I don’t know why but I have an idealized state at the end of my life in which I struggle no more. I have this kind of like end vision in which I do not have any more troubles and life is just an endless vacation. I thought that would one day be the case, but I do not think that is a real possible outcome anymore. In fact, I do not think that I really know what it is that I want in the last stage of my life.
I don’t know if part of growing up is leaving that fantasy behind or if maybe I was just following what the people around me had always expressed but I am here now. Life is a constant barrage of problems and challenges. The day that you have no more challenges is probably the day you stop growing as a person.
You stop growing because you are not exploring the rest of the world around you. It is impossible to know everything because there is so much of the world and so little of you. Life is dynamic and will never stop changing so you best be prepared for anything and everything, at least you should be if you are wise enough to understand that at a moment’s notice everything could change. There is also an aspect of gratitude that must go with this in so much as you must apricate how good things can come be. Sometimes you do not even know how good things are until they are not. This last point reminds me of how much I ignored a few freedoms until after the pandemic took them away.
In today’s day and age, everything is expected to be fast and easy. We have short attention spans and are highly irritable. We have been conditioned to expect everything as quickly as possible. We pay for speed in everything. No longer do we need to feel the need to wait on a reply from someone on the other side of the world. We have come to be conditioned to expect replies within a matter of mere minutes from everyone. That is not the pace at which certain things in life operate. Things like career satisfaction, family development, mastery of a field, and wisdom do not come in a matter of weeks or months. These things take years and sometimes a lifetime to develop. It is a path of real dedication.
What I have come to find more and more today is that convenience has come to sometimes be more valued than sustainability and accuracy. It is like sometimes we are willing to cut ourselves short just to minimize the inconvenience and discomfort we feel. That is pursuing what is expedient and not what is meaningful. If you chase expediency for too long then you ultimately deprive yourself of long-term goal satisfaction.
I know that from my personal experience I sometimes struggle with studying because I feel bored and distracted. I know that there are some areas in my competence and understanding in which I am lacking and insufficient. I am not the smartest I could be, which is what I am ultimately getting at. I have my shortcomings and I know that when an examination of my knowledge comes up, as it is bound to happen, I will feel regretful and dumbfounded. I feel regret because I should have done better in the past and made better decisions. I feel dumbfounded because I am supposed to know in most cases.
What I can also say is that when I do try hard to study and get a good grade I feel accomplished and satisfied.
Dedication to an art or craft is something that does not get the attention I feel it deserves. For every individual performing at the absolute pinnacle of performance, there are thousands of failed attempts, repetitions, and modifications to their techniques. They did not become good just by luck.
Some people are born naturally gifted and the others (like me) did not get that same stroke of luck. Some of us must work extra hard to get the same results as everyone else. In some sense, we all could even struggle to be average in something.
I get that we all have our limitations but sometimes those limitations are just self-imposed and a mental barrier. I know that when I was growing up, I was leaving a lot of opportunities on the table and because I never took them, I became who I am today. That last part might be a bit difficult to understand so I want to elaborate a bit on that.
In life, it happens to be the case that sometimes just some exposure can change the whole trajectory of one’s life. You could have some amazing experiences and meet some lifelong friends if only you gave something a shot… I never really gave myself that chance because I felt too shy and insecure.
I can think of my life in terms of what I have regretted most, and those experiences always stick out more than what I have done. It is weird and maybe a bit of a double negative but those experiences shape who we become. Doing something once leaves the door open for the chance to enjoy doing it and fall in love with the craft. I know that a personal example for me would be wrestling in high school. It was a bit of an odd sport, but I fell in love with the depth of the sport and how even after years of dedication and commitment you still do not know all that there is to know. There is always something you could be learning and always someone to compete with. It is like the gift that just miraculously keeps giving. It is the teacher who only appears when the student is ready to learn.
I think, all in all, I just want to find myself in a place where I do not have to dread my work and I feel like I am fundamentally helping the people I need to most and I do not have to worry about money. It is not always just about the money, but the money helps. I am not going to deny that. The end goal is to make money doing something I feel is worthwhile and will give me satisfaction in the long run. Once that is secure and established, I will worry about retirement. Until then, I see no point in worrying about that.
“Hope itself is like a star—not to be seen in the sunshine of prosperity, and only to be discovered in the night of adversity.” –Charles Haddon Spurgeon
It can be hard sometimes to remember what you are fighting for and in moments of uncertainty you lose sight of what the underlying goal is and then you become susceptible to being vulnerable and hopeless. You lose sight of the destination and your compass becomes uncalibrated. In some sense, you could even feel betrayed by yourself seeing as how the fundamental understanding of the world was wrong. We are emotional creatures and it is very easy to end up getting caught up in this emotionally devastating state, and if you never talk deeply about these issues you just passively (and maybe unwillingly) let them get worse. This psychologically unfavorable terrain has become even more abundant in the wake of the pandemic.
It should go without saying that at a widescale we were already becoming more and more isolated and self-centered, the pandemic just made this aspect worse. In this modern world, if you were to only have a few limited moments of genuine connections it is very difficult to get around to unpacking psychological baggage and figuring out what has to be changed, and quite frankly, it isn’t something most people bring up or ask about and maybe it is because we don’t want to talk about it. It isn’t cool to talk about these problems and it is certainly a hell of a lot easier to just ignore these deeply rooted issues and talk about the new season of Stranger Things instead. And, as if it needed reminding, we all have a deeply-rooted fear of being deemed an outcast merely for being different and having these kinds of issues, yet the great irony is that we ALLL have these same fears and insecurities. It’s just that some people have it as bad as you or maybe even worse. The validity of such claims varies from individual to individual obviously, and it should also be noted that we all tell ourselves stories about our lives that are not always objectively true. That is to say, what we remember at the level of the individual could very well be tainted with emotion and unconscious bias and could very well contradict the actual facts. (And just to throw it out there, this is not me trying to downplay anyone’s misfortune).
