In all things...give thanks.

If I were to sit down and start jotting down a  comprehensive list of all the things that I currently have in my life, I would easily be overwhelmed with a rush of uncontrollable emotion, awe and utter gratitude. From the family that raised me, the friends and colleagues I interact with on a daily basis, the possessions that I own, the finances I have acquired, the knowledge I have absorbed to the health that I currently maintain.

Through this simple practice of sitting in silence and recognizing where I am at this current stage of my Earthly Journey, I can see just how much I have truly been blessed from all angles and in all aspects of my life. Modesty and humility aside, it really doesn't take long for me to realise that there are people, situations and material items that I have in my life which I really don't deserve.

See, when you are taking an honest account of your life, there are certain things you will come across which you know deep down you have not worked hard enough to receive ( if you even worked for them at all) , yet are still endowed with, regardless. The more religiously inclined may chose to call this Grace... and if that is the case, then yes, Grace this is, and I ackowledge it wholeheartedly and am truly grateful for it.

I am a very ambitious person and I have been my own life, born with a natural burning inner-desire to progress, achieve and succeed, always planning, plotting, wanting and desiring.. more, more, mooore!!!. Yet, what I have come to realize over the recent year and a half of being exposed to the harsh unfiltered realities of this world we live in, is to never, ever take anything for granted. 

We as 'educated' individuals, living in this socioeconomic bubble - always surrounded by 'The Jones's' and infiltrated on a daily basis by the heavily biased media, cannot help but selfishly get caught up in our lives, our habits, our dreams, and of course our ever-pending brighter future that we forever fantasize about and cling onto ever-so longingly. And it is because of these egotistical distractions, selfish desires and narrow minded perspectives of this dimension of existence, that we forget to sit down, reflect, give thanks and just appreciate what we have, who we are, what we are, where we are and how we got here.

T4aM.
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"In every thing give thanks..." - 1 Thessalonians 5:18
"No duty is more urgent than that of returning thanks. - James Allen
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Know thyself: confessions of a control freak.

The Confession:
Hi, I'm Ben...and I'm a control freak :( .

This is something that I used to be proud of, a title I was extremely happy to identify with while growing up, until recently when my life exploded into a pool of possibility.

See the ladder of life up until the end of University was quite easy, predictable and deterministic for me, and because of this I would and could easily plan every single life event up until the very last detail. And due to the fact that there were only so many possible options going forward, I would usually have a + 90% hit rate (yes...really) and life was breezy, I was happy, comfortable and fully in control.

But after graduating at the end of 2013, a whole new world of options lay before of me. Leaving the University of Cape Town with a first class honours degree in Computer Science; a heart of ambition and a soul full of passion determination and drive to change the world, there were literally hundreds of local jobs I could apply for, thousands of career paths I could follow and an infinite number of lives that I could be leading a few years down the line. Now you would think that me and my control freak nature would happily welcome more options, but due to the glorious Paradox of Choice  the more options I have, the more anxious I become. So nowadays what happens is that the more and more I think about where I want to be and what I want to do with my life, the more my mind completely and utterly spazzes out, especially when I compare my ambitions to my current situation. Disappointment truly is the deficit between expectation and reality....and I have felt this first hand over the recent months.

Don't get me wrong, my life is still in my control but the problem that swiftly arises now is that:
1. There are many more variables to control.
2. There are many more external factors that I cannot control.
3. The fact that much as I think I know what I want and need in my life, I cannot guarantee that it is truly what I want and need.

See I learn more and more about myself on a daily basis and this reality added on to the above points is preventing me from confidently writing up and following through with my trademark detailed life plans. Because what the me that I am today wants, needs and knows (by the way knowledge and awareness play a massive role in desires and ambitions...), is never completely the same as what the me of tomorrow or next week wants, needs and knows.

The solution: Living in the present!

This past week I had an epiphany that Eckhart Tolle himself would be proud of. See in a deep state of anguish, anger, confusion and disappointment I remembered all the books, videos, lectures and other ad hoc material that I have consumed over the recent years that speak about living in the present moment. From the life changing book The Power of Now - by Eckhard Tolle, to the wise words of my homie  Siddhārtha Gautama (AKA The Bhudda), the teachings of the great Thich Nhat Hahn (Zen Bhuddist monk) and the profound insights of one of my more recent spiritual role models Mr. Alan Watts (western teacher of Eastern Philosophy). Years of learning from such great men have really molded and shaped my understanding of how to approach living in this world, but up until a point it is all just theory, until you wake up one day and are faced with mountains that seem truly insurmountable.

