There’s a mantra that I developed early on in my life as a young, depressed, over-thinker: nothing really matters. My life doesn’t matter. I’d hear this in my head, even if I didn’t want to, along with a variety of other negative thoughts and thousands of anxieties. I’d try to ignore it but it really effected the way I went through life; getting through each day felt like an impossible feat that I wasn’t really sure I wanted to keep going through.
My mental state began to improve a little more as I got more involved in martial arts and other hobbies, and also when I began my mental health journey. With the support of SSRI’s, I began to force myself to be positive and optimistic, hoping it would eventually become organic and natural. I would hear my negative mantra but it wasn’t as daunting as before, it didn’t feel so crippling anymore.
It was when I got a little older, and after training in martial arts for a few years, that I heard my mantra in a ki gong class. It was being used as a lesson, a positive one! We were discussing how you are the center of your own universe. When it comes down to it, each person is but a tiny piece of the universe, and that universe is anything you want it to be. So it is true, nothing matters. There’s no point to our lives, until we make something of them. Because of this, every choice you make for your life is important, because it’s yours and only yours.
Life is all about perspective. I’ve now since developed a counter mantra when my old one shows its face again; as it yells the familiar “nothing matters”, I yell back “so everything does.”
