It’s hard to know how much of my experience is a product of my own neurosis, and how much is just a general part of the human condition.
I want too many things. Impossible, contradictory things. Things I know wouldn’t make me happy. And things I somehow know would, despite the fact that I can’t quite articulate what they consist of, or whether they really exist.
The takeaway would seem to be that my emotions aren’t a trustworthy guide to anything. They’re elusive, fickle, and fade away whenever they’re followed.
It would seem that we’re all just chains of elusive feelings, desperately clinging on to dreams that can never be satisfied. But what else is there to live by?
Suppose you give up on the idea that your dreams, hopes, and desires can bring you happiness. What is left? Trying to numb yourself to pain? Living in stasis, immune to the world around you.
My peers are all getting married, having children, building lives together. They seem to be happy. Maybe that’s an illusion. Maybe it won’t last. But it’s hard to feel that I’m not wasting my life. That I won’t come to the end, and know that my choices were wrong, and that I failed to become the person I should’ve been. That my life will be judged an utter failure by some existential panel of jurors.
I couldn’t be happy with what they have. I want something more. Something impossible. Something I can’t actually articulate. Perhaps some people just aren’t built for real life.
6 comments
I can relate to a lot of what you said
The title caught me as I love that poem, so clickbait? 😉
What strikes me is the “want”.
Don’t “want” things, not getting them will just lead to those various forms of disappointment
You “need”,
and it’s not that “you’re not built for life”, it’s that you “need” it, but are not living life, so live life, and you’ll find what you “need” and maybe get what you “want”
Maybe marriage isn’t for you, even if your peers are doing it, and even if it makes them happy or if it’s just an illusion.
Maybe building a life together isn’t for you, but you are meant for a solitude life as a wise guru on a rock or as a hermit lonely in a cave. Maybe you find more joy in helping others than being with others, maybe you end up curing world hunger or just make a single african child happy, and that might be enough for you.
Aspirations, ambitions and dreams can be all well and good. But disappointments, failure and shortcomings can also be crushing.
So just try and do. And do as much shit as you can manage to get through until you find something that strikes you.
Don’t pay notion to judgement, don’t care about “others”, opinion and perception is just another tool to stack boxes in a neat little hierarchy,
I’ll even venture a blasphemous guess, that even the Pope might suddenly not feel so high and mighty if he one day actually does end up getting judged.
All that is just strictly in our world and in our minds, and is a limitation we best rid ourselves off.
Jump off a 500feet tall building,
if you like the rush, then open the chute, do it again
if you find yourself at peace, smile and be glad it’s now over real soon
I babble, but the point is the more you want the more you burden yourself, so try not to “want” something, not be influenced by society standards, norms and goals, fears, stigmas
just be you, and if you don’t like you just yet, then go out try, and “do”, to find something, a you, you like
if you don’t have something yet, find it,
it doesn’t matter what or how much you have, as long as you have something,
and then be brave and strong enough to spread it before our feet,
and we understanding and knowing of what you have laid before us, will tread upon it with the nimblest and most delicate of steps
I don’t know how to stop wanting. Or what the difference is between a want and a need. Or how to live.
I don’t know how to just do things, spontaneously. I never have. I’ve always needed some motivation, some reason to convince myself to try anything. Otherwise, my anxiety simply paralyzes me.
I don’t know how to stop caring about the opinions and judgement of others. It’s the only way I know to perceive myself.
I get where you’re coming from. I just can’t even begin to comprehend how to approach the world in that way. How to think like that. If I could, I probably wouldn’t be here.
I know it’s easier said than done
don’t think, just do
doesn’t even have to “spontaneous”, the key is you just do something, try something.
I’m not saying you have to go to the center of town and just strip naked and start screaming,
and I know coming from me it’s kind of hypocritical
but it doesn’t matter what it is as long as you do something, something different.
I don’t like to go outside, well, so quite “un”-spontaneous, I psych my self up for hours, and decide to go out with the trash, at 3am when I know absolutely no one is around
Don’t have much of a social life, don’t do anything but sit in the room/lay in bed, goes out one day to the water, just sits and hides in a bush listening to music, couple of hours later jumps in the water and takes a swim all alone before running home
it can be little it can be big, don’t think about it, just think/focus about the thing you are doing/going to do, blocking(trying to) everything else out, in that way, focusing so much, not caring about others,
one might even prance about and run naked through the streets (not that I recommend it depending on where one might live)
am I perfect in my doings or my way of thinking, fuck no, far from it,
but I do know, when I was the happiest, and felt and was the best, it was when I did things, tried things, shutting off and just doing or trying to do
I can’t even say if it will/could work for you, or even if you are like me now, locked down so much/hard it’s impossible or near impossible now.
But I still say try, do, because the only thing that makes a difference is change, and change is impossible without doing or the very least trying
you don’t know what it’s like to strip in public until you do, and you wont do until you try open one button at a time
what is there to lose, death is still gonna be available just the same if you keep your shirt on or not
That’s the thing though, how do you act without thinking? How do you decide to do something without the assessment part of your brain kicking in?
I used to have to psych myself up for hours to even leave the house. I still do for certain interactions that make me anxious. But if I have a set reason in my mind, that fits in with my purposes and how I perceive the world, then I can usually get through. But the idea of just going out and doing random shit utterly terrifies me. It leaves me open to my fear. Maybe you’re right, and that’s what I should be doing. I just don’t know how to manage that kind of switch in the way that I approach the world.
Letting go of my fear of judgement and consequence – it’s like it’s all I have to give my mind structure.
I suppose the simplest way to explain it would be it’s like breathing meditation if you ever tried that, you simply just focus on the one act so much it blocks everything else out
you don’t see feel or conceive the world, things, people, perceptions, around you
you just walk walk walk walk walk, 1 leg 2 leg knee bend foot asphalt walk walk, until you realize fuck I hit the water, now things become real as you become more aware what you just done, so you run to the nearest bush and turn your music up even louder, and you try to start over to narrow your mind back down to 1 thing, water water water water water water water, goes for a swim,
done for the day, hell done for the fuckin week,
runs and gets home trembling
but after the shower, that feeling of pride, the reminder of how the ocean felt enveloping your body again for the first time in years, like you can still feel its touch on the skin, soft but slightly heavy, resistant, as if it wants to fight against your moves, but the more you move the more it welcomes you and opens up and becomes smoother to each movement of the arms and legs, cold at first and then less, but never quite warm or even lukewarm, the lightness of your body, like every move exerts nothing, you don’t get tired when moving your arm or leg because it weighs nothing, but weighing nothing your body takes you nowhere as you need to take 10x the steps to move further, so you can just give up and not move, and just float along on top, because the water lifts you up without effort, and tiny waves breaks by your body as the water splash against it
going to sleep lying in bed, you can still feel the sensation as if every nerve in your skin still tingles with the memory making it as being back there
I shit you not, while it was horrible before, and even during, the feeling afterwards, not just because of that “yay I did something, I’m proud of myself”, but the happiness the joy experience itself caused, to swim again, was so great it overshadowed everything else for a while,
even if maybe I didn’t experience it truly fully because of the single minded focus, it was still worth it, still great, and the best I felt in a long while
I completely get that the single focus can be hard, and even near impossible, or just not work as is by it self, I truly understand, since I myself hardly can get it to work anymore, but when it did work, it was amazing, and I had some of my best moments afterwards because of the things I tried
I’m not saying it’s breathing meditation that’s the key, but that the type of intense focus on 1 single thing could be a way to “do” things, shut things out, or at least maybe get things started rolling enough, and then let it roll from there where ever it might take you