“The most important freedom is freedom from your own self-judgment.” -Vironika Tugaleva
It is very easy to get caught up in a mental trap of desperation, as already established. It is the absence of hope that fuels that negative state of being, and without a real vision towards something greater to justify the suffering you really do get lost in darkness and uncertainty. You become aimless and blind in some sense. That much is no wonder, and some people don’t want to be rescued from that abyss. Sometimes staying in what you know feels better than leaving for something you don’t, but it is exactly in the unknown where transformation happens. It is very difficult to confront the unknown and wrestle with it to understand it. It takes a special kind of bravery because you are the only one who could challenge it and change it. Only you can look inward and change your outlook and habits. Those are the first few steps and those must be taken on the individual level, but there is also a powerful group collective strength that has to keep the individual in check while simultaneously pushing the members to strive for greater heights. This is why support groups are so effective. Not only that but there is also a healthy competitive aspect that goes on as well because you genuinely care to be better and give your all, and maybe it isn’t just about you but it is about outdoing someone, which is not always a bad thing (you must, however, wonder what you are outdoing them in and if it is something that you actually want to do and if it is for your own greater good).
We don’t get to feel much of that sense of constructive group strength in this socially divided existence. We don’t really connect with one another as we did before. Today we are more divided than ever before and there is a raging loneliness paradox. It is a literal silent killer. As a social species, we are meant to thrive and connect deeply for the sake of our survival and the overall good of the tribe and community. We need deep connections to raise kids in a healthy way and we need communities to help keep systems and stability in check, especially when those operations work in a beneficial manner. In today’s divided and “us-versus-them” mentalities we don’t try as much to connect and strive for the greater good because we are so fast to push the blame on other people and paint them as our perception sees them. We tend to group people into categories of many kinds but those surface-level definitions are sometimes simply unjust; we all exist in different spectrums and have our own little individual wars going on in our lives.
In that sense, we are also not getting the help we actually need in that area and it is a critical area to our overall state of well-being. We are meant to connect and build. Not only that, but maybe perhaps we all bought into the notion that to be happy we MUST make a lot of money or acquire any other mandatory or arbitrary thing as deemed and decided by society as a prerequisite for happiness; and by that presupposition, it could very well be the case that in the pursuit of happiness we lose slight of what we have, chasing what we think we absolutely need. It could be the case that what you needed all along was right in front of you and within reach, you just could not see it because you didn’t let yourself see the possibility of what all could be.
And further expanding on norms and customs, it is not always the case people have ideas, it can also be that ideas have people and collectively the people assemble to represent an idea and treat the idea as a living doctrine. This extends to social conditioning and drives unconscious thinking at the level of the individual and the group as a whole. Once an idea has been accepted by the masses it hardly ever gets scrutinized, let alone actually questioned.
“Modern man can’t see God because he doesn’t look low enough.” – Carl Jung
Worth having here is a small discussion on failure. Failure is important because on your journey in life you are bound to get a few things wrong and fall short, and that is fine. Failure seems to carry such a negative connotation. Failure is something we have become afraid of because of the unexpected ramifications it can bring about or what it entails, but it does not have to necessarily always have to bring about something terrible. In my estimation failure is a necessary part of life and part of the road to success. Sometimes a failure can prevent a bigger catastrophe from happening or maybe even cause redirection towards something greater. The world and life are so limitless that you have to find your way around by stumbling and finding your way through trial and error (That is going into the abyss of the unknown and seeing what all is there, with bravery).
After all, most of us learned to walk by stumbling around for a bit, no? That is just a part of life; the trick is not to be paralyzed by it. The trick is to be strong enough to take on whatever comes your way and work with it. I had a mentor once tell me that success is not linear and that statement still holds true even after all these years. One aspect that also accompanies failure is regret, and I know that for me I have a lot of regrets but it is odd in some sense; I regret more what I didn’t do as opposed to what I did do. It’s funny how that works out, actually. (There’s an old post I wrote here on this: wordpress.com/post/escapethematrix.home.blog/55) Regret is supposed to be a tool to better analyze what we did (or need to do), but more and more I find it easier to get so caught up in the feeling of what could’ve and should’ve been and the actual solution gets forgotten about. All in all, however, I regret not much of what I did because it taught me valuable lessons that I will carry for the rest of my life. Not only that but it brought me to where it is that I needed to be.
“If you are not willing to be a fool, you can’t become a master.” – Jordan Peterson
I know that personally, I do not experience moments of complete and total inclusivity from time to time, but when I do get them they completely enthrall me. It is a state of being in which time and space simply disappear and I am just left to be fully engaged in the moment. This is part of what the high points of life are all about; it is about coming together to share deeply meaningful wonderful moments that will last a lifetime. It is moments like these in which fates become intertwined and it is no longer merely about one’s self; indeed it has to be that way because it is no longer simply about just one’s self. It is with that sacrifice of one’s own self that you plant seeds for future success because for better or worse, we are all influenced by the people that surround us.
And as a finishing note, simple moments like these must be cherished and celebrated. It isn’t often that these magical moments happen and they often get overlooked and forgotten about until they are gone, but by that point it is too late to go back. Life, with all of its unpredictability, is drastically different day by day even if it does not seem that way on the surface level. Death is a constant force that never really actually goes away. In my experience, I have been waking up these past few months with as much gratitude as I can for what little I do have because at any moment I could lose it all. The only thing I try to do is not compare myself to others unfairly. That is how I try to avoid the trap of failing to see what I do actually have and, for better or worse, I am the only one of me that will ever exist with my life and experience. The fact of the matter here is that such comparisons to others might not even be fair or equal because we are all different and have our own set of struggles we are born into and obstacles we must overcome. Let us also not forget that we all have different end goals in mind. That all does not mean that we can’t work together to help one another out and reach for new heights together. That last bit is how progress is made and change happens. That is the shared human experience and there is strength in numbers.
“To suffer terribly and to know yourself as the cause? That is hell. And once in hell it is very easy to curse being itself and no wonder” -Jordan Peterson
Actually, it does matter what you chose to do or not do minute by minute. Just because you don’t acknowledge reality and willfully chose to ignore it doesn’t mean that the consequences won’t be waiting for you.
We all have a conscience and despite all of our technological advancements, we still can’t explain how we have it or where it comes from. We really just know that it’s there and it’s waiting for us at the end of each day when our head hits the pillow or when we get a few moments of actual silence with no noise or distractions; and really the only actual way to satisfy that inner voice is to actually do something about it. That internal criticism just never seems to stop either.
“Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness. Listen to it carefully” – Richard Bach.
If you had to take proper inventory of your life and you actually genuinely tried to see what was left to be done in YOUR life, you’d probably shatter your self image and realize your own damn short comings (don’t worry, we all have them).