And then the "aha moment" arises when through revelation you truly and deeply understand that life can only be lived in the now, and when you do this, most (if not all) of the stresses, concerns, troubles and worries fade away and fall to the wayside. Because in the now, the future and the past are irrelevant and essentially non-existent. When you are fully present, you don't need to continuously think about where you want to go or how you are going to get there, you are fully embraced in the present moment and current occurrences of life. You accept your current situation and you give it the full respect and attention that it deserves, because in all honesty it is really all we will ever have in this lifetime...

Yes, I still have many ambitions, desires, hopes and dreams but I am trying my best to let the Universe take care of all the admin (the macro) as I take the responsibility of living my life one day at a time (the micro). In as much as I thirst for the 'finish lines', the multiple objectives and the ideal end-goals, the truth is that now I do not even know the best path that I should take to get there and what is even more concerning is that I don't even know if I actually want to be competing in some of these races of life that I so willingly signed up for...

What I do know however is that 

right Now.. I am Here 

and the Here & Now is the only place that I can ever fully be.

#T4aM

Know thyself: Once you label me..you negate me

Who we think we are, who other people think we are,who we are expected to be and who we think we are supposed to be form the basis of our thoughts, our behaviors our actions, our preferences, our allegiances, our friends, our careers...our life. Overtime we get so caught up with defining ourselves, our surroundings and our possessions, adding layers upon layers of labels, explanations, tags, ambitions, desires - all in the hope that we are making more and more sense of the world when we are actually just making ourselves more rigid and restricted. Limiting ourselves and others from sincere expression and the possibility of having a truly limitless life experience.

"I am this, I am that", we think and say to ourselves as we try so hard to fit into groups and relate to other people. Quick to add more and more words to our arsenal of self-definitions in an aim to form a proud egoistic worldly identity, all in our deep burning desire to be a 'someone'. Quite sad it is really that throughout all of this we tend to forget that it is not who or what we are that actually matters, it is that we are.

You see the idea of who we are is just a collection of labels and descriptions imposed on us by ourselves and those around us, in an attempt to categorize, to understand, to predict, to model and yes, as 'true' and 'reflective' as these labels may seem on the surface, personally identifying with them just restricts you even further because you now associate your deeper self with these superficial high-level definitions, that in all honesty have nothing to do with your real true essence.

You cannot be boxed, you cannot be categorized, you cannot be defined.

You just are. 

#T4aM

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"And God said to Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shall you say to the children of Israel, I AM has sent me to you." - Exodus 3:14

"I am, as I am; whether hideous, or handsome, depends upon who is made judge." - Herman Melville

"I don't think people change. I think they definitely mature. But I think the essence of what I am today is the same as when I was five years old. It's just maturity. I've become a healthier, fuller expression of that essence." - Ricky Williams

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Know thyself: Hi i'm Ben and I'm an introvert

Hi.
My name is Ben
And I'm an introvert....

Aaaand.... I'm proud :D !

They say the first step is acceptance, well I am long passed that phase and the truth is I honestly wish I knew this information a lot earlier in life because it would have certainly helped me in understanding a lot in terms of:

1. How I feel during certain social situations.
2. Occasional inexplicable internal feelings at times.
3. Relationship difficulties and eventual breakups over the years.

And here I was all this time thinking that I can be socially awkward, hard to love and reclusive at times. Thank God for psychology...

People get a tad bit confused about what it means to be Extroverted and Introverted. The average person will tell you that an extrovert is social,out-going, confident, fun to be around and talkative, while the common personality traits attributed to introverts are shyness, quiet, low-confidence and very reserved. This inevitably and unfortunately leads to the conclusion that

Extrovert = Good 

and 

Introvert = Bad 

A very sad conclusion to reach because in all honestly neither of these inferences could be any further away from the truth... I don't blame anyone for thinking like this because this too is what I myself believed for a very long time as well and because of this I think I even ended up pretending to be an extrovert for the most part of my childhood, or rather and more directly I spent a lot of effort suppressing my introversion, because that didn't seem to be what society wanted, that didn't seem to be what was deemed acceptable and normal. We all know that your introvert status obviously won't get you in with the cool kids seated at the back of the bus.

