Mark ONeill Author

my thoughts on friendship

I get judged and picked apart by people who do not know me every day.   It is especially harsh in social clubs and networking where people do not know my background. I spent twenty years in the Army, but I do not look like it. I have no wounds, no limps, only one disability in hearing, and I look relatively young.  That does not mean that I did not serve in the Army.  Why should I have to provide…

Society can be fake and dishonest.  Richard Perry Conant, aka The Riverman, learned that the hard way during college when his friends encouraged this class clown to go to extremes.   While trying to be funny and whacky, to please his friends, he started doing drugs like LSD and acid, and it damaged his mind, leaving him paranoid.   It took a lifetime to recover.   And it took him years to learn…

Suicide hurts. The outsiders of a suicide always wish they could turn the clock back, change the outcome.  But, you cannot retrieve someone from suicide. It’s done; it’s final, and it hurts.

Members of the military and former members of the military commit suicide at a rate of 22 per day, almost 1 per hour.  Out of every five suicides in the United States, one of them is a veteran. Quite a few of them are over the age of 50, veterans of Vietnam and Desert Storm. The others are young, with their careers not even started. Most of them are enlisted.

The number of suicides in the general population of the United States has begun to increase.  And this curse has hit the high school population again.

What is going on?

I served in the military. I wanted to be in the military since I was about 10 years old because I felt a faint calling, a small voice that told me to contribute. I felt as though the military was a service to America. I believe that many of those who commit suicide have similar feelings; they wanted to contribute and be part of a group.  I also wanted to get away from the confines of my family and how everyone had labeled me, stereotyped me –confined me.

Men and women who joint the military experience the highest highs and the lowest lows, patriotism and elation to betrayal and damnation. It can be a real buzz to be part of a good unit, especially when things work. But afterward, once the cheering dies out, and guys go their separate ways, the military members go like the lyrics of song by the Police: feel so low, so alone, so lonely. And they commit that irreversible act. It is often after the service, after the tour, after the high operations tempo that a member commits suicide.

I feel this pattern results from the brain wiring of a certain percent of the population.  I know some of you don’t agree, but I feel that many of the people pre-deposed to suicide are also many of the people pre-deposed to joining the military. This target audience, this population (one that I find myself in) we are not as afraid of death, but we are also inclined to taste the joys and pains of life. One could say we are emotional. Yes. We are emotional.  Being emotional helps when you are in the military; It helps you get through training.

But we are also afraid to show our emotions. So we drink.

And often, not always, when young enlisted women and men try to get out of the military environment they find that the civilian world does not welcome them with amazement and respect. They find themselves in a land with less emotion, less patriotism, less zest. Civilians do not find it amazing that you were able to drive a five ton truck over mountainous terrain, or fire a dragon missile without instructions. Civilians do not respect that you were able to get supplies brought into Afghanistan through Pakistan, while militants bombed the convoys and closed routes. So, our military members and former military women and men are perplexed by civilians.  And civilians look at some of us and think “get a real job”.

Black, Hispanic, White, whatever.  Rich or poor.  The military experience knows no color.  The inclination to serve knows know economic background.  We are all affected. And members of every race, creed and color have committed suicide in this latest plague.

I just read an article about a young woman, Madison Holleran, a student the University of Pennsylvania who committed suicide. She was a track star and a potential academic stand-out who does not seem to fit the mold of the enlisted military members who commit suicide–except, perhaps she was. She was trying to contribute, please society by attending an upscale university. She wanted to do something but was having a hard time. In truth, such performance was just was not in her. She was not a super-star. She was just a girl. And so, she was like members of the military who find themselves let-down, depressed.

This novel comes out in mid-August.

It is a mystery / thriller that recalls some of the hard-boiled detectives from the 1970s.   Thomas Magnum, Jim Rockford.....Franco Chevalier.

The O’Neill Theory on Dreaming

Sigmund Freud hypothesized that dreams work out deep, unresolved and emotional challenges and desires.  Since then, some scientists with backgrounds in neurobiology have argued that dreams are merely a method to burn off excess energy left over from the day. Now scientists using advanced mapping and monitoring techniques see enough activity in the emotional centers of the brains during dreaming that they’re starting to wonder if Freud could have been right.  I believe that over time, neuroscientists will find that both Freud and the biologists were right.  But also scientists will find that parallel research shows our brains must continue to grow and make new connections throughout our lives – so much so that one of the reasons for dreaming might also be to make new connections between unrelated neurons.  These new connections serve to keep us growing, thinking new thoughts and having new ideas.

So, our brains use dreams to burn off excess energy from the day and to work-out unresolved emotional issues. But they also use dreams to form new connections in the brain, connections which make us more capable of coming up with new ideas and new solutions.

Humans benefit from new ideas and connections and dreams are full of weird connections and concoctions.  Freud thought that we used symbols and euphemisms in our dreams so that what we dreamt was not really what we meant and that we had to interpret our dreams afterwards, interpret the symbols.  I think that we dream of odd things SO we can keep odd things in our arsenal of solutions.

What odd dreams have you had lately? Recently, I dreamt I was at a militaristic corporate training program where I was taught to behave through humiliation and ritual.  I only survived by seeking out the class clowns and dejected, those who were about to be kicked out – though I was not on the “shit list” myself; these guys who were about to be sent home gave me advice on how to make it through the program.  I think that I had this dream to help to prepare me for the future, to make me stronger, not to resolve some issue from the past.  Every night I have dreams that connect odd parts of my life that do not seem connected and certainly part of the dreams are there to resolve emotional issues. But I think their primary benefit comes from preparing me for the future.

Dreaming to create new neurological connections via the plasticity of our minds is just a theory at this point.  Please send me your thoughts and comments.   [email protected]

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