Oh, but it’s not necessary. It’s not required to take account for yourself and even moreso is that true when no one cares that deeply about your own problems (contrary to what you tell yourself). We have all these distractions (quite literally) at our fingertips. It’s a very courageous soul that embarks on the journey of life and sets order where it has been left out. That’s creation and organization. That’s doing something that’s actually difficult and being okay with uncertainty because the results aren’t guaranteed. That’s putting your best foot forward and hoping for the best. That’s establishing order and struggling to be become someone worthwhile in a realm that you aren’t familiar with. That is true courage. Pushing on despite uncertainty.
“The worst prisons were not constructed of warped steel and stone. They were carved out of expectations and lies, judgment and corruption.” – Kelseyleigh Reber
That means actively trying to control yourself from spending too much time just mindlessly browsing online. It’s also doing what must be done in your life to the best of your abilities and being okay with struggling (or recognizing that you have a limit and you’re not the best at one particular thing).
This all also includes doing what you must and not coming home just to lock yourself up in your room and binge on porn or playing video games or watch Netflix. This also includes developing a proper focus that won’t easily be distracted or steered off course and that will guide you even when you don’t want to go where you must.
It should also go without saying if you never see where you must go (physically or mentally or what have you) you’ll never know what to actually do about much of anything. Setting a sight is a sacrifice for a greater good.
All of this is really difficult to do, especiallly when you don’t have anyone to really hold you accountable. This is part of the reason why isolation is so dangerous.
I only write about these problems extensively because they are my own and I’m trying to find the best solution that I can to solve the catastrophe that is life. I’ve been ignorant of my issues for a few years now because I didn’t want to think about them. I didn’t want to think about them because it’s painful to just think about and it has become a monster that has been hiding in the shadows of my life. I’m not everything I could be and I hate to admit it and I don’t even acknowledge that much when I compare myself to someone else because the emotional side of myself fails to see that I failed myself and didn’t develop because of self sabotage. It’s my own damn fault.
And if I struggle with this foundational step this much and its because I didn’t even choose to see, just think about having to confront what I actually must.
“Living is Easy with Eyes Closed” – John Lennon
Of course, it isn’t all bad. I still have time and potential and energy. I can still choose to make things better for myself but that’s a decision I have to take and enforce minute by minute. Seeing a possible solution is the first step to analyzing how it can be achieved.
So, I’m done with the endless distractions that are porn and mindless nights spent watching YouTube videos that I don’t even care about; I just watch them out of convenience to put off what I must. That also means that I’m done just going to mindlessly run when my body could very well derive more benefits from a proper routine and an actually healthy sleep schedule. This is my blog and it’s where I will be posting my progress. I hope if nothing else you can stick around and see that change is possible and you too can do it.
“When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not yet ready. The challenge will not wait. Life does not look back. A week is more than enough time for us to decide whether or not to accept our destiny.” – Paulo Coelho.
Success is a very delicate formula that can be ruined with little inconsistency. I would know because I’ve been the one to ruin my own chances of success all this year.
This year would’ve been a hell of a lot better if I had only come to set my sights on a proper goal. That is the beginning of the journey, the other part of the process is actually living up to the standards that I set for myself despite the degenerating standards that society at large chooses to follow. It’s so easy to just degrade and let everything just fall apart; that’s the very natural course of things. Order is a critical component to building something worthwhile, and it’s that part that I can’t seem to get right. Maybe part of it is that I am partially afraid of success and maybe part of that also has to do with my inability to commit to something that is not real just yet. Maybe it is mostly my fault for letting myself get this way-well it is most definitely mostly my own fault.
This blog was supposed to be something greater and something worthwhile that I was building but I slipped into a terrible habit of neglecting it and now it’s just become a shell of what could’ve actually been. This is a reoccurring theme in my life.
“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”
Heraclitus
It isn’t just so much as this is all about simply me; I can’t do this life thing all alone. We are all interconnected and we are all social creatures. We depend on one another to build societies and function properly. Indeed, everyone has an individual role and yet, for some terribly arbitrary reason I chose to do most of what I do alone. It’s always been my nature and succumbing to my own natural tendencies makes me wither away and weakens my over all state of being. Part of it was the way I was brought up, part of is the way I learned to cope with my own insecurities. Life is not about the materials or the possessions. It is about the people and the networks and we have become so self-centred and forgotten all about that. We are not robots built to go from task to task. That being said, One thing is for certain, that’s being that I can’t do this alone.
“If you are lonely when you’re alone, you are in bad company.” – Jean-Paul Sartre.
Not only that but if I don’t know exactly what I’m aiming at and trying to achieve I’ll never know exactly what all I have to do in order to end up when I want to be and need to be. And as I have come to learn sometimes what I want is not what I need, In much of the same way just because I can do something does not necessarily mean that I should do it.
Just today I cleaned up my room and washed my car. It’s nothing too incredibly difficult but they’re necessary to the blue print of my future success. I finally got around to doing a few long over due things and I don’t want next year to be a repeat of this one; not that this one was anything too bad. It just wasn’t all it could be and I’ll pay the price for that eventually. it’ll be my own undoing that’ll bring about my own downfall. It is these thoughts that torment me at night when I can’t sleep. Life just won’t get easier by merely wishing for it. What all does this entail though? What all should actually change?
Well for me it’s….
Going to sleep when I should to be well rested and not struggling each day unnecessarily because I decided to binge YouTube the night before.
Getting out of the house and trying new things
Doing stuff that I know that makes me happy and boosts my mood. I recently found that I quite enjoy dancing to my favorite songs, despite looking like I have 2 broken left feet.
Continually redefining what could be the best version of myself- which by my estimations is what all I am actually supposed to be doing in my 20’s at any rate.This means that I find what my limits could be and actually are and expand them.
Having continued appreciation for life.
Giving up cheap pleasures like porn, video games and the constant shopping to escape. Youtube can be grouped in with this one along with snapchat.
Stop pulling out my phone simply out of pure boredom just to distract myself. Ignoring the actual reality will not just give it the virtue of going away.
Getting back to my workout plan that I never quite developed.
Blogging more frequently and critically thinking, two things I have long abandoned because of the minor inconveniences that they seem to pose. I struggle to bring myself to think and do what all I must.
This one also includes having some sort of studying schedule so i don’t screw myself over when I get back to school next year.
