Perhaps such negativity, which can only be assumed in my title, isn’t exactly helping my case… but when have I ever been the psychologists’ definition of optimistic? When my counselor advised me to be positive every session I’d attend in the meager 10th grade? *scoff*
My University career continues tomorrow and I wonder, as I have been wondering for months, maybe even a year and a half ago when I’d been a mere freshman, why am I even bothering? Is it to pursue the occupation I love? An occupation of which is, by no means, safe or reliable. Stressful, even, granted I’m successful enough to be deemed a full-time screenwriter. Though I can’t help but feel a peculiar fluttering in my stomach as I write, I also can’t ignore the pang of disappointment and, well, the despair that gave the Tortured Artist his name as my motivation dissolves. Dissipates into the air I can’t help but loathe for providing me life.
How hateful I am towards everything, in a most general sense, and yet – I care about issues that are almost completely out of my control. I care for animal rights, human rights (why should I, though?), the well-being of others (even those of whom I’ve never met), the environment… The list goes on. So I must ask myself: why, when I care for others so much more than myself, am I pursuing screenwriting? I could potentially pursue law and defend those who have nothing. I could pursue veterinary services and save the lives of voiceless creatures. I could DO MORE than what I AM doing, because what I am doing is pointless! I say this because I’m not even happy, though I am willing to suppose that my current state of unhappiness is probably going to be the best I can possibly achieve.
When I wake up tomorrow morning, albeit reluctantly, I will likely crash into what seems an endless cycle of self-pitying questions. And yet I remain here.
16 comments
You seem to be quite selfless – it seems like you have massive potential to help people. You know what it is like to care/hope but also what it is like to be indifferent/hopeless and I’m sure you’ve felt what’s in between too. You know what it’s like because you’ve been there: lots of people can learn from you. But if screenwriting is really your passion, why not combine your talents with people WHO make you happy/people YOU make happy.
After all, what better feeling is there than to live for another purely & without regard to yourself? Something about it feels good to help unconditionally.
What better feeling indeed. I almost think that it’s too good to be true, though that may be a rather silly sentiment. I wonder just how such a feeling can be described: does your body feel physically lighter, as if the burden inside of you has literally split and merged with that other person? It’s a wonder, and a truly captivating one at that.
But the media being such a powerful, omnipresent “tool” these days perhaps you CAN make a huge difference for the causes you hold dear? Enlighten people about the plight of lab and food animals alike, about what we do to one another and the Earth. The media holds more power than you know, & you hold the future.
Ah, see, I considered that too. It is powerful, I think, with particularly younger audiences; they are very well capable of changing the future. However, my pessimism is arguing that children, adolescents, and teenagers alike generally lack compassion and empathy for the well-being of others, though this could very well be my experience talking as I have yet to encounter personally such a being.
So show them. Open their eyes.
And there are such beings…..i’ve met many and am raising one 😉
Yeah. In fact, they need a reality check. It’d be my utmost pleasure and honour, really, to welcome them to it.
I’m 19 yet I speak like a bitter old woman.
Hehe, then I’m glad. =)
Much of the world needs a huge slap in the face and a reality check, in my humble opinion. If you’re the woman to give it to em it hardly matters how old you are, does it? But there ARE many good people here too, never forget that. Just some people lose their way more than others…..
Heh. Let me know how that whole “change the world” thing works out for you.
It’s not that people don’t want to change the world, but that they lack the power to overthrow the established systems, because most people are too busy struggling to just survive, to have room for anything else.
The only way to “change the world,” is to get everyone to agree on which changes need making, and to all go along with it… and you can’t do that, without convincing them it’s worth the sacrifice of their illusions and false comforts, for something they will very likely die in the process of fighting for, so that future generations will benefit.
TPTB have things very well in hand. Things are the ways they are for reasons. Most people are taught to be complacent, and to distract and preoccupy themselves with fantastical delusions, rather than risking life and limb to affect worthwhile and overarching changes in the established systems… or even completely abolish and dismantle those systems, should they refuse to change to better suit us.
Maybe watching a few films will change their indoctrinated programming. Or maybe you’d be better served by crafting illusions to help them remain comfortable in their helpless enslavement.
Sounds like you’ve got the whole “life is pointless” thing down pat; of course, being on this site in the first place, I can’t say I disagree. If I must exist though, wouldn’t it be at least a little comforting – if I can find any comfort in it at all – to know you’ve done something to benefit the life of another? Even if just one person. Changing the world… Hah. Every screenwriter dreams of effecting it, even if just enough to leave their mark on an otherwise mechanical regime.
While life is indeed inherently meaningless, it doesn’t have to remain totally devoid of value. We can do stuff. We have senses, and can make sense of the information we can receive, and can cherish the things we experience… even help others attempt to do the same. Trying to make the best and most of whatever this is, isn’t necessarily pointless; though the circumstances for many of us, prevent such things… which nullifies those efforts, making the pursuit itself futile.
If we can’t change the world, not only will we mostly suffer, but countless others will continue to be subjected to these same things, as well. If we can’t get everyone to agree on a better direction, and then get them to accept the potential value that can be gained, versus the weight of the risks… then we can’t change the world.
