5 Days left to live. What would you do?

I am potentially at huge risk from midday, next Wednesday. If you only had 5 days left to BE, to EXIST, what would you do? 

Parents
  • Go on the holiday of a lifetime. Why worry about anything serious if I only have 5 days left? May as well enjoy them as much as I can.

    Hope all is ok? Huge risk doesn't sound good!

  • Why worry about anything serious anyway? What exactly does worry add to the situation? Just curious  ~ does it help in a way that if you didn't worry the solutions would never be found? It's just that for me, I found that if I worried about a situation, it didn't change anything and I couldn't find a solution because my head was too full of worries. So I gave it up and don't bother with it anymore. 

    And why not enjoy every day you have on this planet as we never know which one will be our last? 

    I find it curious that people would enjoy five days but not the whole of their lives! 

  • Worrying is the most pointless thing in the world. But it is not something that I can just stop. I have tried. It doesn't work. Some people may have more control over their thought processes. I do not. Trust me, if I could stop myself from worrying, I would.

    And yes it would be nice if we could enjoy every day on this planet. But I do have to think about things like mortgages and bills and other things which if I knew I only had 5 days to live, I wouldn't care about. I'd just spend all the money I wanted.

    I cannot afford to do some of the things I really want to every day of my life. I'd end up bankrupt and homeless. I will do these things at times in my life. But they will be amazing moments. I can't do them every day.

  • Never have I said I did not share these aspects of my experience of being homeless. These are simply the aspects we talk about to anybody who isn’t living on the streets. To each other, we talk about different things. We don’t do that social chit chat small talk thing that people who live in homes do, we talk about things that are real. About what is real for anyone of us at that time. 

    They showed me love and kindness at its most raw. They gave to me, when it would appear, they had very little, if nothing, to give and with absolutely no expectation of getting anything in return, in fact, it would appear I also had nothing to give. I had no drugs or money to give them or even a word of advice and I couldn’t give them love, because I didn’t even know what that was - until they showed it to me. 

    They gave me the greatest gift that any human being could ever give to another and in return, we experienced the flow of unconditional love between two hearts, between two human beings,who appeared to be at their lowest and with nothing to give, yet here they/we were, exchanging, experiencing and enjoying the gift of true love. The greatest gift of all.

    They taught me about loyalty. Kindness. How to help somebody. How to treat people. How to see the truth of who you are in the face of people kicking you and beating you and leaving you for dead. How to still have the capacity to love and help another person, despite what the masses are doing to you. How to not let go of the love and happiness that’s within you so that one day, if you’ve got nothing else to give, you can give your love and share your happiness and maybe help another soul. 

    I’ve had guys taking me home. Giving me use of their bathroom while they get their wives or partners to make me something to eat, before I go back on the streets. I have had pimps, teach me, why going on the game is not a good career choice. How the f**k would I know that? I was an undiagnosed autistic who didn’t even know how she’d landed on this f*****g weird planet full of people who I didn’t understand and who clearly didn’t understand me. 

    When all the rest of the world had let me slip through their fingers, when they couldn’t or wouldn’t and definitely didn’t, help me, these guys did. And yet according to most people, they were the scum of the earth and had nothing to give. There is more to people on the streets than it’s just cold outside. More than,  that guy just kicked the *** out of me. It’s over. Why would we talk about it? It’s a good feeling knowing it’s over! They taught me to leave it there. Not because it didn’t happen, but because how many times do you want to experience it? You can go through the emotions of it if you want at a later date, but right now, talking about it and reliving it in your head, ain’t gonna help you. 

    They taught me not only how to get by and how to survive but how to thrive. To anybody else, they might look like homeless people, but to them, they are so much more than that. That’s why we would love it if somebody would stop for a chat. There’s more to us than getting p****d  on. When that’s over, it’s over. We don’t carry it over and repeat it again and again, in our minds, so that we’re experiencing it all over again, we’re simply happy it’s over. What next. But we might tell you about it. Because how else do we tell you what our lives are like from a perspective you understand. You talk about weather. So we tell you how we’re effected by the weather. You want to know where we sleep? We don’t ask you that question. You ask us. You get to hear the parts of our experience that are relative to you, that you can understand. 

    If we started to talk about it, like I did to you, nobody would believe that we needed your help, so we have to tell it in a way that you’ll understand and so you’ll give us some of the things we need, such as food. The really precious things, such as loving kindness, sharing a laugh, giving and receiving comfort, is usually done amongst ourselves. Although some people do walk up to homeless people and give them a hug now and again and it’s greatly appreciated, even by people like me that hates human touch. 

