I have a friend whose aunt was at home one day. Out of the blue, an air force jet crashed into her house and Auntie was no more. He and I discussed the amazing implications of this bizarre, tragic event.
I don't like to bring you down, but in order to feel good, we have to face up to our own mortality. Some may think that to mention death is both unlucky and gloomy. I beg to differ. In my opinion, an underdeveloped (or immature) apprehension of the brevity of human life is one constant factor in the minds of the depressed. Deep, deep down, they think they have plenty of time to spend on feeling bad.
How much time do you have to waste? Are you sure you won't be hit by a bus tonight? If you have just 24 hours to live, how much are you prepared to give over to the debilitating feelings that have plagued your life?
Make it a rule
I have a new rule in my life. Because it is new, sometimes I forget, so I have to remind myself, and I have to practise. This new rule is this: I have two days to live, and one of them was yesterday. I am training myself to think and behave as though this were the only day I had left to live.
You've probably heard before such wise sayings as:
You've probably heard them, just as I have. But have we internalised them? Am I
– are you – aware most of the time, every day, that life is unpredictable and short? I didn't have teachers drum that into me like the 12-times table or the National Anthem. What a shame. The correct apprehension of our mortality (extremely difficult for the young to comprehend) is one of the most important skills that must be learned in adult life if we are to be happy.
Why do I make such a bold statement? To answer this, I have to refer back to our earlier concepts, that
We only have one body;
All our emotions are in that space;
There are only 24 hours in the day;
Therefore, every cubic inch, and every 10 seconds, of good feelings takes up space and time in our bodies, thus excluding bad emotions.
Do you see what I'm driving at? Everything points to the fact that we only have today, and today is the canvas on which you and I can paint our lives.
Familiarity breeds contempt, and this is so true of what I call "fridge magnet philosophy". Living 'one day at a time' is such a cliché, it's likely that we don't fully apprehend its meaning and importance. If you are often miserable, then you definitely haven't 'got' it yet. You think you have time to waste on misery.
The good news is, that this is just another skill for us to practise and get good at.
Pillow to pillow
I want you and me to 'get' it this way. We wake up at, let's say, 7 in the morning. We go to bed, let's say, at 11 p.m. We sleep for about eight hours. (I wish 
!)
From 7-11 we have 16 hours in which to feel, think and behave. I call it "pillow to pillow". We have only from pillow to pillow to be happy. (And it makes life so much easier knowing that we only have to be all that we want to be, from pillow to pillow. I don't know if I can be reasonable, sane, honest, kind, tolerant, courageous and happy any longer than that. So one day is all I try for.)
If we are lucky we will wake up tomorrow, but we don't know that. Don't freak out on this reality ... don't make yourself lose sleep over it. The crucial thing is to accept the truth, and act with maturity.
If we live only from pillow to pillow (because yesterday and tomorrow are illusions), then what we have is a brief, precious, 16-hour canvas to work on. How much of this 16 hours are we prepared to give up?
I say "give up", because when I am miserable, it is mostly lost time. Dead time. Down time. When I'm miserable, I am feeling bad in my body, the 'house' of my emotions. Many parts of my body feel bad; my thinking is confused and unfocused; my physical strength is reduced. I have less energy to get things done. I am more fearful of doing difficult things (especially because they're harder to do when I'm not energised). When I'm blue I might have to go to bed and lose more of those 16 hours. Or I will try to divert myself from my feelings by doing ridiculously easy things when I might actually have to be attending to my life-world.
The 30-minute wallow!
How much time can I waste upon feeling bad? Well, I decided to quantify it. I decided to allow myself a maximum of 30 minutes a day to wallow in my misery (I've since changed it to 15 minutes, and I've only had to use it three or four times since 1999). Wallowing is not a bad thing. Wallowing is necessary. People who don't go into their pain deeply are pretending; what they are doing is glossing over the real pain they feel. It's called 'avoidance'. Remember, pain is mandatory (though suffering is optional). Remember, too, that we only heal pain by feeling it first. If we avoid, we don't heal.
There are many ways in which people avoid feeling their pain, and by doing so, they don't heal it. One is by anaesthetising with chemicals, such as drink and drugs. Another is electronic valium ('EV', or television). There are many others, of course, and I'm sure you are aware of your own avoidance techniques.
