself was Turbulent and created much Turbulence within me and others!

Proudly I can say that it was my mother who would take me back to school and show my markings to the headteacher and I would explain their origins. First off, my mother was accused of trying to put the blame onto my teacher to cover up her cruelty towards me. I can say loud and clear, that I was not being treated with physical cruelty by my mother or father. My mother pleaded with other mothers to back her and speak up for their children.

Eventually this teacher was removed from our school and not one of us was hit once more during our days at primary school. We had this woman down as a witch, this was a real life witch we all thought as infants. I was not afraid of her though, I stood up to her, hence me suffering more of her brutality than anyone else. We would all wee in the classroom, we asked to go to the toilet but were refused permission. We had to wait until breaktime! 

There was a drawer of knickers in the classroom that between all of our mothers, were kept permanently clean. We would many of us, always arrive home in a pair of school knickers as opposed to those which we had been wearing on leaving home! And be taking back the washed school knickers every morning. My Mum, being my brilliant Mum, would put some of my own in my pockets! Those scratchy old knickers felt awful! 

Our replacement teacher was magic, oh, she was wonderful! It was she my friends who read `The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe´ to us all in our storytime session prior to finishing up for the day. What a wonderful story reader she was and she so inspired me and many others, to become passionate readers of books.

Life being what it is though, people who move about will invariably cross paths with many, either known to them or hitherto unknown to them. This is as true as I write it, WE could not believe it either!

I was in my fifth year at secondary school and my elder sister had begun her first job. Rape was ever an underlying factor of life in Gran Bretaña. Stalkers were always a part of the dark hours. I had already had a narrow escape from one thoroughly negative monster and was fearful now of contact with males. On her wanders through the city, my sister had seen a poster advertizing self-defence classes for women in the YMCA, if you please!

There was a minimal charge and so we decided to go along. We bought our judo kits (at some considerable expense. Poor Dad!) and turned up at the YMCA around 7.30pm for our first session. On walking into the gym, my sister has immediately tuned into a hunky looking type who turned out to be our instructor. "Come on in ladies!" He had absolutely tuned into my sister as well. She had this effect wherever we went!

There she was in white judo kit, perfectly manicured painted nails, fingers and toes. Perfectly made up, make-up, lipstick and hair looking immaculate. Whilst the rest of us women had come rather scrubbed down! We chatted with the instructor and his assistant, a very tall guy who seemed as though I might well have some trouble getting away from here by myself too! 

My sister was thinking along the lines of, "Well, I am bound to be safe with him!" Post Traumatic Stress Disorder! I was thinking, "Knowing that this guy is a self-defence expert, I would not stand a chance against him!" No way, I would not even try and know him!

The last few are now coming through and suddenly my sister grabs my arm and says, "Oh s**t! Am I seeing things or is that MRS. BRUTALITY over there?" I looked and even as I set my eyes on her face, she saw us and came towards us. Now this is the truth, it really is! We cannot believe this quirk of fate. There was hesitant dialogue between us, my sister filling in for me. 

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder! I am having flash backs, I am hearing her voice and the things she said to me, I can feel the sting of her hands (enormous hands, she was a tall woman) as they seemed to wrap around my face and get the back of my head, across my ear, across my cheek and even get my little button nose, which would sometimes bleed, depending on her angle that day or maybe more depending on how quickly I saw it coming that day!

The instructor takes the centre and silence falls, I can barely hear him. I have got this woman talking to us as if she remembers nothing of this torture that she inflicted on me and others in my class. Yes, by pain tolerance levels, she beat all but I into submission. All I was doing was asking questions, honestly! I could never understand why some people would happily answer your questions and others like this woman, would automatically rear up and strike. 

Former generations were literally beaten into submission of their wills to their dominator, their indoctrinator, not their teacher and guide, no that obstacle that was blocking your path and instinctively an INFJ-A child like myself knows that. `SUBMISSION´, the title of a Sex Pistols song off their only album entitled, `NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS´. 

Our hunky instructor chooses my sister (of course!), to demonstrate with and so, she is to be his partner being like to her in height actually! They were all smaller women except me and yes, you have guessed it, my old sparring partner! Post Traumatic Stress Disorder was coming back into the present! She gave me a grin and I was on my back, in an arm lock, slapping my hand on the tatami in gesture of submission! The B*****D! 

Well, it is of course the element of surprise which makes self defence so very effective. My sister was dying for me. What luck! MINE, MY INFJ-A luck as a now full blown INFJ-T, after four and a half years of secondary school!

"OH, THAT WASN´T TOO DIFFICULT, WAS IT?" she says to me. With all of the consequent moves that the instructor was showing us, using my sister as his prop, in truth my thoughts were trying to veer aware from the punching and the throttling. What a tussle I was having with myself within, at the same time that everyone else was giggling and enjoying this! We were supposedly taking this in turns! This B*****D had done this course before, I swear!!

