Breathing? Yes. Living? Yes.

For the last several months of my life, I have personally struggled with feelings of severe anxiety, self-doubt and fear that my life has little worth in the grand scheme of things. This has ultimately been amplified in recent weeks due to a five-year long relationship ending suddenly, and an unnamed event I wish not to speak of as of now.

That being said, I’ve felt anxiety and obsessive tendencies for almost all of my teenaged life, maybe even during the latter years of my childhood too. I distinctly remember the moments where the inability to stop the thoughts of overthinking began. I remember sitting in classrooms, and teachers would write on the white board and if they wrote a letter incorrectly to how I would have done it, or if something around the top of the room was *off* it would drive me to insane levels of stress in my head. It was moments like this where I felt I was insane, nobody else at that age seemed bothered by these little things, yet I felt almost like a nagging voice in my head urging me to scream out to change the thing that was seeming off for me.

That is just a background into my anxieties and obsessive nature from a young age. This has only ever grown since then. Luckily, I got it under control between the ages 17-21. This piece is essentially me trying to share some personal help I use in these moments of extreme stress and anxiety. It is very simple, but for me it almost always works. Ask yourself, are you breathing? if the answer is yes, that is a start. Ask yourself, are you living as a result of being able to breath? The answer is yes, therefore so long as you have your breath, you have the ability to control your emotions, to control the feeling of pressure weighing down upon you.

I often find myself paralysed, completely frozen, often in tears with little to no control of my reactions. In these moments it is impossible to control your breathing, let alone acknowledge it and harness it to help you. It is in these moments where the only thing I can focus on is my heartbeat. My heartbeat is like a metronome, it can set the tempo for the rest of the body and mind. Listen to your heart beating, zone in on it, allow it to be the tempo-setter for the rest of your physical and emotional being, you’ll soon find that your heart can set the tone for your body and mind.

So, at the end of this writing, what do I have to say…

Are you breathing? Yes. Are you living? Yes.

Allow your heart to be your metronome in moments of loss. Let it set the tempo for your existence in these moments.

“Has it Ever Struck You That Life is All Memory. Except for the One Present Moment That Goes by you so Quick you Hardly Catch it Going?”

Have you ever seen moving video of the past and had a moment of fear and wonder that every person who was once thinking, with a life of their own in that exact video, is long, long gone? This piece was triggered by my viewing of the first coloured video of London in 1924.

Throughout life, it is almost impossible to comprehend our own existence and the world and universe we live in. No matter how much we may think we understand it, or how self-aware we may think we are, we still know almost absolutely nothing. It can be scary living life, unaware of your movement towards the end. Like some people, I too have these realisations sometimes, however this realisation is often triggered by seeing people alive and living, who are now dead.

It is fearful to imagine, you can see dreams, hopes, failures, happiness, sadness, fears and entire family backgrounds and lives all playing out in front of us on a video, yet it is all what has mentioned has been long concluded for these people.

I say that the first coloured video of life moving about in 1924 London was what triggered this, and that is true, but what made me have inspiration for genuinely documenting my thoughts on this was the quote by Tennessee Williams from The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore, the quote being “has it ever struck you that life is all memory. Except for the one present moment that goes by you so quick you hardly catch it going?”

This quote put the fear of God into me to be honest. It made me realise that one day, I am gone, and the only proof of my existence will be any documented video of me, much like those people roaming throughout London in 1924. It made me realise that my life is all one constant growing memory, there never really is a ‘present’ moment. Every moment that feels like it is in the present is instantly moving into the past as it happens. It is only at the end, or through other people’s viewing and retrospect, that they can realise the present of other people’s lives. As for the people living the lives, it will never truly be the ‘present’.

I guess the main point for this piece is not much. It is a thought, a concept, a fear, and an awe at what life really is. It is a memory, and one day, the only proof of that memory ever being a present, existing moment will be the video documentation left behind of you living your life, blissfully unaware that every moment of your present is moving instantly to your past.

To view the video of London in 1924, you can do so via this link – First Coloured Video of Life in London in 1924.