So because of my weak inner compass and my superficial social ambitions I honestly thought that I was an extrovert: I mean I like parties, I like crowds and I can socialize with new people - crack a joke here and there...so thus I am an extrovert right??

WRONG!!

It was when the romantic, loving, sprung side of me somehow got us involved in stable relationships during varsity that I realized that I really really really valued my alone time, because sometimes I just really wanted to be alone but unfortunately I could never really explain why. And due to my overpowering ignorance throughout these confusing and adverse times, I ended up looking for any viable excuse not to be with my better half ("I need to study", "I miss my room hey", "I'm not feeling too good" etc etc), completely oblivious to the real reason behind it. I remember I even once asked to be alone on my Birthday (that didn't end to well at all), which some might view as a selfish move, but the reality of the situation was that I needed to have some personal time, I needed to reflect and I needed to spend time with my self...why? because that's where I get my energy from and that ladies and gentlemen is what it is all about. The key concept behind what it actually means to be introverted, is that we as introverts tend to recharge by spending time alone and we tend to lose energy from being around other people for long periods of time. Yes this is a really simplified expansions of the two terms (it gets deeper) but I have found that this explanation alone explains the very core of who I am, what I do and how I act in my daily life (FYI a person in the middle of  this personality continuum is referred to as an Ambivert).

Things that are probably only known to myself and those really close to me is the fact that I can literally go days without seeing anyone, sometimes (many times..) I  spend an entire weekend in complete silence alone in my apartment away from the world (reading, writing, coding etc) and it honestly doesn't bother me one single bit. Of course it's not complete silence because I talk/sing/argue with myself on the regular and it's these conversations, these thought processes and these private times that keep me focused, sane and on track - without them I'd be an utterly hopeless wreck - which has happened many a time. Usually when exposed to (certain types of) people for too long, away from the privacy of my space (home, apartment, desk etc) for too long or surrounded by the 'noise' for too long.

Understanding this key aspect about my personality has really taught me about my self, both going backwards in retrospect as well as giving me great insight going forwards with my future plans, goals and ambitions both in my career and personal life. For example : working this year knowing that I am introverted (among many other personality traits) has helped me understand how I prefer to solve problems (usually a lot of thinking, staring and mental processing), why I can get slightly agitated during long days at the office and how I operate in teams and group discussions (a lot of reflection, silence and internalizing). It is this kind of deep inner understanding that will help me to determine the type of working environment I can thrive in, the type of work I want to do and the type of people I'd like to be around. Regarding my future intimate relationships, I'll be sure that my next I-think-that-I-like-you-let's-date contract will be accompanied with my little personality disclaimer at the bottom of page 1 ( that and the fact that I'm not a big fan of PDA, yes we can hold hands in public but that's about it..)

As much as life and reality as we know it is about understanding the world around us and learning how best to adapt,the real journey is about understanding who we really are deep down inside and finding out how best to express that fully in our immediate environment and in our every day lives.

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"For introverts, to be alone with our thoughts is as restorative as sleeping, as nourishing as eating."
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#T4aM

sources: http://www.fastcompany.com/3016031/leadership-now/are-you-an-introvert-or-an-extrovert-and-what-it-means-for-your-career  (thanks for the great article Beth)

Meditation : You are the thinker not the thought.

I thought I would transcend into a different reality, a whole new dimension, another plane of existence. Honestly those were my initial reasons when I initially commenced this journey of 'seeking' along with my extreme interest in Buddhism and practicing meditation. "Just quieten the mind" they said, and quieten I did, or rather quieten I tried...

Unfortunately It was an utter nightmare in the beginning. I could not seem to get it right, my thoughts would be all over the show. I would get about 10 seconds of silent meditation in the beginning of the session and then bam! all of a sudden I'm thinking about a random event from the recent day, something that someone said to me, or some arbitrary image that my imagination decides to spark up from the inner void of randomness. And as soon as that one initial thought captures your attention, it's a roller coaster ride from then on, right up until you gain control again and that's if you've even realized that your efforts have been sabotaged.

