Distractions.

Life can be a very busy experience.  Personally I prefer it that way.  An interesting observation my mother once told me was that I am a much happier person when I am busy doing things.  For some reason idle time and myself do not mix very well.  I become bored, irritable, and even at times unpleasant to be around (shocking I know).  Part of the reason that it is easier to stay positive when I am busy is because an empty / bored mind is more susceptible to the negative thoughts and temptations that are constantly thrown our way on a daily basis.  This can lead to a tendency to dwell on the unpleasant things / experiences in your life, what you wish you had, etc.  For this reason I have been ever more aware of the many different distractions that I employ in my life on a daily basis.  There are a lot of different things in my life that I use as temporary respites from the daily trials and frustrations that I have and that help me to chase away the depressing and negative thoughts that so easily come back when my mind is free to wander.  

First off let me put this in perspective.  I am not a depressing person.  My life is actually very blessed and I generally keep that in good perspective and am happy and grateful for my blessings.  There are times however, when it is easy to think of things that I wish could be different regarding my life.  Not everything in my life is ideal, and there are a few changes that I would make if given the opportunity to.  Unfortunately for me, a lot of these things are beyond my control and are not things that I have a lot of influence over.  I am okay with that, and I have come to accept that there are lots of other good opportunities and blessings that I can be pursuing as things currently stand.  While I do feel good about my current situation, there are times when I think about it and it bothers me.  It then becomes easy to become sad, cranky, and frustrated.  This is where the distractions come in for me and turn to music, sports, reading, writing, and friends to keep my mind from focusing on things in my life that have the ability to bring me down.  I am sure this is a very common thing, and probably not worthy of dedicating an entire blog post to.  What really caught my attention though was when I realized how similarly I turn to my distractions listed above to take me away from the reality of life situations that I can not or feel like I can not change, as drug addicts turn to drugs to escape the reality of situations they are facing in their lives.  

It was not something that I had ever thought about before.  I was watching 'Celebrity Rehab w/ Dr. Drew' on VH1 and the people on the show were talking about how they had turned to drugs when the situations in their life seemed overwhelming or too much for them to deal with.  They used the drugs as a distraction to keep them from having to think about the negative situations they were dealing with in their lives.  I have noticed recently in my own life how I will turn to music, sports, or some other distraction to take my thoughts away from situations in my life that I feel like I can't deal with / have little to no control over.  While the consequences of the decisions I make vs. the consequences of the decisions that the drug addicts made are vastly different, the interesting part to me was that the thought process behind the decisions were very similar.  A whole book could be written on the importance of choosing positive distractions to overcome your pain / grief / frustration vs. negative distractions, but I simply wanted to point out how close the actual thought processes behind those decisions were.  Personally I can remember specific times when I have had thoughts that were depressing, frustrating, or both and I have made the conscience decision, "I can't deal with / think about this anymore", and I have turned on music, gone running, or done something else to take my mind off of what was bothering me.  Not that I have a ton in my life to complain about or get me down, but there are times when it is easy to get caught up in the sadder aspects of life.  It was a humbling thought to think that I followed the same process in what has turned out to be very small decisions in my life that addicts followed when making some of the most life altering decisions of their own lives.    

I guess what is important is finding our own personal positive distractions that help us effectively deal with the inevitable windfall of tragedy and heartache that will eventually befall us all to some extent or another.  Perhaps the process behind turning to distractions to deal with different situations in life is more of a human characteristic vs. an addict characteristic than I had previously thought.  I never really thought that I had as much in common with those that have turned to drugs to escape their problems as it now seems that I do.  I guess the only thing that differs is our drug of choice. 12-12-10