A 30-minute wallow is perhaps the most efficient way to heal. A good wallow is not a half-assed cry, or a half-baked self-pity session. Those are just usually attention-getters or avoidance techniques that we have learned.
No, by 'wallow', I mean a deep, full-on, heavy-duty misery session. Go to your room; shut the door; bash the pillows and cry your eyes out if you have to. Go into Chaos. Into Kali, the goddess of all that is dark. Go deeper into the eye of the hurricane than you have ever been before. Feel yourself as you are: one small atom in a Universe that will continue whether you live or die.
Feel your aloneness, your loneliness, your isolation. Feel your pain! This will take you deeper into the core of your being. By experiencing your aloneness, you will become stronger, more independent and more free from aloneness. You will discover that your feelings won't kill you (as your Etch A Sketch being thinks will happen). Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
Don't do it for attention. Don't do it to get help from anyone. Don't imagine Mum will get you out of this one. Feel your aloneness. You are alone, you know. I believe that until we feel our aloneness, we can't become whole, we can't heal, we can't take responsibility for our whole lives, and we can't feel mostly good most of the time.
Half an hour of intense wallowing in your misery is better than spreading it thin across 16 hours, because to spread it is like smearing your whole day with muck. Half a cry is like half a movie. Half a wallow is like half an orgasm. (In Sydney, we call that "getting off at Redfern", Redfern being one railway station before Central 
)
You have probably heard that endorphins (feelgood chemicals in your body) are released by crying real tears. Make use of this fact.
Now, you might say to me, "Pip, I've tried to cry, but I can't. The refreshing tears won't come. I feel dammed and choked up. So it's not a healing exercise for me at all."
I can really relate to that. There are many taboos against crying, and times when it's inappropriate to cry, so our bodies have learned control (sometimes too much control). Imagine if George and Sam were on the 76th storey of a building under construction, and Sam couldn't pass George the hammer because he was having a little weep about his childhood. Not a good look!
Firstly, I would say this. You don't need to cry tears for 30 minutes of intense emotional clearing to work. It's quite optional, in my experience.
Secondly, perhaps by saying "I can't cry", you are telling your brain the wrong thing. Try putting it in the past tense: "Previously I had trouble crying but I'm getting better at that every day". Remember, your brain is listening!
Thirdly, it's important to note that crying, with tears, is a skill, just as laughing is. If you have found crying difficult, your muscles have got weak and temporarily lost their skill. You'll improve! With practice, we improve at juggling, saxophone playing, crying and laughing. There will be more on this later, but for now, ask yourself, "How does it feel when I cry? Which muscles move? What feelings are happening to me, and whereabouts in my body? How can I better get in touch with them? How can I improve my ability to release my cleansing tears?" You will come up with answers to these questions I've never even thought of. Maybe you can share them with others in our guestbook.
Commit!
I am committed to having a good life, and I refuse to waste more than a quarter hour (or, maximum, 30 minutes) a day in misery. Of course, there are special exceptions, such as when we are grieving, when we need to use our common sense about this. However, I put great store by Precept 10: I have up to 30 minutes to feel and heal pain. Any more than that is not only self-indulgent; it is self-destructive.
My life is precious to me, and the more I practise what I have been describing in these pages, the more valuable it becomes. Ironically, the more I feel this way, the less fearful I am of death, but because I am loving life more, I am more careful on the roads, and I am more miserly with the time that I used to waste on making myself miserable. I fear death less, but I'm having such a ball, I don't want to waste a minute to misery, and I try hard not to get hit by a bus.
Commit to new habits. Have a good wallow, then emerge from WallowWorld and tune into our previous tips, plus whatever else you know to feel good. Shake up the Etch A Sketch. Snap out of it. Don't worry, be happy. Give that a try, OK? Maybe it's not as dumb as it sounds.
I have promised to try to keep these chapters short and simple. There is absolutely no need for me to write any more on this precept. I won't try to complicate a very simple principle that, if practised regularly and with commitment, can help change a miserable and dysfunctional person into a much happier one. I have nothing more to add but this: if you allow yourself more than 30 minutes a day to be miserable, you still think you have unlimited time. Better duck if you hear low-flying jets.
Abundance and gratitude,
Pip
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