Tag Archives: beingagoodman

My Mental Health – In Times of Mind

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I has taken me a while to getting to write this post.

Because, it is important, humbling, embarrassing; but, mostly life changing.

After a major health scare in December; let’s say it for what it is, it was a brain aneurysm and I almost died. Staring the Grim Reaper in the eye a couple of times can give you a bit of a scare and be life changing!

In recovering from that, and then having massive changes in my personal circumstances, there is no other way to describe it… I broke.

A really good psychiatrist said to me there were a lot of medical terms for my condition but basically I had a ‘good old fashioned nervous breakdown.’

As my spiritual guide Russell Brand would better describe it “I was a bit fucked.”

As a result, and only through the absolute love and dedication of my ‘Band of Brothers” and my wonderful daughters, they got me the help I needed. Thank you, you saved me.

I was admitted to the “Rural and Remote Ward” a Glenside Hospital. The only experience I had in the ‘Glenside Mental Hospital’ was dropping crazy people off in my career in the Police and my old Mum often saying “If you kids don’t behave I’ll end up in Glenside!”

I was humbled and grateful for all the care and treatment I received there of several weeks as an inpatient.

Also during that time I found a little blank notebook in the bookshelf that had a floral cover and the words ‘Life is Beautiful’ printed on it. In this little book which I found by coincidence I started to write poetry.

Now those who know me and have heard me recite “Clancy of the Overflow” about 1000 times and threatened to punch me will know, I have always been a little interested in the wonders of verse and poetry. I have written a few before and love a verse or two in my homemade cards which some of you have been subjected to.

Plus I have to thank my late buddy of 30 years Des Steele for his love of poetry and it’s inclusion in many of his ‘Desisms’. (I still miss him and you can read about him in a post I did a few years ago when he passed away – click here).

So I filled this little book with poetry during my recovery. I filled that book and a few more pages since!

The poem below was the first I wrote in Glenside. It is basically the first draft, are a lot of my poems, which I don’t change in typing them up so as not to lose the moment they were written.

The poem below has recently been published on a United Kingdom site – www.theperspectiveproject.co.uk – which has a lot of works by people recovering from mental illness – worth a look I think.

So, I haven’t written here lately, largely because I have been writing in another way I love with pen and paper in cursive (much to the horror of my daughters and their inability to read cursive!)

I will include a little heading, not like this rambling, for each of my posts where I publish another poem; I may even read a few on my YouTube Channel Being a Better Man.

But, mostly I want to share my trek, as I experienced it, and wrote about it.

I will share my posts on Facebook etc (which is probably how you got here anyway) and appreciate your comments and feedback – there is a comments section on the bottom of this post and all my posts if you want to use that on this site to comment or provide feedback or suggestions.

By the way, I love doing this, it has helped a lot in my treatment and recovery. I hope you can find something for you.

Enjoy. (and No, hardly any of my poems rhyme!)

“In Times of Mind – Hope”
 
In times of mind,
Through experience,
I lose myself.
 
I see, and think, and feel,
And lose to myself.
 
I circle and dive,
I resurface;
To a confused sea.
 
I struggled against
The currents within;
And the steep mountain ahead.
 
I swim and climb; alone:
Against the winds within.
 
In the blackness,
Without light, I turn searching,
For landfall, or the smallest foothold.
 
I am alone.
 
I reach out my hand,
In one final grasp at survival.
 
…And suddenly, I feel
The grip I have been seeking.
 
I am held afloat,
A firm foot hold found,
 
It is love,
And family,
And friendship;
It was there all the time.
 
The light of the beacon,
Always shines;
My blindness was from within.
 
The light now guides me;
The light now fills me.
 
I now sail and trek forth,
In light, in love;
With hope.

A Good Man: Takes Responsibility for His Actions

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Yesterdays blog was about forgetting the ‘better man project’ and just being a good man – everyday.

Everyday is a long time – it is now and it is always.

You can’t have a bad day as a good man and hurt people and then say sorry and think it will be okay. Saying sorry is a good start but that taking responsibility for your actions is the actual action that you need to take.

I remember when we were all saying sorry for something we didn’t think we were responsible for… I always used the analogy of having a cold….

“Sorry you feel bad with your cold” – as opposed to…

“I apologise you have a cold” – but it’s not my fault so why apologise.

An apology is taking responsibility for your actions – “sorry about that” is all very nice and really has no answer, or complaint, but is it taking responsibility – I vote no.

I want to be a good man and take responsibility for my actions on a daily basis. But, there is a catch. Apologise freely, or better still stop and don’t do that thing that I might have to apologise for in the first place – that is the good man.

The good man today does not wipe out the not so good man of yesterday. It does also not wipe out all the ‘sorries’ when there should have been ‘apologies.’