I didn't like the fact that my mind was so noisy, I despised it, I was angry, felt hopeless, I hated my failed attempts at meditating, I thought I was using the wrong approach, that there was something special I wasn't doing. I thought I would never get it right, I thought my conscious self would be banished into this realm of reality forever. But I still persevered, I kept at it, session after session, meeting after meeting, attempt after attempt, and surely but ever so slowly progress was made.At least I thought I was making progress, up until one moment changed my perception forever...

I was at a Buddhist temple here in the mother city, and I was attending a weekly guided meditation session, the monk seated in the front of the room proceeded to tell us to focus on our breath, and the thing is I had heard this many times before, but that day something was triggered. In the beginning I was consciously breathing, in out, in out, in out, with concerted effort, focusing on the inhalation and exhalation throughout my body. And then after a while I had realized that I had stopped consciously breathing, but my body ever so faithfully carried on.. and it was at this moment that I had a massive epiphany.

My body (well my respiratory system, to be specific) breathes, yes, my body this over glorified bag of cells, this vibrant living organism that I call home, breathes and my brain (the control center) manages the breathing of my body without the need for my conscious intervention. At the age of 22 my brain will ensure that I breathe on average 12-20 times per minute, at least 17,280 breathes in a day.Why...? because that's a part of it's job. This isn't the epiphany in its entirety don't worry there is more to it than that. Because from there I realized that just as my body takes an active role in ensuring that I continuously breathe to survive as a part of its function, my brain, or rather my mind must think, one of the mind's key functions is to produce thoughts, and produce thoughts is does, second after second, minute after minute, day after day, whether you know about them or not- they are there.

On average we have at least 50,000 thoughts a day, fifty thousand different thoughts racing through your mind during your every day life, and the problem is that unless these thoughts are well monitored, literally tens of thousands of these thoughts could be  one, some or even all of the following "I regret..", "I shouldn't have" ,  "I wonder if", "I'm so lonely" "I'm hopeless" "this will never work" "I'll never get it" "why does no one care" "I cant imagine he did that", "I look really fat in these" "my life is such a waste" "this is nonsense" "I'll never be able to..." "It's impossible" "I can't"  ...and so on and so on.

Now there are an infinite amount of negative thoughts and projections that can be appended to that list, the problem here is not solely that we are having these thoughts, the major problem here is that we have identified ourselves with these thoughts (the ego), so instead of us realizing that this is our (clearly untrained) mind doing its job, putting in its hours, serving its purpose, we identify with the thoughts, that our mind produces, we forget that we are the driver, the horse rider, the captain, the pilot, we forget that we are user of the mind, we forget that the brain is our tool and slowly but surely over time we allow the mind to use us, to shape us, to dictate our every move, wish, desire, activity... we as the drivers of our life allow ourselves to become victims to simple vehicles of thought - the mind.

And when this happens you live your life in a reactive manner, you unknowingly attract bad things into your existence, you allow fears and worries to manifest into reality, you lose track of who you are, who you want to be, where you want to go. You limit yourself, you maneuver through reality with a distorted filter on, limiting your perception and understanding of what is out there, what is possible and what you can become. You allow people thoughts and opinions to over power you, you allow yourself to fall into the trap of self-induced mind control. And we can't blame the mind, we unfortunately just don't know how to use it properly.

With this said (I could really go on forever, but i'll keep this short), I'm happy to say that it is mostly through consistent meditation that I have been able to actively take the role of the observer, the watcher, the thinker and not be identified with the thoughts themselves and it has truly done wonders over the years. Because of this constant presence (still working on this) and awareness I am able to live life consciously and I am not easily affected by the instability of my surrounding environment, the noise from the empty vessels, the negativity of those around me and the ever-present chaos that is 'reality'.

So yes unfortunately as earlier mentioned I haven't been able to have an out of body experience, communicate to an ancestor, or travel through the multiple planes of existence, but at least I am learning how to cope with the current dimension that I am in, one thought at a time.