All in all, I am being quite honest with myself I have let life become too easy and it is starting to stagnate. I do’t feel quite the same pressure I once did to move and get back on track as I did when I was in school. It is like all my current efforts are limited and undercut by the fact that I have some unfortunate limitations plaguing my existence; and yet even given that much, I still don’t feel quite satisfied giving my way the easy way out. Cheap pleasure has never brought me proper satisfaction. Cheap pleasures are just a distractions that take away from my over all life satisfaction. Legitimate excuses have never stopped the ones who really wanted to go out and make something happen. As a greater society we have stopped making strives for improvement and instead opted to maximize pleasure. It is for that very foundation that I can binge endless hours of YouTube and never actually really get down to doing what matters most. That is what caused the fundamental death of my ambitions; It was my own self and lack of commitment to myself because I opted to pursue some cheap pleasure.
“All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride.” – Sophocles.
And, as the title suggests, procrastination could very well have cost me my short (and long term) future. Because I waited too long to do most of what I know I should have done, I missed out on valuable and once in a lifetime opportunities. I did this to my own self and choosing to not think about it or acknowledge the problems does not make them magically disappear. Now this is my issue and I must make the most that I can to get out of the rut that I put myself in and I must hold myself accountable. It is going to be a struggle but I have to start remaking my life one day at a time.
If there has been something that the past year taught me, it’s that an individual’s system of beliefs is like the gravity that holds everything together in everyone’s own little world.
“We are what we think, all that we are arises with our thoughts, with our thoughts we make the world.”
We humans are self-centered creatures. We get so caught up in our own little narratives that we do not even consider that someone else may not even have the same point of reference as we do, and as a consequence they may not even stop to consider what we think. Our own little universe we build is completely invisible to everyone, and even more-so to complete strangers. It is not much of a stretch to say that all of us operate on a different reality that has come to be shaped by the lives we all lead independently.
“Under all that we think, lives all we believe, like the ultimate veil of our spirits” –Antonio Machado
It is a system of belief that guides our thoughts and actions through our own designed reality whether we know it or not. Very rarely do we stop and think about what we believe and why. In fact, some people may take it as a direct threat to acknowledge something that may not align with their own system of beliefs, even if it is not a complete truth. It is these secluded people who close themselves off and have a limited view of the world because they simply see no other way of reasoning. To put it simply, they just do not know any better and, more often than not, they wouldn’t want to know any better because it damages their entire inner world. In some cases it could even put their entire way of being in jeopardy if they have interwoven what they believe into their identity. I have found that sometimes it is an ego or pride thing and accepting that you are wrong or don’t know as much as you think you do interferes with your own perception of yourself and that can cause some confusing or hurt feelings or even an over emotional response. So in that regard and given these likely scenarios, it is better to stay ignorant and turn a blind eye to what you do not want to know. The reasoning here is that it is better to stay in what you do know than confront the chaos of the unknown. The being said, the truth can be hurtful sometimes and not thinking about something painful is certainly a hell of a lot easier than actually thinking it out and following through with the steps necessary to solve a legitimate issue. The avoidance of this necessary step is made especially easy in today’s modern society with companies and products constantly battling over our individual attention and money.
“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” ― Plato
It should go without saying that there are ways to say something and that we all have our own serious issues going on and that we must deal with them; we are all living lives plagued with tragedies and catastrophes, each one of us with out own personalized degree of suffering. Turning a blind eye to real problems does not make the problems go away and regularly paying no attention to a problem actually makes things worse and chances are then your conscience will make you feel worse if you listen to it because it’ll probably tell you that you could have done something to circumvent the issue when you had a chance and not only that, you are not everything you could have been in your life. After all, who knows best of all who you could be better than yourself? Something I want to reiterate here is that you don’t have to listen to your thoughts and innermost voice. You could very well choose to find something to occupy your time and mind space with. Whatever you chose does not entirely matter. It could be an insignificant problem that you blow out of proportion or a mindless waste of time. Hell, you could even chose to do the same and feel even worse when you feel behind in life and see others present their achievements forward.
“Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” ― C.G. Jung
Now, given this context, it is important to think about what we value and believe. These things are like our subconscious road map and compass. It is like a program running in the background that dictates what you think and how you think and again, you do all of this without a second thought. Everything we do, talk and think about flows through this system of our subconscious. It all flows from the inside out and it all starts with what we think and what we think about is not directly in our control. If you have ever actually wanted to concentrate and focus on something but couldn’t you know what I am talking about. We are irrational creatures of habit and emotion by nature and if you pay no direct attention to what we focus on, we’ll find ourselves with a weak system of beliefs and an even weaker over all foundation for life.
Therefore it is also important to consider how we talk to ourselves and what we pay attention to. It is these inner dialogues that come to form the foundation for how we see the world and make meaning of it all. Not only is there that, but how we interpret each event plays a crucial part in how it affects us (this is evident in how we can all experience the same story and derive a different meaning from it all). These are all important developmental steps because they sets the stage for our later goals and ambitions in life. However, the issue here is that with so many systems of distractions readily available to us not only is it even harder to stop and actually question what we believe but we are more at risk of being deceived by so many cheap pleasures. Sometimes what you want is not what you need.
Consider this: In a time where we spend ever more increasing amounts of time online, is it coincidence that most of the news stories that get spread around so widely are normally outrageous and tragic? I doubt this is done accidentally. It is these types of stories that get the most publicity and with that high publicity there is high amounts of revenue that go along with it. It is the highly emotional stories that speak to our humanity and evoke powerful feelings. That is what gets the clicks and brings in the revenue. So with this insight, would it not be appropriate to say that if we are not carful with what we consume and from who it comes from that we are all susceptible to manipulation and deception to a high degree? The deception only gets exponentially worse the more time we spend online and the more we mindlessly scroll our lives away. If they control what you see than they can influence what you think without your direct permission.
“When you know what a man wants you know who he is, and how to move him.” ― George R.R. Martin
Now, given that we all have our own little way of choosing to see only what we want and preferring to see what reaffirms our beliefs, what is to stop us from intentionally seeking our what reaffirms our belief systems online and spreading that like gospel? After all, we do create the reality we want to live in, by choice or by unwillingly giving up that choice (the latter of which we are all more susceptible in a group environment). What is to stop us from finding what we want to see and not what we should see? How much of this is fabrication and how do I know that what I see online is real anyway? Not only that, but how do we know that we are not just pursuing the false God of pleasure and instead have chosen to following something long and difficult that is more rewarding in the long run?
