Red balloons

Balloon: A balloon is an inflatable flexible bag filled with a gas, such as helium, hydrogen, nitrous oxide, oxygen, or air. Modern balloons can be made from materials such as rubber, latex, polychloroprene, or a nylon fabric, while some early balloons were made of dried animal bladders, such as the pig bladder.[1] Some balloons are used for decorative purposes, while others are used for practical purposes such as meteorology, medical treatment, military defense, or transportation.

Right, it’s ranty Friday, and thanks to a few sleepless nights and PMT I’m ready to rant!

Have you ever noticed how hard it is to be positive? (Ha I hear soooo many of you cry!) So many things conspire against us, least of all, as I am finding out at the moment, other people and mostly people I don’t know. As you know I’m weaning slowly off anti-depressants and am trying to remain positive (I know, I know, sometimes it’s not that simple and our brains won’t work like that just because we will them to, but I’m trying, I have to, and I really am trying) Recently it has seemed to me that everyone around appears to like to moan, and whine, and feel like they are so much more hard done by than everyone else. Not just people I come across everyday, but even in the news which at times seems so bizarre that I can’t believe it has actually made the headlines. And mostly this angst is over such trivial things that don’t, in my opinion, warrant such a bad mood. For example when driving….people can become sooooo unbelievably aggressive and cross, mostly about the simplest of things ‘Ah you haven’t let me out, YOU HAVEN’T LET ME OUT, how could you do this to me, why haven’t you let me out, ah that’s it, my day is ruined, RUINED I tell you.’ *offers a finger or two* Or in the supermarket ‘You are blocking me, I cannot possibly say excuse me so instead I will ram your trolley and give you an evil glare because you are in my way and I need to get past, I NEED to get past, oh I cannot believe your trolley is there, you must be doing this on purpose, my day is ruined, RUINED I tell you.’ *huffs and puffs and shakes head* It’s the rudeness that comes with the perceived ‘unreasonable’ action that really upsets me. I’m a nice person, I don’t go out of my way to upset people, yet perfect strangers seem to treat me with contempt, as if my only aim in life is to make their lives miserable, simply because let’s say, my pram might be in the way. Say excuse me….it’s not hard!!!! If I don’t know you’re there or that you need to get past I won’t know I’m in the way! Maybe I’m being over sensitive or unfair, I don’t after all know these people, they might just be taking their justified frustrations out on me, you never do after all know what goes on behind closed doors.
But everyone to me seems to be fighting to prove that they have it harder than everyone else, they seem to go out of their way to find things that wouldn’t normally cause concern to groan and moan about. I’m not talking serious illnesses, or redundancy or anything major obviously, people that suffer these fates have my every sympathy and I am always there to listen and help in anyway I can. No I’m talking about things like I mention above, and the unnecessary rudeness that comes with it. Whatever happened to common courtesy. To a bit of politeness and respect. To sticking together, supporting each other…helping each other out when things really are tough. We should look out for each other not battle against each other. We should be quick to assist, not judge and condemn.

I was becoming so overwhelmed by strangers reactions to me in various circumstances, that I often ended up in tears in public places. I had to find a way of letting things go. It’s not until I started to try and let these things go myself and put them into perspective that I noticed it in so much more in others. I needed a technique that was going to work. So…I started something new, and irritatingly am now advising everyone I meet who groans over insignificant stuff to do the same. Life is simply too short to hold on to these things. It’s simple, you just put the problem in an imaginary red balloon and send it off, floating up into the sky. And it’s gone. (It bloody works as well I promise!)

When someone doesn’t say thank you, red balloon. When someone sees me struggling with a pram and a toddler and doesn’t hold the door open, red balloon. When someone pushes in front of me, red balloon. You get the picture. I do admit that once I was so incensed by someone that not only did I put them in a red balloon, but I also floated them up to the nearest electricity power cable so the balloon popped and they fell swiftly to the ground, but you know, it was fair, they’d really upset me!

So, is there something in your life that you could red balloon? And send floating away so it doesn’t take up any of your precious head space? Right now for me, I am appreciating the irony of my blog post, and of my ranting…so into that red balloon it goes…… 😉