Have you run across signs of a certain disease in yourself or others? Here is one sign. "My opinions don't count for anything. Nobody listens to me so I must be a bother."
Another sign is when hearing younger people say, "I'm a kid so who cares about me except the people who want to take advantage of me. The want my money or my body so who can I trust".
Another sign is watching older people withdraw from human contact and conversation. "They treat me like I don't know anything just because I don't have a fancy telephone or computer. I can't do the things that were such fun in younger years. What is there to live for when I feel like being part of the trash."
This disease of mind and body is hard to name. "Bad self image" just does not do it. Depression comes to mind but defining depression is impossible. Does it mean "clinical depression", whatever that is. Or feeling the "blues". I simply don't know an adequate word but I am willing to make a proposal for one way of looking at things.
What if I think of myself as a "Library of experiences". What feeling arises in a person by just saying or writing those words? Curiosity seems to arise in me. What does it mean to see myself as a library? I surely have had experiences since childhood. So what is in me as a library? Consider looking at a recent or long time ago experience.
I try to put into words that positive or negative experience and soon discover that a filter wants to screen out some things as too over the top good or too terrible to look at right now. So I find one event that is interesting and soon a magnet like power draws in other ideas and feelings. A person learns which event to take off of the shelf of the library of your life. It takes practice. The brain as the central storage machine in each of us has already organized memories and events.
You may find yourself wanting to take notes on what has appeared. Do it. More notes will follow.