`THEY´RE OUT TO GET ME´, the title of a Guns and Roses song off their first album titled `APPETITE FOR DESTRUCTION´, we were definitely singing off the same song sheet there, we were! The tall assistant comes over to us now to see how we are getting on and reminds MY PARTNER of the submission gesture and that they must release their grip instantly on submission.

OH, NO! These head-locks and arm-locks were seeming eternal to me, they were! I talk of throttling and punching but that is in my mind. I do not want to inflict pain and suffering on anyone or anything. That I could find even a need to inflict pain but to premeditatedly cause pain, that is b*****dly and I knew this woman capable of beating four and five year old children. She was a spinster, hardly surprisingly!!!

We have though, all got somewhere within us, a breaking point which we do not usually find until driven right to it by some negative force. If I did not find my point of breaking, I was in serious danger of having some part of my own body broken! She was a slippery customer she was. Finally I was able to get her down, totally, firmly, twisted beyond understanding and she slapped down her submission gesture.

I looked the other way just as she had been doing with me! "Look Mr. Teacher, am I doing this right?" For all of those extensions of time in excruciating positions, I gave her back now in one punishing dose! Just as the assistant came to us again on his round (we saw nothing of the instructor who was just having a field day at alternately putting my sister down on her back with him atop and her getting him on his back with her atop! She was getting some very personalized tuition, she was and she was enjoying it!), I let go!

Meanwhile I and my childhood aggressor who had come back into my life this evening to inflict further injury on me, continued our mutual tussle for dominance. But ours had nothing to do with self-defence as such, oh, no! This was personal. Even as she was bearing down on me, I could see it. It had been me and my mother who had upset her day to day by having her removed from our school on the grounds of cruelty towards children.

Had she been able to work again, I was now asking myself? Had she been struck off the teaching register? Well, of course not, we are in Gran Bretaña here? We support our own within remember, she was one of the old school! I lived through the change over of much of the old school of teachers and wow!! What a different attitude the new school of teachers had. They actually liked children!!! Therein the greatest difference of all, I believe. They allowed us to be children first and foremost.

When you have got two rivals unevenly matched as we were, bearing in mind that she was a good ten centimetres taller than I, can make for a rather one-sided combat! That extra length gave her, as already mentioned, a pair of very large hands and feet. Those feet kept hooking round my ankles and getting me off balance. Her damned legs were so long and her arms too, it was like dealing with an octopus. How long is this class? I was exhausted from this battle.

I could feel it within though, this was my chance, here it was, she was here in front of me. She was an adult of full size, yes, I was adolescent, but I was now full size too. By a strange quirk of fate, I had been given a genuine reason to go for this woman with all of my aggression. A timely word from our instructor, having just picked my sister up from the tatami for the, I do not know how manyieth time! We must try and think aggressive, this is a big male who wants to violate your will, think aggressive!

She did not see me coming this time! What a roll? Down, down, down, down, down, again and again. Using each of the techniques that were being demonstrated. I was letting her get up quickly out of the locks when she submitted. I wanted her to get on her feet quickly so I could get her down on the ground again. Whoa Lady Galadriel!!!! I had not even realized that all other activity had stopped, it was the end of the session.

The display of combat between myself and my former childhood aggressor was demonstrating all that our hunky instructor had been trying to teach us. "In spite of being the smaller rival, you can be the dominator, it is all in the mind. You have to believe in YOU. You have to be able to channel your energy and keep your thoughts clear. Direct your attack knowingly not randomly, that is how it will ever be most effective!" Those where his parting words of wisdom!!

There was little knowing in the technical sense I must admit but oh, I so well knew my motives for defending myself from this aggressor. We were asked to `leave it´ there for today and we would continue our practice in the next session. Courtesy demands that the opponents bow to each other out of respect at the end of a combat and oddly enough, she did bow to me very courteously. On the instant, I certainly did not feel so courteous but it was a reflexive reaction on my part and I bowed to her too.

Credit where credit is due, she was a bloody tough one to pin down! I do not know that the instructor would have done any better than I. I felt as though I had achieved something, I can see it now, I had evened the score. I had inflicted some serious pain on her during that session, not overlooking the fact that she was then in her forties and I in my teens.

Our Dad was waiting outside the YMCA and my former teacher saw him and approached him before we got to him. We saw the flash back effect in his eyes, the "Am I really seeing this?", just as we had an hour and a half ago. She greeted him by name and informed him that she had just spent one and a half hours of pure physical suffering from his mentally unsafe daughter, who really should receive some psychiatric help!

Dad being the perfect leader type, was not about to resort to raking up the past. In his posh voice he enquires of this woman how her career is progressing? "A lot better now that I do not have the antagonism of your daughter on a day to day basis!" was her reply. Just going to show how ten years on, this woman still had me clearly pictured in her mind. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder? Oh, yes, I sure stressed her out but her only answer was to shout at me and hit me!

That cannot be considered healthy teaching! On parting, she said to me, "I do not think I will come again. I do not think that my body can take anymore. You are the strangest child that I have ever known. Get her to a psychiatrist sir!"