These are questions that I have thought long and hard about this and the more I experience in life, the more I come to realize that I don’t have the full answers just yet. The more I learn the more I realize that I don’t know. As such I have given up on wanting to always be right because I am flawed in my reasoning and arguing. What I gain in winning a petty and insignificant argument is nothing compared to what I could learn by seeing that I might not be right and that perhaps I have everything backwards. That valuable insight can be valuable in the future. After all, I am too young to know an awful whole lot of anything significant. And what an argument normally leaves behind is one party feeling good that they won and one side resentful or (in some instances) both sides resentful that nothing got achieved so their combined efforts got nothing changed. Very rarely does your reasoning actually get through to the other side and any attempt to do so will only cause them to double down on their efforts. Life truly can be a game with no winners.
“Human beings have a unique ability to turn anything into suffering. Imagine that humans have started flying like birds. Flying has become a status symbol. Living on the ground is considered shameful. There is a mad competition to stay in the sky all the time. People don’t land. They suffer. Counsellors teach how to ease stress of flying. And spiritual Gurus say, “You fools! It’s OK to land and live in peace.” ― Shunya
That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t make a solid case for yourself or stand up for yourself. Don’t be spineless, but maybe think about what it is that you’re actually arguing for and about. It is okay to be wrong and it is to be expected if you are young. In the petty squabbles you win you will simply earn enemies that will be out to get you and get revenge later on. It is not a good investment in the long run, and what is to stop all your enemies from banding together later on to conspire against you?
Going back to the topic of only having a limited view of vision, I only ended up here because I wanted to originally write a post about gratitude and I found that I had to filter through so many preconceived notions of despair and indifference. Being grateful was not the default way of thinking. It is actually quite terrible because it is so easy to forget all the good that actually goes on, and many of the great things going on happen all around us; we are maybe all just too ignorant as to what all is properly functioning.
“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.” – Melody Beattie
It will never cease to amaze me how many brave people I find so willing to help others in need. It might not even be a stretch to say that these people exists in abundance – maybe not to the exact degree that you’d like them, but they’re out there. Perhaps it is these people who are courageous enough to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. Perhaps it is them who have enough self mastery to help others even when the culture does not encourage or promote it. They do not subscribe to the belief that everything is pointless and nothing matters but one’s self. Perhaps they have even rejected the acceptance of the most popular moods and belief systems. These people live in the same objective world that we do, yet these brave souls pour their time and devotions into something they believe and can’t physically see – yet. The very courageous among them act like existence can be worthwhile for everyone.
And that leads us to faith.
Faith is something you feel confident in even when you do not fully understand all of the variables (that is my own definition). This does not have to exclusively apply to a religious context. You can make an investment you see one day pay off (and deeply convince yourself of it) even if nothing has happened or there are obvious signs of real change. The faith component is being confident that it will one day pay off. The believing part is incredibly important if you are trying to make a change in your life that you have never seen or experienced. It is something that transcends our existence and we act as if it were all real. In a deeply existential way, faith comes to define us.
It is easy to go with the flow and blend it, but much harder it is to stand apart and do what all must be done, especially when it is on your own terms and when no one else believes in you. Sometimes you are alone and you must have faith in yourself and what all you are doing. That makes all the difference in the world. Faith.
It’s easy to feel good when the times are great and everything works out and prosperity is abundant. The real test of character comes when tough times arise and it’s time to act. That’s when the rubber meets the road and it’s do or die time and action must be taken. Taking no action is in itself a form of action. It is in the moments of doubt and uncertainty that true character is differentiated and made apparent from everyone else. It is in these times of turbulence and uncertainty that faith is put to the real test, so make sure you are well equipped.
We all believe in something and we treat that as if it were real. If nothing else this just shows the absolute importance of willingly choosing what we believe in and examining what all hold as the gravity in our own individual universe. So maybe do not have a life devoid of meaning or proper values.
One of my biggest flaws in my short lifetime is the mere fact that I failed to develop myself into the greatest possible version of myself that I can achieve.
I know that we are all guilty of this on some level, but I can’t know when other people do it because I can’t listen to the inter dialogue going on in everyone’s head. I’m also not one to judge an individual’s values. I can, however, know when I do it and I know when I fail to act upon what I know to be right. I can’t know for sure what all everyone is capable of and, in some sense, only the individual can know. We all have our little biases and blind spots within our psyches (this is without mentioning anything about actual preferences or individualised tastes) so it isn’t so easy to just have a one size fits all approach and it might even be downright unfair considering how diverse we can all be.
The conversation of who you could be is a long one that spans a few good year and maybe even a lifetime. It is not really something that can just happen over night like magic. The best version of yourself is something that one must constantly negotiate with one’s self because it isn’t quite obvious to your own self what you actually do want and if you stay constantly distracted in a way that has come to characterize the modern world with the widespread adoption of social media (and other timewasting sites) this type of conversation becomes ever more increasingly difficult. Because of the constant distractions, ideas and thoughts don’t have the proper chance to develop and fortify as they maybe should. It should also go without forgetting to consider that not properly analyzing ideas is just as bad because it does not stop an improper train of thought and you could very well end up feeding the wrong idea and become completely misguided. This is the type of phenomena that occurs with the people who fall down a bizarre rabbit-holes and become ever more convinced of ludicrous conspiracies like the world being flat or something far more extreme.
In my own experience it seems to me that people don’t ever achieve what all they actually want due in large part to the fact that they have never really actually take the time to properly identify what they want, and if that part remains vague and unclear it is highly unlikely that they will accidentally achieve something that they never really set out to do. In part this could come to be because people don’t want to know that they are failing at something they want to achieve; but if you don’t assess what works and what doesn’t, how can you make sure that you repeat the behavior that brings you closer and closer to your goals? Success can’t be achieved without a risk of failure.
Figuring out the destination is what then must be negotiated because it is something that must be discovered by the own individual. The negotiation is with yourself because you have to properly think about what you are willing to give up and what kind of behavior is killing your chances of success. The latter of which must be limited more and more. Often times it could also be the case that what you envision as success for yourself isn’t really for you and it probably will not make you as happy as you really think. Ego can get in the way and alter the perception you have of yourself and what you really are and how much you know or need to know or don’t really know. People often tend to rationalize their shortcomings, something I am also guilty of, and given the disconnection to reality that we humans can possess, we truly see nothing wrong with the reality we have come to believe. In some sense it is like building out a world of fiction and becoming an inhabitant. Imagination is after all a powerful tool.