We can change ourselves, we can attempt to gain resources enough to adjust our own environments to increase the enjoyment and fulfillment in our lives… but we’re pretty much stuck with the unacceptable systems, as they are. Meanwhile, so many people prejudge others in quite superficial and despicable ways, that quite a lot of people are prevented from enjoyment or fulfillment, almost entirely. Why would someone involuntarily subjected to that, the majority of the time, ever want to help anyone?
So, i do understand the idealism behind wanting to help others, and feeling good about it… but i can’t help but feel that is ultimately just another self-serving method of preoccupation and self-distraction, from the real and important issues. We should all be uniting against the common enemy… but most of us don’t even realize we are contributing to the perpetuation of the problems that make us suffer, by participating in what the system itself encourages us to do: soothe ourselves, distract ourselves, entertain endless fantasies, and live in our own minds… instead of “waking up” and seeing just how serious and offensive all the real problems of the real world, really are… and then being disgusted and angry enough to actually rise up and do something about it.
And that’s when it hits you: there’s nothing you can do about it, because it requires people to abandon their own comfortable delusions, in order to circumvent and subvert the system that causes us to require them, to depend upon them, just so we can make it through each day.
I have personally spent years, helping small people, in small ways… and trying to seed their minds with what could later grow to be a bountiful harvest. It was the best i could do, with the power available to me, in the scenarios which required me to spend almost all of my energy on trying to survive, and trying to cope with all the shit i always knew i’d never be able to change.
If i die at any moment, i know i tried. I helped people i encountered, when i could… but all too often, there wasn’t really much i could do, but reduce their requirements, and try to open their minds to better ways of thinking and doing things. I always tried to be considerate and not cause anyone undue harm.
At some point i just felt worn out, like i just can’t keep going like this, just for its own sake. I hope some people learned some useful things from me, but by and large, i think most people missed the point, and many will remember me incorrectly or mistakenly, if at all. I couldn’t really do anything to make the world discernibly better… so i tried to make sure i didn’t make it any worse; which is a lot more than i see some people caring to do. Some people don’t give a fuck at all, and if you have to get hurt in the process of them getting what they want, so be it. And they’ll still feel they did the right thing, because they got what they wanted out of it. The world is teeming with people like that. It takes a lot of energy to sort the wheat from the chaff, to know who should and shouldn’t be helped. Plus, you never really know what kinds of wild, outrageous, bizarre ideas people might take from anything you create.
Sigh…
Ah, incredibly said. I’ve actually admitted something similar to myself a while ago, and I think that’s when the path to depression revealed itself from beneath a foliage of lies (how corny, but true). I think my desire to help people, or someone, could very well mean distracting myself from my own issues but it also makes me focus on the bigger ones, however feeble and…well, obsolete, that may be. Helping others, even temporarily, to forget their problems may be cruel now that I think about it, but if I am to consider forgetting my own as relief then I’d be a hypocrite to believe otherwise for the former.
I enjoy this site, if not for ranting about my (sometimes) petty misfortunes, then for reading about the profound thoughts of others. =)
You’re choosing screenwriting because you can withstand investing countless hours into it, hopefully. And if you so choose in the future, you can utilize your refined art to effect change through one of the most influential mediums: film. The vote rigging in response to BlackFish might’ve made more news than the movie, but that’s how it can start.
You put things so well, and i agree with and feel your disillusionment in the world. It isn’t changing, and won’t change until people want to change ……and they don’t. They would rather b comfortable, as u put it, and ignorant. I don’t understand it. As a vegan i find it shocking how many people actively avoid the truth about where their food comes from, just so they “don’t spoil their next meal”. Was i born into such a callous world? Genocide, women being murdered for being raped, babies being killed for being female? Or were my eyes just opened somewhere along the way? The true horror, to me, is people WANT to be ignorant……i know “ignorance is bliss” but where is your humanity when u turn a blind eye to torture? When you aren’t outraged by it?
I’m outraged by injustice… but some people deserve torture. Like anyone who murders a woman just because she has been victimized by another man. That’s just beyond infuriating, illogical, irrational, and unacceptable. I don’t care whose “culture” or “religion” claims that is how things should be done: it isn’t, and it shouldn’t.
I think torture is a far more appropriate punishment than death, because at least with torture, we know they felt immense pain, for some length of time. With death, it’s quite likely just a brief pain and then nothing. That’s not punishment. That’s inconvenient. That’s escape. That’s almost as bad as just getting away with it entirely, with the added benefit of not being subjected to any further strife or consequences.
I think it should only happen when discernibly appropriate, but that we also need to abolish all the insane and unjust laws, as well as the reasons those ridiculous laws exist, prior to implementing any extreme punishments, for anything.
Anyway, i just get sick of feeling like i’m wasting my time and energy trying to do something that can’t be done, or that most people will actively prevent from succeeding. I’d much rather just find a way to acquire enough resources to be comfortable and spend time with someone who appreciates me. The world can go fuck itself, until it decides to learn to act right. Meanwhile, i’d rather just distance myself from all the stuff i don’t like and can’t fix. People will either figure out they need to change it and start changing it, or they won’t, and whatever i think won’t matter. But i have no problem with anyone wanting to use various art forms to make meaningful statements to the world, or even just help people forget about it for a while.