Do we look for stressfull environments out of conditioning and familiarity? Is it like looking for painful relationships because we are used at being abused or at abusing the other? It reminds me of the lyrics of The Eurythmic’s Seven Seas.

Sweet dreams are made of this

Who am I to disagree

I travel the world

and the seven seas

Everybody is looking for something

Some of them want to use you

Some of them want to get used by you

Some of them want to abuse you

Some of them want to be abused

Familar pain or stress outrule a new situation by numbers, if you leave it up to your mind to do the thinking. The mind much prefers to ‘know’ the situation. Knowing equals being prepared for what it takes to survive. The mind is a clever organ. Ultimately savy in how to survive. No new territories please. New territories take survival instinct to discover, explore and master. Better to gear on auto pilot. Even if that involves enduring pain or stress. Because auto pilot enables us to still pay attention to something else. Like looking after children or work or what our friends think of us. Which increases our chance of survival.

Why am I writing this? Because I am intrigued by the purpose of negative thoughts. Nature’s design is infinetely complex and we don’t know much about it’s inner dynamics. Maybe because we focus on outer appaerances, symptoms and results more then what drives the engine. Why and how our minds bring us down (negative thoughts) can be easily discarted as illnesses. But that doesn’t pay much hommage to our clever design. Do we simply judge negative thoughts as an annoyance to say the least? Or maybe even as outright ‘wrong’ and on call to be changed, altered and cured for the better at once. This remedy sounds like when someone is being thirsty, instead of giving that person something to drink, his or her craving for water is questioned. When I’ve got a negative thought I should be triggered to find out where it comes from and what it wants to tell me. Instead of being ashamed of it or embarrased to burden other people with it. When I am thirsty I fetch myself a drink. Don’t you?

In Gozo now the summer season is over. The locals resort to their silent and simple lives. The lack of stress slows me down. I have been looking for down time after one and a half years down under in Australia. Up here in Gozo, contrary to what happens in Australia, there is less incentive to work for material gain. The prospect of and familiarity with prosperity is much lower here in humble Gozo then it is in promising wealthy Australia. A week ago I visited the UK. My familiar incentive to achieve came back to me. It’s a bit stressful to be honest. I like my mode in Gozo, isolated from the result orientated busy-ness of Northern Europe. But we take ourselves with us wherever we go. Hence we do not rest until we have found our same old groove. This might be in a new direction and in different conditions. But still. It’s what we are familiar with, conditioned for survival, no escaping from it. Meanwhile it rains here, it rains constantly. I like the rain.