In my estimation, sometimes what you think you want isn’t really what you want but you really don’t figure that much out until it’s too late (and sometimes you won’t admit it to anyone but yourself out of pride, which is fine because we all do that). It could also be the case that what you thought of yourself and your desires is also not really what you know to be the truth and the image you have of yourself is not really based in reality, and if that is true that is also fine. Perhaps you set out to try something and fail and that is fine. Maybe it wasn’t for you and that much is fine too. Maybe you were not what you thought you wanted to be, but that does not discount the fact that you could be something stellar in a different domain perhaps. The planning and execution do not always go as we imagine them to.
You might object that you don’t lie to yourself and that you only want what is best for you, and like fair enough. There is just one painfully obvious fact; That being that life is always changing and personality is always in flux. Given just that mere fact alone, it is very likely that you tend to liwe to yourself a lot. Personality is not concrete and it is not set in stone. Humans are adaptable creatures and given any type of environment, we can thrive- but only if you really truly want to and only if you want it badly enough to negotiate with the future in a very real and intrinsic way. Who you are right now doesn’t have to be who you will be next year, next five years or next ten years.
There is however, a drastic cultural shift that has happened in the past 20 or so years, and I am of course talking about the rise of the internet as an ever more persistent force in everyday life. The impact this has had on the development of the youth is immensely impactful to say the least. I won’t touch up on this too much here because I do plan on giving this big topic its own post sometime in the near future, but concerning what could be the forging of your own best self, this “tool” has had mixed applications in our everyday lives (no pun intended). Obviously the science is there; more widespread depression, increase in suicides, more time wasted, but the one effect particularly worth mentioning here is the fast pace that we have all come to adopt. It is like continuously living in a fast pace race constantly through life, even though that is just a fraction of what actually comprises life. Life is like a symphony with its ups and downs. There is no healthy balance that comprises just constant highs.
Now, as this relates to forging the best version of yourself, constantly being exposed to the fast pace nature of technology where we have become absolutely bombarded with notifications and glimpses at other peoples’ lives, it is hard to develop routine and become consistent with something, especially if it isn’t something that does not feel particularly good and even more so if it does not particularly feel like it is paying off. What could that possibly imply? That you won’t have the long term patience to really see your own goals through and that you’re more likely to give it all up for some quick gratification. We are all guilty of this.
So what is the right answer to all of this? It’s simple really.
Talk to yourself and really think about what you fundamentally want and how you could get there. Meditate on it. Apply the right amount of order and habit into your life and see how far you get. You might not hit the absolute goal and smash the finish line, but at least some improvement is better than nothing. Maybe the plan goes up in flames and you have to go back to the drawing board, and that is fine too. Perhaps you’re not doing enough, I won’t be able to say for certain but we can have a conversation about it. Big change might not come over night, but if you were to make small steps here and there you’d see that over the long stretch it would be something massive and perhaps maybe unfathomable, but if you can’t take a small step and begin now you won’t be able to make any progress. Highly talented athletes, musicians, actors and writers don’t forge their craft over the span of a few hours. It takes commitment and concentrated dedication with a few failures along the way. I don’t imagine any other skill would be any different. In the end it is all truly about starting and building persistence.
In life there is a struggle we all face. There is a dissonance between who we really are and who we present to the world. It is an existential gap. On the one hand there is who we present to the world – this is the exaggeration of our best qualities or a showcase of personality traits we don’t have – and on the other there is who we really are when we are alone, if we can even tolerate that for long enough.
The self we present to the world gets its validation from the external world. It flows from the outside in. This is projection is also characterized by all the things that we own and it is exacerbated by social media. We get this identity from the external world. This is how you want everyone else to see you.
The real version of yourself is who you are once you are left all one. It is the part within you that eats away at your soul when you have nothing to do. This deeper self can’t just be bought or made with some material goods. It is a form of self that is made through experiences and hardships.
Everyone goes through some life defying experiences when they are teenagers. These experiences shape who you become as you grow older. The negative experiences especially stick out in this time of life of great insecurity. Perhaps you felt insufficient compared to all of your peers or felt left out of the greater group. It does not just have to be one thing that makes you become emotionally attached to acting a certain way. It can be many little things that led to the same underlying feelings. The more you think back to these (traumatizing) experiences and replay them out in your mind, the body and mind react to these thoughts and recollections as if they were happening all over again. The chemistry in the brain replays itself. You are stuck living in the past. These recollections affect your perception of the world and your personality starts to change. The thoughts that occupy your mind become who you are.
So early on in life you feel insecure as a teenager for whatever reason. It happens to everyone. You look at the people around you and everyone seems to have it so much better. This is a marketing gap that companies have been exploiting for years, and it is not just limited to young adults. Every product advertising agency has just the product you need to solve all of your shortcomings (or make up for other ones) and it can be yours for only a small fortune. Young people who don’t know better are vulnerable so they buy into the marketing. The desperation of insecurity makes them buy into it and since this type of habit gets picked up early in life it is behavior that gets repeated as they grow older. The things we own only serve to further remind us of our materialistic identity. It sounds like a perfect solution to an existential problem; If I own these things than maybe everyone won’t think less of me and I won’t have to put up with these uncomfortable feelings of just being. We build these identities around the products we own and temporarily forget about our own inefficiencies. Perhaps they get locked away for a long time and we really do forget about them, or at least we forget about them until we die.
“The point is, true happiness has nothing to do with pleasure, because the reliance on feeling good from such intensely stimulating things only moves us further from real joy.” – Joe Dispenza
But we don’t have time to think about that because we keep on moving to the next bigger and better thing. It is a race that does not stop and one that humans can’t win. As soon as you get the thing that you’ve wanted you’ll just grow bored of it and want something else higher up. Then you’ll get that and grow bored of that and the cycle will repeat all over. It never ends. This is desensitization and it isn’t exclusive to the things we own. This is the same type of behavior that starts most addictions and every human is vulnerable to a downward spiral.
This never ending race is made all the worse by Technology. Technology is great because it is a wonderful distraction to all of the impending problems of life. In just a few minutes we can completely change our mood. Social media is an escape from reality and the struggles of life. It kind of makes one feel like they are never really alone and always interconnected and cared for, except for when you have no internet access. There is no limit to how much you can consume. Can anyone really stop me from choosing to play video games all day?
This isn’t to say that technology is the only distraction or problem; It is just the most obvious one because it is everywhere. The problem that was exploited by human nature is only made all the worse by technology. Having the best of everything won’t make you a good person. It might not even make you a decent person. This type of materialistic mentality does not internally change you on a real level (but some people live their whole lives acting like it does).