In thinking about this, I wondered is is all that apologising and saying sorry really doing anything – is anyone really any better for it?

The answer that continued to boom through my head was ‘Yes”.

Not that long ago I was contacted by someone that I had wronged a long time ago – for all those years I put it down to good old youthful exuberance. They told me what I had done had hurt them for years and it was a horrible time in their life. I said sorry… I hope I apologised. But, most of all I realised that neither of these things seemed enough. I dont know what to do to make up for this wrong – but, I do know the universe will tell me when that time is and I will have to pay the piper – and I will pay him gladly.

Taking responsibility for your actions can be a hard pill to swallow – you can choke on it and it may kill you. It may kill the construct of the person you thought you were – it may kill your ego. These are things we don’t risk in our modern dog eat dog life.

But, and there is always a but….

In my ‘Dr Google’ research I came across something interesting in all my searches about taking responsibility for your actions… and it was in the Alcoholic’s Anonymous 12 steps program… (these are a few of the 12 and in actual order but with a few edited out – do a search and next time you may be kinder to someone who you think is, or is, an alcoholic – they are undertaking something much harder than any pretend better man project…)

  1. Admit to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
  2. Make a list of persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
  3. Make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

So, the battling drunk up the street may just be a good man (or woman) trying to undertake the recompense for a life not so well led. … and if you want to baulk at the God bit, just think about editing that out instead of trashing the entire sentence – perhaps it is easier to not get passed the ‘God bit’ because you then can avoid the ‘ourselves’ bit.

When you think about their list it can be overwhelming – when you think about your list it may be a surprise – when I think about my list, especially those closest to me, it is staggering.

I am following the 12 steps and it may not be God even to me, but the Universe is always watching – it is where we came from and where we will go back to. Remember there may be one molecule in your body that was once the heart of a star – and that is a legacy that deserves recognition and somehow, somewhere, a sense of awe!

I want each day to not be about being the better man sometime in the future and to hell with my past in getting there, well getting there tomorrow.

I want want each day to be about me being a good man and acknowledging that yesterday has a whole lot of responsibilities that I have to also take responsibility for and when I can ‘I apologise’ and do what I can to make amends.

Some days this may sting, but often the acknowledgement takes no more than will and acceptance … and that may not be pretty.

I have been a good man today and I accept all the responsibilities for my wrongs of all the yesterdays to here… I will be a good man tomorrow and make amends where I can.

Bye the way – I do not think this is a task, I think it is a privilege – because we, I, am still here to do it.

Being a Good Man

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Well this is a realisation.

The ‘better man project’ is a myth.

Each day I have convinced myself that I am on the path to being a better man; yet that day of fulfilment is always in the future – I will be a little bit better today and a little bit better tomorrow etc etc etc – well etc, ad infinitum until you get to the point that you convince yourself that each little ‘better bit’ will lead to some unattainable position of better – but of course after that you can always be a little better.

… and of course because in you, in your idea of where you are going and what you are doing is the problem that each little bit of better you disguise to yourself as deserving some credit and acknowledgement for the effort – irrespective of the outcome – which overall may not be better…

Today, the only day I have and the only day I am living – actually I am only living this actual moment right now…. I need, now, to be a good man.

I can plan to be better tomorrow which always provides the excuse of not being the good man today, now, in this moment.

It is a big realisation that the construct of my personality that I have created – as in ‘this is me’ is in actual fact a construct of something I will be tomorrow – in that I will be better tomorrow so it is okay to not be so ‘better’ today.

It is easy to be a better man tomorrow – it is hard to be a good man right now, especially when things are not going well, or you are hurting or …. well there are 1000 reasons why we tell ourselves it is okay to behave in a certain way today because tomorrow….?

It is a little difficult to change an entire blog to ‘Being a Good Man (Now)’, but labels are often just there so that we can feel our place – URL’s are just there so we can find a web page – and so often that is a place we have created so that we can feel empowered.

As with all things I decided to seek ‘Dr Google’ to advise me of the characteristics of a good man… there were a lot of URL’s that got a hit – actually 600,000,000! I think, and feel, that what defines a good man must come from within – and with perhaps a little help from the universe; so I will thank Dr Google for its 600 million ideas and define my good man characteristics from my heart, my mind, my soul, my universe and hopefully when the next search for ‘define a good man’ ends up on someones desk top they too can find it themselves and define themselves as a good man from within – because, after all that is really where the good man emerges from or hides.

So, I think the better man project has taken a paradigm shift – I will always try and be better tomorrow, it is hopefully the nature of all of us – but today, this day, this moment, now, I will be a good man.

A good man is:

  1. Honest