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"Don't under estimate the power of the subconscious mind, because the truth is that your life, your perceptions and your reality as a whole is filtered, formed and defined by what goes on up there." B.J.M
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T4aM

40 day Meditation Journey

I really do want to write a long post about my journey in life so far, where I want to go, what I believe I can achieve and my current sense of direction...buuuut ...I'm quite tired today :)

What I will say however is that I am about to embark on a life changing journey. I am about to go where no Benjamin Jacob Mmari has gone before, I am about to undergo a remarkable period of complete inner transformation, in order to change the universe the world and myself from the inside out. Yes ladies and gentlemen I am about to attempt a 40 day double meditation personal mission.

Earlier on in the year I took part in a Transcendental Meditation course here in Cape Town and looking back on it, it was a great investment. During this course I learnt about a whole new field of meditation, I was introduced to the amazing Maharishi Yogi, I further explored the nature of reality, the impact of my thoughts and most importantly I was reminded of the importance of calming my mind, sitting in silence and detaching from my thoughts.

I am quite proud to say that since I finished that course I have been practicing TM, in the privacy of my own home, with my personal mantra and my ever so eager mind. In the beginning it was always twice a day (energetic times) then sometimes twice a day (busy times) then it was just once a day (lethargic times) and recently, shamefully and disappointingly I have even gone some days without meditating at all (utterly pathetic times).

However over the past few days, from multiple completely unrelated occurrences and conversations with people, I can sense deeply that the Universe is willing me to get myself back on that meditation horse, and when the universe speaks .....I listen.

The goal: Daily meditations for 40 days, twice a day.
The purpose: Self realization, inner exploration and overall personal growth.
Start Date: 19 October 2014.
End date: 28 November 2014.

Meditation over the recent months has honestly had an amazing impact on my life, it has taught me many things about who I am, where I am and the most exciting aspect of life right now...why I am. Honestly, I am not sure what the outcome of this journey will be, but I am ready to find out.

I even set myself up a nice meditation corner (work in progress) and bought me some incense...

Let the inwards journey begin...
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"Quieten the mind and the soul will speak"
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T4aM
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Know thyself: The torments of acne...and the elusive solution.

The problem

| Puberty.... thy heartless bastard! |

Before high school I was fresh faced, a bit chubby, full of confidence and ready to tackle the world. I had heard of rumors of this puberty thing but I figured that I was a special child and that nothing could possibly go wrong with me. But after hearing stories of what my older siblings had gone through I had decided to brace myself for the onset of puberty, I mean it wasn't all supposed to be bad right : the package came with a deeper voice, more facial hair, growth spurts and all so I kinda needed it , always being the shortest man in the room and all. But no one and nothing could have ever prepared me for for what was about to happen. Circa grade 10(2007) I started to cross the chasm, into the deep dark abyss known as puberty, all the other upgrades were really great but the only thing I couldn't handle was the acne, oh dear Lord why did you give me the acne....

In search for a solution

So there it was my greatest enemy for the past 6 or so years, acne, acne, acne. Cursed with weird/sensitive/reactive skin, at times I couldn't even tell if I had oily, dry, or mixed skin because it exhibited each quality at different points in time. And I tried absolutely everything. Honestly, you name it and I've tried it, the following list contains just some (rain drop in the ocean) of the products that I had tried to no avail:

1. Clearasel.
2. Young solution.
3. Oxy.
4. Clean n clear.
5. Acnet.
6. Garnier.
7. Zinplex
8. Epizone.
9. Eucerin.

And these are just a few of the well known brands that I tried, in times of deep distress I even ventured into the unknown. The following is not something I am extremely proud of but once, desperately in need of a solution I went to a pharmacist in Swaziland and he told me to use  vaginal cream on my face (yes...really...). Not the greatest decision I have ever made in my life, the fact alone that I was actually using it was weird enough, but now imagine having to explain to a bunch of macho male teens in a high school hostel why I had a tube of vaginal cream in my cupboard, as if the pimples weren't enough stress :( . I'm sad to say that this brave experiment didn't work at all, if anything it just made it worse and the issues just got deeper and deeper from there. 

