I need to better define so as not to
get lost in abstraction.
My basic needs are met, so in a way
I’ve peaked. I can say that I don’t think you need to know strife
and pain to appreciate being perpetually comfortable. I think strife
and pain come out of boredom or when intellectual needs are not met.
Whether it is working through a difficult problem or just a
compelling distraction, engaging the mind seems to be one of
humanity’s biggest projects. I’m currently interested in the
“why” people pick the veins they do. I need to find a better
definition for what I try to justify doing, because currently I’m
doing relatively dick.
Patterns are my best friend and
potentially worst enemy. How I choose to define something says
everything about what role that thing will or won’t play in my
future. If something is “just a job” I will sound and behave like
someone who just wanders about town just doing jobs for petty cash.
If something is “too big to be handled correctly/currently” by
myself, it gets filed away like most of the problems I concern myself
with. If something fundamentally feels like “spinning my wheels”
or an “empty gesture” I may come across as disrespectful or
non-caring.
I understand that it’s all a matter
of what you work towards, the perspective you force your brain to
have, or the La La Land you can trap yourself in. What I perceive are
people who are comfortable enough. They have “a job.” They
have “a significant other” or “their friends.” They are
filled with “their opinions” and they’ve served them long
enough to get the things “they want.” This system or pattern or
basic M.O. makes me uncomfortable. Not the healthy skeptical level of
discomfort, but the “maybe I should re-evaluate my entire charge in
life and thoughts about people” kind.
It bugs me because this propensity in
people may speak to something absolutely fundamental and absolutely
overlooked by me. And I still may not have a way to define it that
makes sense to me. I look at the opinions of the optimists. They say
things like “when things get to the point of ultimate shittiness,
that’s when we’ll do our best.” Or they’ll go on about how
technology will save us all. Some just site all the historical
examples of how we’ve managed to not go extinct or take their
perspective of time and take for granted “one day and one way or
another” things will look just as desperate and terrible then as
they do now and we’ll “overcome” if only our imminent denial of
the current problems.
To what end? I always go back to this.
The only time in my life I’ve felt that loss of self in being so
uber motivated is when I thought I had “all the answers” or at
least “the best and most reliable” method for bringing about what
was correct and true into the world. It was fundamentally coming from
a position of naivety. The more I argued, the more I learned, the
less people around me cared or knew what I was talking about. The
intellectual leaders I went to seemed content to rehash the same
speeches and move on to their next book. Then I get my view shaped
more by brain and social science. I become disillusioned by how easy
and quick it is to get lost in semantics and connotation. I decide
friends are better to have than a fight. Then, boom, one day I kind
of stop giving a shit after 3 ½ years.
The only steady
parameter I have in life right now is to maintain a basic level of
comfort. When I have the tools to endeavor into something new, I will
do so, and I will treat it as a game. Everything I do has a flavor of
superficiality and it’s not intentional. I know everything I change
can be changed back. I know the story in my head is never the one
someone is going to receive exactly as I tell it to myself. I know
that most people are mostly concerned with themselves and what makes
them comfortable. That comfort can be reached infinitely more ways
and by infinitely easier methods than I may prescribe. But it all
feels empty; logically and honestly empty. “Mattering” simply
becomes the extent to which you can argue something does. My problem
is that I appear to have nothing to argue that doesn’t feel like
mental masturbation.
So much of the world seems self-evident
to me that I’m losing that passion to keep saying the same things
over and over. I’m not feeling like I have anything to prove. My
justifications aren’t for you so they remain as explanations of me.
The irony of knowing you can do everything and then feeling like
you’re doing nothing. Simply knowing that the “everything” and
“nothing” go as far as you’re willing to see them is the whole
point. All you can do is ground your decisions in feelings; taking
cues from your environment. How lucky to not be in complete control
over how we feel…right?