Just to round of that anecdote, my body was bruised all over. When we told my mother of the whole scenario, she could barely credit it either. "What did she do to you?" she asked on seeing the bruising all over my body. I had the finger prints of this woman, vice like finger-tips marked as lines of small bruises. What a grip that B*****D had? I did not feel like going again and well, big sister could always make her own decisions and was out the next evening with the instructor getting some even more personalized attention!!! She returned not to the YMCA either!

Living, working, breathing, yes, that was today´s train of thought. But I have gone elsewhere in my trains of thought because today I am suffering heavily from Actual Traumatic Stress Disorder and trying to see how I have been able to cope with some of these tremendously antagonistic people who dog my path! I had to get away from where I am for a while. Thank you for listening!

I am so grateful that I was able to follow that train of thought all the way through before the interception of my train of thought occurred. Ms. C, if you are reading this, that uncanny perception of my vibes! I had just added that `Thank you for listening!´ when interception occurred! My escapism therapy had produced the necessary effects and so, I had turned myself back to my task of the day.

Telling you about my living, working, breathing philosophy minus the antagonist and their antagonistic behaviour which seems to have a greater force towards negativity always, why? I am not going there today? I am an INFJ type and I have to find my Assertive self within as we all do. The rise above it technique. 

Whilst this chapter is entitled Living, Working, Breathing, actually the whole book is about living, working and breathing. That is what I have always been trying to do. As most of us do. I am challenging the way in which we live, work and breathe. We are having to live in ever more precarious conditions, work in ever more abusive surroundings at employment that has no positive benefit. We have to breathe in ever more polluted air and so compromise our own physical health and destroy our own psychological health.

It is so simple for the rural areas, Medina Azaharas, all of them. Small villages and small rural market towns. My home city of Norwich is contemporaneous with Medina Azahara, another walled city. It was fundamentally a very good idea but of course, where it all came unstuck was ever for the same reason.

The accumulated wealth generated by a whole community of people was unfairly divided always. The THEM and US system. The big guys sat up high, lording it over all of us, reaping all the benefits from our hard work and giving us a token handful of coins for our labours. And we should be grateful of course, that HE has made work available to us and HE is willing to pay us for that work done! Now come on, that is a good deal! Yes, it could seem like a good deal but how often is it?

Re-distribution is the way forward. I say it many times and will continue to do so. The re-distribution of people and fortunes. The solutions for the rural areas are actually all so clear, it is really a case of going back to former employments, farming, agriculture, craftwork, forestry work and create new employment in the ecological field. 

Just this time, we need to get it all right, knowing as we do now, where we can use all that WAS positive and add all that is NEW and positive. The fusion of the BEST of the past with the BEST of today. The natural world is the scientific paradise and we still have much of our natural world undeveloped by man-kind. It is essential that we now ensure that these natural areas are protected from development by man-kind and become absorbed into HIS concrete jungle. 

I have already talked much on our Mi Lords and Ladies and their estates. Well, these estates do tend to be in rural areas that is why it is so important for these to be generating employment, produce and income. If we were to look at my birth nation which is a small island, you would see, if you were able to mark out all the estates of the wealthy, that they made up some two thirds of the total land area. If these people do not act, we really will not get far fast.

The other third being the space given to the concrete jungles, otherwise known as cities. The governments all over, seem only to see their concrete jungles and their polluting production industries. Not so in the countryside. People there still care about their environment, they still want to fight to maintain it too. Why go back to the countryside if you have no employment there? I will say that again and again. 

If all the educated heads that have had to leave their rural areas in order to find employment in the concrete jungles, were able to bring all of their knowledge back to their home areas, WE would be able to do all that was needed to restore a balance of the LIVING, WORKING, BREATHING in our rural areas.

This is about what WE CAN DO! WE, the little country folk who care. No, WE cannot work the cities but WE CAN work the countryside but WE have got to find the leadership that will back US, the country folk. We wait and we wait! I say stop waiting for leadership from man-kind. Two million years is a long time by my reckoning. WE need to become our own leaders and clear our own pathways to our better future!

Thank you for reading and please FEEL welcome to comment in the space below the post or make communication via the contact box in the right-hand panel, underneath which, you can see the follow tab. Next blog I am going into chapter eight entitled `LEADERSHIP, BOLLOCKS OR NOT?´ Have our male leaders got any courage or not? I will be ripping them to shreds and exposing them as the cowards that they really are! So check it out.

Do you suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder? I do! I did not recognize it as such myself until I went through my life story in depth again. Oh, yes, there are people and their words or actions that have been your reason for PTSD! How many of you are regularly suffering from ATSD, Actual Traumatic Stress Disorder? I am! Something that we need to talk more about. Until next time, happy learning!!

For those of you who may like to read my book, you can find it with these links to Amazon.com: ON THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN Paperback and ON THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN e-book

MANY HAPPY RETURNS OF THE DAY TO ALL THE TEACHERS OF THIS WORLD, THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR DEDICATION TO LEARNING.

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