Psychological effects

In the world that we live in, beauty plays a big role in our daily lives, with the media bombarding us from all angles, we have a preconceived notion of what it is to pretty, to be beautiful,to be attractive, to be normal. And high school is a time when everyone is trying to outshine everyone else, the cool kids are getting girlfriends, the pretty boys are receiving their first kisses etc etc. This is a very difficult time to be suffering from something so trivial as pimples and bad skin. But this plagued me throughout and it has such a deep rooted effect on your psych. Something that I haven't really shared with anyone was the fact that for the purposes of a self-induced delusion - There were many occasions where I used to go a whole week without looking at myself in the mirror, it sounds weird but I swear this is true. My reasoning was that if I can't see how bad my face is...then its not that bad..right?. And this helped me sleep at night, but it didn't stop the eyes wandering around my face during face-to-face conversation, so to counter that I developed the habit of looking away when talking to people (or just not talking to people at all :) ). So I'd be staring everywhere but at your face cause I didn't want to see myself through your eyes....quite deep hey, deep, sad, but very very true.

Depression, anger, sadness, fatigue, short-temper, lethargy...these were all bi-products of my disastrous face.. Every day became a challenge for me, a challenge to make it to the end, to survive, to refrain from breaking down in public, in-front of friends, in-front of people. Its such a traumatic experience and I don't think any one that hasn't suffered from prolonged acne really knows how this feels.You see, your face is the entrance to your soul, because your emotions, your thoughts, your feelings are all expressed through your face. When you meet people, first they see your face and then they analyse the rest of your body. Its analogous to living in a house that's falling apart on the outside. No matter what the situation is on the inside, all the judgments are passed long before entering the front door. And this left me constantly searching, searching for acceptance, seeking approval and always looking for love. Because when you don't accept, approve and love yourself, you obviously have to depend on someone else to.

Next sop...varsity

Going into varsity, the situation only got worse, and now this affected my academics, because instead of focusing on my work during lecturers, there I was thinking about my face.And the thing is that it's not all restricted to the psychological level even, because when you have inflamed skin, you can literally feel the puss pushing out against the boundaries of the pimple, and trust me that shit hurts! So not only did I wake up and feel like shit, I was reminded the whole damn day that there is a war happening all over my face, all day everyday. And to make this objective situation ten times worse there are so many pretty people in varsity, so one can't help but compare... :( As I walked around campus on the daily, I used to curse people that had perfect skin, cause they looked like they bath in milk while I looked like a destitute prisoner of war. I even wanted to see less and less of my own friends, locked up in my room for days, hiding behind the books and the course work - wondering why life is so unfair?

Searching for the underlying problem

What I didn't understand throughout this period is what actually caused this problem, all this time I was trying to fight it from the outside in: more face washes, more toners, more creams, if this doesn't work try another one, if that doesn't work try another one use a face mask, try a steamer, more more moreee!!!! I think my face was even tired of me, it probably almost threw in the towel as well. Early into varsity I stopped dairy, since I discovered that it was a contributing factor, after this change my face did improve..ever so slightly. 

Because of the effects of alcohol (high in sugar and toxins etc), throughout varsity I had many on and off periods with that as well, thinking that alcohol=bad, but that never lasted long.There were way too many parties to attend and not nearly enough self-discipline. I had managed to stop junk foods completely, so no sweets, chips, chocolates and the like. And people around me would often ask me why? But I would simply tell them it was due to 'health reasons', not exposing the reality of the matter : the fact that I was fighting to get control of my life back. 

In high school I got into the unnecessary bad habit of smoking as well , having such great friends as an influence (face palm) but I stopped that for good, early during my first year of varsity and haven't touched a cigarette since. This had some sort of effect, but then there was nothing to take my mind of the stress that was being caused by my face... So for the following years my love hate relationship continued with my face, I had good weeks, bad weeks, good days, bad days, ups and downs, ins and outs throughout and I eventually just conceded that this was my life, this was my journey. I decided to accept my fate....

The revelation

This continued up until this year(2014) the year after I completed my honours degree in varsity. Since I had started working I had a fairly routine schedule so I started going to gym on the daily after work with a group of work mates. What my workmates did was, they ate oats an hour or so before going to gym, for the carb-loading benefits. So I did the same, every day for about 3-4 weeks I had a nice bowl of oats (with sugar), sometimes even twice a day. After some time I started to notice that after I ate oats I used to get this bloated uncomfortable feeling in my stomach (which I actually used to get often) , this got extremely awkward over time. On top of this I also started getting this horrible acne by my jawline, and not just a lightweight whiteheaded pimple, it was deep cystic acne, those hard painful bumps that take oh so long to go away. Furthermore I also used to have a distinct weird feeling, like some sort of anxiety, but I didn't take much cognizance of it (i passed it off as fatigue). So this all continued to happen for a few weeks. 