But when you die and all of your material goods stay on earth your identity stays with your things. You can’t bring anything with you. The existential gap will catch up to you.
So maybe don’t just invest in those things. Life finds its meaning in the hardships and challenges that people overcome and the responsibilities that they decide to adopt. Life is suffering, that much is evident. What will you really do about that? No one can just pay to have someone to sort their lives out for them. That is something that every individual has to figure out themselves. No one can (or will) sort your life out.
In the final analysis of life it won’t matter how much you had or what you had. In the end it’ll only really matter what you did. The only thing you’ll really take with you is all of the memories.
Life can get monotonous, repetitive, boring and old really quickly.
Human beings are creatures of habits. We practice something until it becomes second nature and then we carry out the sequence without even thinking much about it, or in some cases, without even thinking at all. Habits can work for our betterment or our detriment.
Habits have three components: A cue, a routine and a reward. The cue is the signal that triggers the brain to turn on autopilot mode, the action is what the body subconsciously does without having to think about it and the reward is the result of the action being preformed. It is a simple three step process that builds the foundation of life as we know it. Who you are today is in part a result of the habits that you have followed for years. These automatic systems that have guided your life for sometime now have shaped you into the person you are today.
But Habits are not just limited to actions, they also extend into the way that you think and feel. Because you are not just a body or a mind, the two different aspects of yourself work together and intertwine. Seeing something from your childhood may bring you back to a simpler time in your life when you didn’t have to worry about anything and you were infinitely happy. Seeing that certain something again and again will trigger the same type of feelings and thoughts again and again. This is how you get stuck in seeing the world the same way over and over again – and if you see the world as the same place, you’ll never see a reason to change. This is why chaos is vital; it is a much needed change of pace. It is an adventure off into the unknown.
Within you there is also a dynamic of the body working with the mind in everyday life. The body accommodates itself to carry out the habits it knows without using too much energy (or too much thought). This is essentially running on autopilot. Not paying attention to what you do in everyday life will inevitably lead you to a live a life that has been scripted to be as easy and as predictable as possible. That is comforting because it is like you aren’t even running the show.
“Believe in your infinite potential. Your only limitations are those you set upon yourself.” ― Roy T. Bennett
How does this all relate to chaos? Because habits are order and the unknown or the unfamiliar is chaos. It is out of chaos that order is born. It is out of the unknown that something new can be established. Having only order in life is no way to live because everything is predictable and nothing is exciting. There is no wow factor. Everything just stays the same. Never changing anything will only lead to the same results.
Introducing a bit of chaos into your life will open you up to new experiences and expand the mind. It will allow you to make a new path where there was not one before and it will take you to somewhere you have not been. Chaos means actually doing more and less planning. Chaos means you can’t control everything in such a precise way. Chaos is potential.
“To stand up straight with your shoulders back is to accept the terrible responsibility of life, with eyes wide open. It means deciding to voluntarily transform the chaos of potential into the realities of habitable order. It means adopting the burden of self-conscious vulnerability, and accepting the end of the unconscious paradise of childhood, where finitude and mortality are only dimly comprehended. It means willingly undertaking the sacrifices necessary to generate a productive and meaningful reality (it means acting to please God, in the ancient language).” – Jordan Peterson.
But because life is so complex and so unpredictable, you can’t control everything anyway. You’ll stress yourself out and tire yourself out for somethings that were fundamentally out of your control from the beginning. It is like a game that you can’t really win. Instead of just trying what you have always done, it might be time to change and get better. Instead of ignoring the chaos try confronting it and establishing a little bit of order. It might feel weird and it might make you uncomfortable but it’ll at least make you stronger, and if you play this game and make it a habit you’ll make exponential progress over time in various aspects of your life – But only you really know how far you can go.
As I look back at the previous month, there is one thought that really seems to sum up most of what I have actually been thinking, and you’ve already read it in the title.
Whenever I mention rejection most people think that I’m talking exclusively about relationships, and that is an important aspect of it, but it’s more than just that. Rejection transcends more than just the dating aspect of life. Life is much more complex than just that. It happens in business, in education, in sports and many other realms of life. The right answer isn’t to just shut it out completely and ignore it. Ignoring the truth only makes you weaker to reality (and perhaps part of you is avoiding the truth because some part in your deep conscience already knows what it could be – or what it actually is).
“You get in life what you have the courage to ask for.” ― Oprah Winfrey
Rejection is such a bitter and unpleasant truth, it is no wonder that humans have made millions of rationalizations and distractions for it. Rejection is more often than not a a hard touch of reality that brings you back into the present moment and reminds you of all the failures and shortcomings that you have in your life.
“A winner is just a loser who tried one more time.”
― George M. Moore Jr.
The older I get, the more I come to realize that there really is no be all end all solution to life. There is nothing that you or I can simply buy and have it solve all of my life’s problems. Anyone who says otherwise is clearly trying to sell you something. There is no magic potion or any special elixir to help you magically get all of your life together. Getting your life together is a long and stressful war that you must win against yourself. It is something that only you can do and it is also something that only you can know how to do because you know what you are like and you know what you are really facing against (if you are wise enough to first identify it, and this too is by no means an easy task).
Rejection is the fundamentally (maybe even indirectly) telling someone that they should not be wishing that life were easier. Instead it is telling them that they should be better. The bitter aftertaste is where real confidence can be found. This is not the cliché of ‘just be yourself and feel good about it’.* At least after getting shot down you can take real assurance that the outcome was out of your hands and, if you really tried, that you did all that you could. If nothing else at least that is one less thing to worry about and you won’t lose sleep at night wondering “WHAT IF”.
*as a side note; The type of confidence that derives from real and genuine action is much more real than any confidence that can be obtained from any material good. Material goods provide confidence that feels real, but it is superficial and flawed because these materials can disappear at any moment. Real confidence lies partially in accepting that you’re going to be okay no matter what happens outside of your control – so don’t worry about it 🙂
You stand up straight and you be courageous despite the fact that life is tragic and tainted by malevolence. – Jordan Peterson.
A while ago I was talking to someone that I had grown very close to and at some point we started to really get into each other’s past. It felt great because it was the first time I had really done something like this with anyone. I told them that I felt like at some point in my life I had died before I really ever actually started to live and enjoy life. To this day that underlying feeling still haunts me.