    So I’m not saying that none of those things that homeless people talk about, didn’t happen to me, just that, that’s only one small aspect of our lives. Where we sleep is not the most important thing in our lives but it’s what a lot of people focus on. We’ve still got other things going on as well, in our lives, we don’t suddenly stop having a life just because we haven’t got a home we can call our own home. 

  • I totally not only share my experience with other homeless people, they taught me how to do it. I was an undiagnosed autistic female who didn’t have a clue what to do at the best of times, so how the hell would I know how to survive and get by on the streets? They taught me, not only how to get by and survive, but how to thrive, so that one day, I would be able to get off the streets. I owe a lot of my wisdom and understanding of life to homeless people. They looked after me and taught me how to live, to the best of my ability. 

    Life on the streets is tough. I learned to act tough even when I was petrified with fear. I learned not to go to hostels because they weren’t safe for a woman, so I didn’t go. I didn’t have a clue, I thought that was the best place for me. I learned a lot.

    I learned how to show love and kindness to other human beings when most other human beings are p*****g on you and kicking the s**t out of you, just because they can and because you’re asleep in a shop door way. They showed me love and friendship at a time in their lives when they were seen by many others as the lowest of the low, and the happiness it brought to them to be able to help me, and the happiness and love I felt by being helped by them, will stay with me forever. They taught me that no matter what your outer circumstances look like, no matter how many people look down on you, you can still share moments of immense gratitude, kindness and love which brings about a feeling of happiness that can’t be described and that nobody can take from you. 

  • I literally have no understanding over this conversation. I think I may just have to agree to disagree.

  • Yes, it's from a tabloid newspaper - and you can't always believe what you read in the papers.

    This, though, reflects the experience of people I worked with at a homeless shelter a couple of years back.

    Homeless people reveal the brutal reality of living on the streets

  • And that was my EXACT point too. We are in TOTAL agreement. My job, is to help people to SEE that truth, so they can STOP BELIEVING that thought that others are happy and they’re not. 

    You told me that just because I’ve changed my thoughts I can’t say everyone can and I merely answered with, yes I can say that. And if you read any of my posts, you will see that I regularly talk about the amount of hours, days and years I have put into changing my thoughts and at a huge cost. I have never said it’s eaay. But it is, just one decision. That’s the easy part. I decided one day that I was going to change my thinking and god knows how many years later, I did. 

    There is no ‘positive’ in Truth. Sometimes the truth is very painful indeed and it has no opposite. Positive is simply the opposite of negative, just two sides of the same coin. Truth transcends opinions. It has no opposite and no equal. It stands by itself. You might say, isn’t a non truth the opposite. But no, a non truth is simply the abscence of truth. 

  • You can live a very certain and predictable life on the streets. You can sleep in the same place at night, go to the same place for food etc, it’s not as different from living in a house as you think.

    I can't believe that you're still peddling this nonsense.  You have had an experience that many, many people who are homeless do not have.  Your safety and security is at risk, you don't know from one day to the next whether you are going to eat properly.  People freeze to death on the streets.  My father became ill living on the streets because he wasn't eating properly and was vulnerable to the elements.  You make it sound like a lifestyle choice.

    I give up.  I thought I was living on a strange planet.

  • I think you completely missed my point about the social media. My whole point was that it isn't real but people believe that it is.

    At no point have I said people can't change their way of thinking but your making it sound as easy as deciding to change my jumper.

    What you are describing as seeing the truth is basically what I would describe as positive thinking. Not seeing the negative so therefore positive. I'm not sure what you call positive thinking.

  • I never do positive thinking. When you take away all the negative thinking, you are simply left with what is, which is love, life, compassion etc etc, all the good stuff. 

    Exactly! Why would you become homeless just to understand what it’s like? Why do you need to understand it? But you’ll never understand it by reading about it or talking to somebody about it. That would get you, at most, just an interpretation of somebody else’s experience of it and trust me, we do NOT tell anybody, who’s not on the streets, what it’s like, regardless of their motives. 

    I experience happiness as my natural state. What you’re describing is what I would call having an enjoyable experience with something outside of myself. There is nothing outside of me that can make me happy but I can certainly get a lot of enjoyment and pleasure from things outside of me, but happiness comes from within and nobody and nothing, apart from my own thinking and believing, can take it away. 