At first I thought "o.k just some more retaliation from my face" but after consistent irritation and further annoyance it eventually lead me to do some research on our loyal friend Google, and after a few searches I came across this life changing article by Jenifer Blanchard. Her story was basically the same as mine: acne from a young age, trying every acne product on the market, staying indoors cause she was afraid of the world, hatred of staring in the mirror, feeling ugly and gross, despising other fresh faced teenagers, feeling of anxiety at times.. and halfway through reading the article I was like "woah, this is my story!". Then the part where she mentioned the jawline acne, I knew that I was onto something.

"Now the ACNE had started migrating downward, showing up along my jawline and neck as well as on my face. Deep-rooted, cystic acne that never seemed to go away. I didn’t know what to do anymore."

I carried on reading and she mentioned that after trying all products and even getting expert advice (which i did as well,and it was a complete waste of my time and money), she decided to take matters into her own hands by signing up for a nutrition course.

She continues to explain that during a lecture on food allergies the doctor started listing symptoms produced by gluten allergies and law and behold...one by one the truth was reveled and I saw the light.

"I was listening to a lecture on food allergies, and the doctor who was teaching the class started listing off all the symptoms that gluten and dairy allergies produce: anxiety, heartburn, GERD, ACID REFLUX, stomach pain, ear infections, sinus infections…the list went on."

Connecting the dots

My mother will be quick to tell you that I was terribly sick throughout my childhood and my parents had no idea why. But looking at this list and taking into consideration all my issues from birth to now, it all starts to make sense.. maybe, just maybe I was sensitive to gluten. On the one hand I was extremely  happy to come to this realization but then again I was also like REALLY?REALLY?? REALLY!!!!! The universe waits for me to go through high school AND varsity fighting a constant battle with myself before telling me that I shouldn't be eating gluten? After all the bread, the scones, the buns, the oats, the pasta, the beer! NOW you tell me that I'm gluten sensitive, now when i'm 22...well done! I kicked myself after reading this but it also all made so much sense, because looking back the times that my acne was at its worst correlated to times where I had a lot of wheat/barley/rye.

• Hostel and res -> the food is ridiculous, so you just end up making sandwiches to supplement everything. I'd go days eating like +10 slices of bread.

• High school going into varsity -> in high school your status of being a cool kid depends on whether you drink beer or not (which tasted disgusting) so what did i do? I drank a whole lot of beer!. In varsity... well, we all know what happens in varsity, you are either studying, sleeping or drinking. 

• Varsity self catering -> living in a house, without being catered for, not knowing how to cook to save my life- what did I eat most? bread, pasta and more bread!!!!!! and that's when I started my oats habit as well - 'just add boiling water' they said...curse you Jungle Oats!.

And what does bread, pasta, beer and oats all have in common? Gluten, gluten gluten!!!

Looking back it should have been more obvious but I mean its really hard connection to figure out and honestly up until this year I didn't even really know what gluten was, but now I know and I'll never forget. I've stopped eating all forms of gluten and the results are truly amazing (especially considering where I am coming from).

Postmortem 

With all this said and done, I'm not saying that I have photogenic face with smooth silky baby bottom skin...yet! I am however clearly on the road to recovery and it really feels great, being able to walk out your house and face the day (pun intended) in confidence is one of the greatest feelings in the world. I'll have to follow a strict diet of course, but it's for a good cause, I really do miss my craft beer, but honestly I'd choose smooth skin over a hangover any day.

Know thyself

Now this definitely isn't a proven cure for the millions of other acne sufferers out there, but it is worth a try. The point to take out of this is to always look for the root cause of your problems. I am a strong believer in logic,  reason and rational, and in as much as we may live in a random universe, not everything is random, things don't 'just happen' especially if the observations are consistent, one needs to look for the correlation and search for the true cause. It is extremely important to know yourself, your body, your allergies and your sensitivities both physiological and psychological, else you will spend your whole life fighting in a losing battle. 

Take some time, do some research, experiment on yourself, make some sacrifices. Life is too short to suffer, when the solution to your problems could be one simple insight away.

T4aM

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