Black Holes

 Warning: After writing this blog and rewriting it and realizing my mind is not only in hyper-drive these days but has a bit of a chaos issue going on with too many issues roiling around, it may not flow well or make a lot of sense to you. I know the subject makes sense-- black holes.  Explaining them, well that's a whole other story; but if the blog is ever going to go out, it has to go-- as is.

The other day Parapluie and I were talking as I mentioned waking up at 3 AM and feeling depressed about the black holes in my life. She asked what that meant. As we talked, I thought how I had mentioned black holes earlier in this blog, and it would be a good topic to explore more deeply here.

In space, a black hole is a bit of a space mystery. They are part of the energy continuum, at least as best I understand them. They are a region which can suck energy into them, and it cannot escape. Scientists, with better telescopes and able to look from further out, are learning more about them; but in general they appear to take energy for what seem to be unknown purposes. They are sinkholes, quicksand, suctions that draw into them energy but never (apparently) release it. Black holes continue to grow by absorbing energy through taking what is around them. When something goes into a black hole, science can no longer see or measure it. The term is obviously complex and my simple explanation doesn't do it justice but for my purposes, it explains how I use the term for my own life.  Wikipedia on Black Holes.

Okay so that's the science end of it. My end of how I see my own black holes. They are energy gobblers, and there are several types. My dividing them that way leads to what I try to do about them. Black holes to me represent those things that are not all I want them to be and that fact is bothering me.

When a black hole is just about worrying; but I can't do a thing about it, I try to eliminate them from my mind. This can especially be politics when it's in regions I have no influence at all. Other black holes seem more positive as they show me there is a problem and I can fix it if I just want to enough. Waking up at 3 AM and fretting over something is good motivation to do exactly that.

So maybe in our lives, black holes can have a purpose if we recognize them as sucking our energy and then break them into piles. One pile for those where we have no control. These are good ones to list on a piece of paper that is then burned. Whenever they come into our minds, we push them away. If we have no part of being a solution, weren't part of the problem, then they are sucking energy away from us for no purpose.

Politics can be that way. When politics start reaching a level where I am not just learning what is going on but actually worrying about it, I know I need a break. Politics is one of those areas that can though be a negative but also a positive where it comes to energy. When we can write about it, talk about it to possibly influence others, donate and volunteer, it's a positive. When it's just worrying, it's a black hole that needs to go.

There are other things in a person's life that are the kind of black hole you want to eliminate from any time. One example is relationships you cannot fix. If say you have a parent who did wrong by you, but you cannot fix it; you didn't cause it; it's past being repaired, then what is the point of letting it suck energy? These make for great books but not necessarily good in our lives as they can ruin what we can fix.

So a positive use of a black hole, for those things I cannot change, is two-fold. One is stop letting it have any airtime if I really cannot do anything regarding it. But supposing what I need to do is not external but internal as in forgiving that person, even though they are no longer in my life? Than the constant awareness of this energy sucker is actually a warning to do something about it because it is bothering us and could pop up as a physical problem next. Often when a black hole has been bugging me like this, there is something I need to do. When I do it, it disappears.

In the let-it-be category, right now for me, would fit whether my books ever sell on eBook sites. That's obviously not easy to do.  I have things I can do like get places where people, who might like stories that aren't a standard genre, actually would find them. But in the end, I can't impact what others choose to buy. Worrying about it would be a pointless black hole but working to get the books to be all I can make them as well as to find the places I can do promotions, that's a positive use of a black hole.

I think my attitude toward this, which is do the best job I can while releasing the results, that comes from years of doing creative work like painting and sculpting and having to face the same issue-- control the work and let how others see it be their thing not mine.

The best use of black holes is when I let them alert me to things where I can change it but am not. When I lie awake at night thinking-- I am not eating right. I am not exercising enough, it sucks my energy and why? Because I won't do what I could do. Waking at 3 AM and finding it hard to go back to sleep because of fretting over something I can change alerts me. I then recognize not only do I have something I am not being healthy about but I could change it. My awareness they are bugging me in the middle of the night increases my motivation to deal with them more effectively when daylight comes.

Black holes can be the same kind of warning signals that pain is. They are an alert that energy is draining away and we can either stop letting it or fix the problem.

Next is a blog on an example of positive energy from the skies-- and closer to home.