    People are NOT seeing how happy someone is on social media. They’re simply ‘believing’ that they’re seeing other people happy. I could post a photo of me looking all happy and inside I could be suicidal but somebody might look at my photo and believe that I’m happy, but it doesn’t make it true. And when we compare our lives to somebody else’s, we loose, but only 100% of the time. Because how can we compare our insides to somebody’s outside? It makes us feel either less than, more than or just average! Who can feel happy when they believe they are either less than, more than or plain average? And it’s not even true. There is not a person on this planet who is any better than anybody else. 

    I certainly can think that somebody else can change their thought patterns because I have and it’s backed up by science ~ read up on brain plasticity. They need only find the tools that work for them and I haven’t met a person yet whose mindset has not changed after they have come to me for help. And it’s definitely NOT positive thinking. I simply help them to see, for themselves, the truth in the situation and at that point, there mindset has changed. I have even changed the mindsets of people diagnosed with schizophrenia and multiple personalities with disassociation disorder. We ALL need help with changing our mindsets, and not just autistic people. And for many of us, me included, it takes a lot of practice, focus and commitment. 

  • You obviously do do positive thinking if you say you enjoy every single day of your life. I have never met a single person that has never said they've had a bad day.

    I may not know everything about being homeless but I know enough to know it is not a situation I would feel comfortable with and I'm certainly not going to try it out to see it from your point of view. Why should I? There are many people's situations I have not been in and so couldn't completely know but I can't be going and trying every single one of those situations to see what it is like.

    I would disagree that happiness is our natural state. Being ok/satisfied is our natural state. Happiness/enjoyment is a level up from that. We actually had training on this in work and they said one of the contributors of depression is people seeing how "happy" others are on social media and feeling their lives weren't as good. In reality we only post on social media if it's something really good. There aren't many people who post their average day.

    I'm well aware that all the scenarios in my head are not realistic. But you can't think that because you have managed to change your thought patterns that everyone else can just do the same. We wouldn't have a mental health crisis if they could. I'm not saying everyone else's brains are unchangeable but other people may find it far more difficult and need help in order to do it.

  • I wasn’t being positive, I was simply facing reality, the truth, and accepting it as it is instead of arguing or fighting with it.

    I don’t do ‘positive thinking’ or ‘being positive’ I just accept things as they are without adding stories, or judgements or meanings. For example, some people might say to themselves in that situation, I’m homeless, this is terrible, this means I’m poor, etc etc ~ they make up stories, make judgements about it, add meaning to it and make themselves feel terrible because they believe the little stories they tell themselves and the judgements they make and the meanings they add to reality instead of simply accepting reality as it is. 

    And I didn’t see it as an ‘experience’, it was simply my life and that changes every moment so it was simply, oh, this is where I sleep tonight and no matter where I sleep, I’m still sleeping and I’ve always had a knack of getting comfortable no matter where I am. I was still eating, breathing, sleeping, waking etc etc just as I was when I was living in a house, my outer circumstances don’t change that and if I can eat, breath and move around etc, why wouldn’t I enjoy my life? Why wouldn’t I be grateful for what I have ~ eyes that see, legs that walk, a brain that works, love in my heart, hands that work, the ability to be kind, to see beauty, to give love, to help other people, why wouldn’t I be grateful and happy for all those things every single day of my life, no matter what my changing outer circumstances look like because they don’t change those things. 

    You can live a very certain and predictable life on the streets. You can sleep in the same place at night, go to the same place for food etc, it’s not as different from living in a house as you think. How do you know you would struggle for meals? You’ve already made an assumption and made up a story and believed it without even trying it out. You think it would be a struggle without home comforts but again, you don’t know that, but if you believed it, then sure you would struggle because that’s what you’ve decided you will do, regardless of the facts of reality. There are several people, that I know, living on the streets who are autistic and they do just fine. And don’t worry, you soon get to know people (if you want to) and why would they come up to you if they didn’t know you and you didn’t want them to? Just because people live on the streets, they haven’t lost the use of their senses, they can still tell if somebody doesn’t want them around. You seem to know an awful lot about living on the streets and yet you said you’ve never been in that situation. Don’t believe what people tell you about it. What we say to non street sleepers and to each other, is very different, so if you want to really know what it’s like, you’d have to do it. We’re not going to tell people not living on the streets what it’s really like  because  they’re judgmental and their support is conditional so we make sure we meet their conditions, from the outside, and we keep the rest to ourselves and each other. 

