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"Ground Hog Depression"



Ground Hog Depression

    I read somewhere that one of the ground hogs we use to determine the length of our winter here out on the east coast, well he’s a bit depressed. I thought, ‘How sad’. How do we remedy sadness? Or even further, that let down of depression because we aren’t living the life we wanted to, perhaps. Or something along those lines.
    You might not want to hear this. However, I have been around. Speaking with a holistic healer, who’s well known in this country and perhaps even abroad. We had this discussion quite recently. About happiness. He has known me before he’d finished college.  Way before. Technically he could just about have been my son.  Age difference that is.
    Upon our discussion, we agreed that our happiness is sometimes just what we’re born with.  The personality traits of being human. The physiology of our individual bodies is vast. The medical doctors from internists to brain surgeons and the like I’ve questioned in my office in the past. The question is, “How much do we know about the physiology of the human body?” I have received answers from ten to fifteen percent. Yep. Quite a small amount of knowledge we have. And some of those medical doctors say that may even be a high estimate.
    In this form of us being human, I think, I’m guessing here. We’ve been in this form of human being about 50,000 years. I’m certain someone will give me another number. I’m not here to get too bogged down in that discussion. I’m making another point.
    Perhaps it is, how we perceive life. That may be what is the most important thing in the equation of how we handle illness, injury and death. I don’t think you can force someone most of the time to think and be any differently once they’re born. It’s all so individual. ‘One experiment of one’, as some have pointed out, physiologists that I’ve known have said that. I agree with that. Yet, a physiologist I’d known for years, who passed years ago agreed with me on one particular thing.
    Oh, that particular thing? How do we change our genetics? I had a theory about twenty-five years ago. When I was a weeee thirty-something year old. My husband debated my theory. Told me I was ‘…way wrong’. He having attended much more advanced education than I, at the time. Yet, his background was botanical, psychology, math and teaching. Mine has been more directed towards military-thinking, accounting, finance, biology, somatic modalities, speaking, writing… Then on my own I dabbled in chemistry in my kitchen and over the years my gardening. I can say, I’m a bit of a fuddy-duddy with all that. I always feel like a slow-moving science person. I science myself, and have had people poke me, just a little for science. My brain is in a few or so books of other high-end technical authors, doctors and professors. I’ll leave it at that.
    So, that particular thing? We may not be able to readily change our personalities. And may be neither should we want to.  Our personality flaws, which God knows I know my many…flaws that is. Those flaws, or what we think are flaws, quite often are the very part of our personality that drives us and or others as well. An example would be, when we see a person who’s quite artsy. There are those of us left-brain thinkers who question why they, the artsy people are so different. Those left-brain thinkers get irritated by someone like me, a right-brained thinker that say, “Well, it’s gray. Can’t you see that? But it’s not completely gray…” I’ll motion with my head tilt and hands trying to tell you what the color is that’s perhaps not on any pallet of paint you’ve seen, yet. And you the left-brain thinkers will shake your head in irritation. Or better yet in disgust, because we can’t debate what perhaps we can’t see. Me being the right-brained thinker, considers that to be comedy. As well, you left-brained thinker will not see the least bit of humor in the lack of debate and irony, of our own stupidity of our personality clashes and flaws.
    Hence, when I know something is funny that I can share, yet the response is not coherent in my realm. I realize you’re more a left-brained thinker or you’re pissed because I made the joke first and you didn’t. The latter I’ve had happen from time to time in life. Again, a personality thing.
    How about another example. Such as standing in formation in a military setting, such as the Marine Corps. So, we’re serious right? Waiting for our First Sergeant to call let’s say all five hundred of us to attention. Our Captain is about to arrive, ‘front and center’, as they say. And what am I doing? Because I’ve been around. Made rank meritoriously. I truly belong. I feel like I belong. What I start to do is make jokes as I stand in the second to last row of Marines. I see bodies shake, snickering of course at perhaps an off-colored joke. As the First Sergeant is ready to call us to attention. I lower my voice even more, giving punch lines. Basically, I can be a pain in the… well you know. Yeah, I did that.
    Why? Because I love to put a twist in and bring about joy to lives otherwise overly left-brained. How that came about? My husband of nearly thirty-six years he says my experiences as a child. That’s a guy with a psychology degree talking. Actually, I remember thinking comedy at age four. At that point in my life, my parent’s marriage seemed quite intact. So, no worries that I can recall of, at that point. Although, just a few years later my parent’s marriage was not such a happy one. Yet, the comedic side I believe I may have been blessed with. My mother was an incredibly right -brained person, with a long fuse and longevity in what she thought was funny. Look up Artsy-Fartsy in the dictionary, and there is my mother’s picture as a baby.
    Oh, the genetics. In around 2004, we found out that my theory in 1995 that hubby poo-pood was proven correct. We can alter our genetics even after we are born. Yep.  Oh, the Genome Theory… Look that up. This does have to do with what we put into our bodies. Then changing our mind? We have habits, all of us. It is how we learn to start brand new ones, yet our old traits will not fall by the wayside completely. My theory on that right now is… Life would be boring if you thought like anyone but you.---Jody-Lynn Reicher


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