Shooting coke

Each day a person is subjected to forces outside of their immediate control and those forces often bear down on a person causing stress, anxiety or pressure of some kind. It's a part of life. It could be work pressure, the stress of a toxic person or environment, financial, health or relationship pressure, it could also be of a more personal nature, a teenager struggling with their sexuality for instance.

Every human being will feel stressed and under pressure at some point in their lives; It's inevitable and simply a part of life.

This image shows a standard glass bottle of cola. It's hard to see but there is a bullet just about to strike the bottle. If you look carefully, or blow the image up on your computer, you will see it. There it is just at the lower edge of the red label at the left side. These images are still-shots from a video so the quality is not all that good but you should be able to see it if you look carefully. It reminds me of what a person is like right before something really bad happens. You know, one of those things that happens causing a person to experience high stress, anxiety or pressure of some kind. The bottle is the person, the speeding bullet the duress.

Here's the same bottle once impacted by the bullet. You can see it's starting to explode, to crack into pieces.

Again, that's no different to what happens to a person in times of stress and under the duress life can inflict upon us at times. Sure, we don't physically break up like the bottle, but I think, at least emotionally, we do, or can.

Life is hard sometimes and it takes its toll causing us to fall apart, experience debilitating emotional stress and yet we need to find a way to cope, to address the issues both inwardly and those that formed the catalyst for them in the first place; The external source.

Many people fail to confront (address) the issues and pressures they face preferring to either ignore them in the hope they will simply disappear, or to deflect them. Both of these options will have a result however most often that result may not be the most desirable one. This can be as simple as an argument between two friends that gets out of hand because it wasn't addressed as a smaller, and much more easily-solved issue, or something more significant and damaging. Here the cola bottle is entering its final stage. The bullet has imparted all its energy into the bottle and the result is a catastrophic and total destruction of what was once a whole and complete cola bottle.

Managing stress is an important part of life, after all who wants to end up like that poor cola bottle above? There's many ways to do so including: Talking to someone, removing toxic people, or removing yourself from toxic, negative and stressful situations, relaxation techniques like yoga and meditation, sleeping more and consuming less Alcohol, caffeine or nicotine. I'm sure there's many more also.

For me I add honesty to that list. Yes, honesty. Self-honesty actually. It's critical to apply it to one's self and then outwardly. Honesty is linked with integrity and both of them can help manage how external sources of stress affect the individual.

It's almost the holiday season so hopefully you're not feeling stressed however when, if, you do recall the cola bottle and don't be like it. Don't fall to pieces when there's so much help around you, and within you.