“Some people die at 25 and arent buried until 75.“
It is a hard feeling to describe because I don’t quite know when I stared to get this feeling. Perhaps it was in high school? Maybe it happened before then? I don’t know, and truth be told, it doesn’t really matter. The feeling just kind of manifested itself one day and it comes back to me on those dreaded nights when I can’t sleep.
It is a feeling of regret that makes me feel insufficient, like I’m not really actually living my life to the fullest. Most days in my life feel like I live out someone else’s plan and like I am only passively living my life. After doing that for a few years in high school you get to graduation and feel like all of it was for nothing. There was no struggle that actually mattered and there was no one that I really actually connected with in high school.
Instead of trying some things when I really had the chance I didn’t. Instead of really enriching myself with great relationships and conversations I didn’t; Instead I opted to play as much video games and watch as much YouTube as I could, and now I have nothing to show for it. I deprived myself of my own experiences and it is my own fault. I did this to myself.
But it isn’t too late to change the direction my life is headed in. It isn’t too late to escape from the matrix and get my life together. There is a little over two months left in the current decade but it is not too late to start to change who I have been for all of my existence. I know that I have grown accustom to my limited lifestyle and that it is going to take effort to change it but it is a struggle I am more than happy to put up with if it means a better future.
Quarantine life was great until it got boring. Then I wanted to do everything other than stay home, except I can’t really go anywhere because most places are still closed.
Time is one of the most valuable tools humans have at their disposal. It is the valuable tool that bridges who you currently are and who you will be. If memory serves as a tool to prevent you from making the same mistakes over and over again, then time is a component of that tool that allows reflection and deep thought to occur. Time is a really valuable resource because it can’t be bought, exchanged or negotiated. You get a set amount of time for life and once it is used up that’s it. There is no more. If you really knew how much time and life you had left, would you really go around throwing so much of it away? Would you really still be okay with all the bad habits that tear you down everyday? What about all the habits that waste precious time?
From time to time there are remarkable people that come into the world and find out who it is that they could be over the course of a lifetime. Those are the people who tirelessly grind and chase their dreams (with a lot of failure along the way). Those are the people that history remembers. Those are the people whose lives have such a great why that they can almost bare any how. These are the people born with nothing that strive for everything that they could ever want. These are the types of people that just get stuff done and make stuff happen. That is the simplest way to put it.
But well, there is also an existential component to it all for human beings. At the end of the day you probably won’t get much satisfaction from realizing that the entire day was wasted on nothing but cheap entertainment. It might even torment you half to death and keep you up longer than it should at night (which is exactly what happened to me and the reason I started to write to begin with, actually). One night it had occurred to me that one day I could lay in my death bed and regret everything I have yet to do. I wouldn’t so much as regret all I have done. Instead what bothered me was all the stuff I never did and all the things I never pursued; of course, that isn’t to say that you should just chase mindless pleasure and do whatever feels good at the moment. That is only temporary satisfaction that may never actually amount to anything worthwhile. What it means is that something has to be changed now so that the future will not be a repeat of the past. Mindlessly binge watching YouTube videos you don’t have much interest in sounds harmless, but if you knew that the average person only lives about 27,375 Days, would you really be okay with doing that more than once a week? what about 4 times a month over the course of a few decades? It doesn’t have to just be Youtube though. Really anything can substituted. But that is a lot of time down the drain that you’ll never get back. I’m especially guilty of this myself (as you can evidently see by the title of this post).
The ancient philosopher Seneca thought humans acted as if time is infinite because we often forget that our time here is limited. We forget about our inevitable deaths. This is especially true in a modern world with so many distractions readily available. You don’t even really have to actually confront most of your deepest problems; instead you can ignore them and hope that they will go away. The internet is a host of unlimited distractions, after all. Once you find something that distracts you long enough (or keep moving from one distraction to another) and something, or everything, falls apart, just act like it wasn’t done by your own accord. Pretend like you never had a say in what happened and that you could have never done anything to change anything. Frame it out to be that way and maybe you’ll fool others, but you might not fool yourself so easily. Your own self consciousness is smarter than that.
Of course, that is not to say that you are terrible for allowing yourself to kill time from time to time; I would say that it is actually that it is crucial in getting work done and not completely burning yourself out, but there does have to be a fine balance that is different for everyone. I can’t tell you what you must do, but we can sure as hell have a conversation about it. Sometimes you have to have conversations like this with yourself. Sometimes you even have to negotiate with yourself. You remember all the times you told yourself you would do something but never actually did anything?
“Don’t underestimate the power of vision and direction. These are irresistible forces, able to transform what might appear to be unconquerable obstacles into traversable pathways and expanding opportunities. Strengthen the individual. Start with yourself. Take care with yourself. Define who you are. Refine your personality. Choose your destination and articulate your Being. As the great nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche so brilliantly noted, “He whose life has a why can bear almost any how.” ― Jordan B. Peterson
When all the days blend in and they all start to feel the same you fall into a mental rut and stop learning new things. You stop growing as a person and part of you dies because as a result. Instead of expanding outward you start contracting. Instead of going on a self defining journey to discover who you could be, you fall back to the same problems you have always had and instead of overcoming such problems and facing different problems, some being problems you might actually want to have, you default to being the same person that you have always been. You remain the same out of fear or some other trivial factor. Sometimes this situation happens over the course of a few days, which eventually turns into a few weeks and those weeks eventually turn into months and the months become years and the years add up to be decades. Over the course of a lifetime that compounding interest will add up to become something that won’t ever be able to overcome. The work wasn’t being done when it needed to be and the result never manifested as a result. Then one day death grips you and pulls you closer and closer, but by that point it is much too late to do anything about it. The game ends and that is it.
“If you don’t say what you think then you kill your unborn self.” ― Jordan B. Peterson
Instead of forging myself to be who I could be, I gave into the simple temptations and became okay with mediocrity. I did that a few times and forgot all about the dreams I once had. I abandoned them and they died. All the time that was needed to change myself passed by but nothing was done. Time is the component we all have, but it isn’t something we all actually use to our betterment. Sometimes in life it isn’t fair to wish something were to be easier; sometimes you can only wish that you were better. The commitment and dedication needed to make something happen is what separates the people that kind of want something from those that really actually want something. Some people aren’t content with just wanting something and waiting. Some people are only content with stuff getting done. This quarantine period gave most of us an opportunity to work, but not everyone used it. Now it is time to go back to a weird reality (and hopefully a better one).
Escape the Matrix 