More Freaky Current Affairs

The first one I noticed this morning was the story of a woman who jumped off a building naked after taking part in a "rigorous" self-development course.

"She climbed out of the second-floor window of her workplace building, stepped off the ledge and fell onto the pavement below, and then she died half an hour later," Mr Bromwich said. "She was a modest girl but took her clothes off twice and was naked at the time of her death."

What is wrong with us that we constantly think we are not good enough or need to be more in order to be happy? This poor woman probably paid heaps of cash to go to this course and the end result was it ended up sending her bonkers to the point she either wanted to take her own life or suffered from so much grandiose thought she probably was trying to fly. (This photo is actually from the website of the organisation that ran the course.) This quote was taken from the course website:

"Imagine being comfortable with your emotions, allowing yourself to be sad, angry, or happy, knowing you can appropriately manage and express your feelings and have a satisfying relationship with yourself and other people .... Feeling profoundly connected to your heart, nature, society, and in contact with your soul - that part of yourself that is the essence of fulfilment, providing meaning, purpose and a sense of wholeness in your life."

Imagine. How fucked are we as a society and as a community if we need to do a self-help course in order to be sad or happy, express emotion, have satisfying relationships and feel connected to nature, society etc etc as stated above. Have we come so far that the most basic laws of humanity - emotion/expression/connection/purpose have completely eluded us and left us naked and broken at the bottom of an office building in Sydney's CBD?

It makes me yearn for another era and romanticise some of the stories mum has told me of what it was like in the 60's and 70's. She told me that when her and Dad were just married, they lived above a shop in Sydney, two hippies with no money, a new baby and they would sit around listening to records and playing cards for hours on end. They didn't have a TV, they didn't have any cash or assets or any real idea what they were doing either as young adults or parents - but they were just in love with each other and the moment.

This story really illustrates to me the fragility of our mental health in a modern age. We are the product of technology, consumerism, terrorism, globalisation, pop-culture, fast food, disposability, celebrity, genetic modification, built-in obsolescence and so many other false and fucked up concepts that interferes with what's real, what matters and essentially who were are that unless we are rock solid in our mental health, we can easily lose our grip.