Find your spiritual outlet and find yourself

I have been thinking about the term spiritual outlet recently, and I have heard it occasionally before. From my understanding, people must find a spiritual outlet to express their thoughts and ideas. If these things are not expressed and kept in the heart, they will definitely become bad and may lead to mental illness. Some people have done bad things but dare not tell others, so they go to church and confess to the priest, and then they feel relieved. Some people really had no one to complain to, so they ran into the mountains and talked to the tree holes. After speaking, they blocked the tree holes and felt relieved.

Everyone has different things in their brain. Some people just talk about trivial things. Some people are hiding secrets that they cannot tell anyone. Some people are talented and full of knowledge, which must be expressed through painting, music, and literature. Everyone must find a spiritual outlet, otherwise they will live in despair.

I have a friend who is in a very bad mood whenever it rains. It is gloomy and he feels out of breath. It has been 13 years since her son left this world, and she still has not come out. In the past thirteen years, she has only done one thing, which is to miss her son constantly. She has lost contact with many of her friends and distanced herself from her family. She was afraid that others would ask her about her children and she dared not mention them. She is a very wise person, but in this matter, she did not find a spiritual outlet. I once asked her to do something meaningful, such as writing, to express her inner pain in words. She said that she wanted to seal this incident well. It was the most precious memory in her life, and she did not want to touch this memory. Perhaps she was afraid that she would not be able to face the process of writing. I want to write it down and say goodbye to the past. Even if I am heartbroken and crying, I still have to write it. After writing it, she was generally cured! But now, during the holidays, the weather is bad, and her son's classmates have happy events, she is immersed in sadness. Time is not a good medicine sometimes, it makes people sink deeper and deeper.

When I was in middle school, I had a female classmate of the same age who came from a poor family and studied very hard. She is the kind of person who is so diligent that she has no time or energy to make friends with others. She went all the way to China University of Political Science and Law, and then to Oxford University for a postgraduate degree in law. Her life was only about studying and never falling in love. Her life was only about hard work. After returning to China, I worked in a Hong Kong law firm. Not long after, I suffered a mental breakdown. I have been studying hard like this for twenty years, and I have never given myself any time to relax. How heavy the load is on my brain! Even if she has emotional experiences, even if she has simple sex, her spirit will have an outlet to vent, and she will not collapse!

Spiritual outlet can be understood as the output of pressure, or as the output channel of talent and ideas. Those things in our hearts that make us carry weight forward must be released, otherwise life will be too heavy.

We write on it, it’s a good place for spiritual output. In WeChat Moments, there are all my friends, and I actually don’t want them to know too much about my true thoughts. Write it in your own diary, no sharing, no outlet. When strangers see my writing, my writing becomes everyone’s story, and I no longer have to bear these stories alone. Therefore, you will find that many people do not actually care about how many diamonds they get, they just write whatever they want. This is their spiritual outlet. Therefore, the more you write, the more energetic you become!

From the spiritual outlet, we can think of the nagging of housewives. Their world is very small, and their family is their world. Every day is their husband, children, vegetables, rice, oil and salt. When their husbands and children are back, they must talk about it, otherwise who will they talk to after they have been holding it back all day? However, her husband and children found her nagging her and did not answer the call. This made her even more dissatisfied.

There is a phenomenon that I didn’t understand before, but now I understand it. When my daughter was in kindergarten, I discovered that the mother in their class was a full-time housewife. Soon they were playing together, shopping together, going to the content center together, sharing delicious food together, taking their children out to play together, and complaining together. Husband, that’s very interesting. When the family didn't listen to their nagging, there was a group of mothers in the same situation. They shared with each other and quickly became so-called good friends and besties.

The same situation also occurred when the children were in elementary school. The mothers who were housewives quickly met and became good friends. Work out together, shop together, get beauty treatments together, and pick up and drop off the kids together. I don't get along with these people, we talk about different things. They will not be my spiritual outlet.

Now I understand these behaviors. There are people to share trivial things and troubles about their families. They have found a spiritual outlet. These friends have brought them relaxation and joy.

Using the mental outlet, I also thought about the children. Children today are actually much more tired than we used to be. He was taken home after school and rarely played alone with his friends. After school and holidays, there was a mountain of homework, and there were interest classes and cram schools on weekends, which made the child breathless. A school in Hangzhou asked each child to develop a photo of a smiling face and paste it on the school wall. I found that the older the children, the more forced they were to smile, and rarely saw photos of genuine joy. The younger students were even happier. If parents do not pay attention to their children's spiritual outlet, they will easily become rebellious during adolescence. Therefore, no matter how busy I am on weekends, I have to take my child out to play and let her get in touch with nature and other children. As long as she is happy, she will have the energy to go to class next week full of energy. One day, the teacher sent a video of children doing indoor dance exercises. Most of the children had expressionless faces, but my daughter was dancing happily. I was very happy to see this scene. She is mentally healthy, which is what a child should be like!

Using the mental outlet, I also think of the aunts who dance in the square. In fact, they not only dance to exercise, but they also get to know Aunt Zhang and Aunt Wang who are also from the countryside and come to raise their grandchildren. They not only danced together, but also bought groceries and chatted together.

Those buddies who like to get together to drink and play cards when they have nothing to do actually don’t talk about anything big. They just repeat the same topic every time, and they enjoy it. This is their spiritual outlet.

Spiritual outlet does not have to be lofty, it must be expressed through music, chess, calligraphy and painting. Ordinary people, a group of like-minded people gather together and talk about heaven and earth, which is their spiritual outlet.