    My mind overthinks everything, if I let it, and I mean everything. None of the scenarios you see in your head are realistic, because they’re in your head. But I realised that when my mind was forever going over and over every last little thing and that it made me feel anxious, depressed and scared I decided that the solution was to stop over thinking stuff and I set off on the journey of how I stop it. 

    I’d say it’s taken me about 19 years (probably more) of hard work, but I managed it. The tendency is still there for my mind to jump in and start its cyclical thinking thing and I have to make sure I have no stress in my life, because that can get in the way and make it almost impossible if not impossible for me to have control of my mind. That’s why I’m so serious about creating my income in a way that serves me because if it doesn’t, I know that I’ll just get caught up in all the loop thinking, over analysing everything, coming up with terrible scenarios etc etc. I’d rather die than do a job that didn’t serve me and that caused me any amount, even the slightest amount of discomfort, even if it paid me hundreds of thousands of pounds a week.

    I never accepted ‘this is just who I am’ and I’m  glad I never because even scientifically, that’s not true. We have proof now that our genes don’t control us and that the brain isn’t a solid structure. There is something called brain plasticity that shows how we change our brain with the thoughts we think. 

    I went into a lot of areas, science, physics, astronomy, metaphysics, quantum physics and more, but I’ve enjoyed it and it was worth it because it’s my life, I wanted to be in control of my mind and my life and live in freedom, peace, unconditional love and happiness or I didn’t want to live at all. I decided I would keep going ‘until’ I got there or until it became obvious that I couldn’t achieve that and in that case, I would have been happy to depart this earth.  

    So no, I definitely do not do ‘postive thinking’ by any stretch of the imagination, I’m just happy and I don’t fill my head with silly stories or tv etc etc. I don’t watch tv and never have, even as a child ~ I don’t recognise faces or follow the story lines, even when they’re simple - I’m still processing the start of the film and it’s almost finished!  I don’t watch modern films or listen to music (or very little and it’s usually meditation type music or Indian type devotional music or hymns), I don’t read newspapers or magazines or go online or go on social media, I don’t engage in gossip etc etc so I’m pretty much sheltered from a lot of outside influence. And I don’t subscribe to my life needing to look like others or that just because most people do it this way it’s the right way etc etc. And I have, and always have had, total unconditional love for every person, being, animal etc etc. I do not and have never loved my child more than another child, I wouldn’t even know how to do that. I don’t know how to not love people. I tried, as a way of ‘fitting in’ and being like others and it nearly killed me with depression and suicidal thoughts so I decided I wouldn’t try that again. But I learned a lot and learning is my special interest, so if I’m learning, I’m happy and I’m always learning. But happiness really is our natural state and we only come out of it or become separate from it when we believe our thoughts and the stories and judgements etc that the uncontrolled mind makes. 

  • I see. I’ve always found it more effective (for me) to focus on what I do want rather than what I don’t and worry would make me shrink, as it comes with horrible images etc for me so it would make me feel small and scared and I wouldn’t do anything. But if I think about what I want, I feel good and if I feel moved (I rarely do! lol) I’ll move, towards that goal in some way. I’m already hyper alert, I don’t want to be any more alert so maybe that’s why worrying doesn’t work for me.  Just leaving the house is like a military operation! Lol! Have I got my scripts? Do I know where I’m going? Are there any roads to cross? Why d’ya think I wear wellies? It’s one less thing to fiddle with. The wellies slip on and off easily. Sometimes there’s so much to think about that I don’t bother! Lol! But I’ll feel good either way. If I worry I feel bad and it can get me in a terrible downward spiral. It’s scary. It doesn’t help me at all. 

Reply
  • I see. I’ve always found it more effective (for me) to focus on what I do want rather than what I don’t and worry would make me shrink, as it comes with horrible images etc for me so it would make me feel small and scared and I wouldn’t do anything. But if I think about what I want, I feel good and if I feel moved (I rarely do! lol) I’ll move, towards that goal in some way. I’m already hyper alert, I don’t want to be any more alert so maybe that’s why worrying doesn’t work for me.  Just leaving the house is like a military operation! Lol! Have I got my scripts? Do I know where I’m going? Are there any roads to cross? Why d’ya think I wear wellies? It’s one less thing to fiddle with. The wellies slip on and off easily. Sometimes there’s so much to think about that I don’t bother! Lol! But I’ll feel good either way. If I worry I feel bad and it can get me in a terrible downward spiral. It’s scary. It doesn’t help me at all. 

Children
No Data