8th June 2019
Anyone can do any amount of work, provided It Isn’t the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment.
Robert Benchley
That's it, avoidance.
Denial is refusal of admitting that one has a problem, avoidance is deliberate pursuit of a copying mechanism that does not address ones problem.
Avoidance manifests itself in many ways and the signs are as highlighted in the Nihilism and self Sabotage discussion.
I take this opportunity to tackle a very elusive tool of avoidance.
Mental Preoccupation.
Many months ago, I found myself watching ,"ear worm", an episode of sponge bob square pants.
Apparently, the song Musical doodle by the Sonars had entered sponge bobs mind so deeply that he could not stop singing it, he couldn't eat or talk or even sleep, he was either singing or whistling it every second of the day for some days.
All his friends committed themselves to getting the song out of his head by playing other songs but all their attempts were futile, even without Sponge Bob having to open his mouth to sing , the song kept playing in his head.
A month ago I realized I had been in a similar situation one time in the past.
Certain tunes had engulfed me and for a period I couldn't get them out of my system, I couldn't sleep and I would do everything else including making conversation while half-minded.
The rest of my mind was stuck on replay of these tunes and I had no control of the situation.
I came to really think about it a week ago and realized the tunes weren't divinely catchy, its just that in my subconscious I was fighting so hard to avoid dealing with certain things that my mind went into a near extreme self distraction mode.
Mental preoccupation, deliberate or not, is a tool of self distraction, it's a way of taking attention away from the needful.
As much as it would appear to be a coping mechanism, self distraction is an elusive path down self destruction.
Ever noticed how sometimes someone's mind may not be with them, observe keenly and you might notice a worrying pattern of mental absence that mostly manifests itself in lack of productivity and sudden bursts of useful energy.
Absent-mindedness is highly characterized by forgetfulness and clearly observable in awkwardly often misplacement of items and lack of recall of conversations.
Presence of mind is the key to creativity, mental preoccupation can be seen in:
An authors writers block and so called lack of inspiration or an uninjured sports-persons loss of form.
Loss of jobs, loss of loved ones, bankruptcy, disease and many other issues could lead to this theft of presence.
Mental preoccupation is the underlying imbalance of the absent-minded.
Absent-mindedness is a product of semantic noise.
Semantic noise is a result of internal discomfort.
Internal discomfort is a call for self care.
The nature of this elusive pattern is pervasive, self neglect leads to eventual deeper internal discomfort and thus reversal of neglect calls for more self care effort.
Mental preoccupation is the thief of presence.
Lack of presence is the thief of productivity.
Unproductivity is an indicator of mental preoccupation
Depression is so hard to deal with because its elusive nature lies in pervasive patterns that are buried in complex intertwined layers.
Avoidance leads to addiction to more copying mechanisms.
Victor Mafusa
