People want to connect but everyone’s so afraid. So afraid of being vulnerable, of being hurt, they aren’t truly capable of letting someone else in.
I think the real issue is people don’t let themselves in. Their true selves. Not the self-created by society. The perverted portrayal of self they use to navigate this fake life we’ve created in the modern world.
We live in an irrational society obsessed with the guise of being governed by rational thought. And then don’t understand why so many people are confused and lost. How can we feign ignorance, when we know our society is racist, sexist, and elitist? In the face of ultimate truth, these things make no sense.
We are all human, intimately connected by sharing the same time and space. This is no coincidence. Of all times in the world’s past and future, you were born now. How can we say it is up to chance that we exist today? How can we say it’s okay to divide ourselves across arbitrary lines, judging people for things such as where they were born? What they look like?
From a young age people are taught to judge in an unhealthy manner. They rearrange their life views from a selfish perspective. They’re constantly caught up in how life relates to this image of ourselves we’ve created. We are taught to perpetually chase everything we were conditioned to want.
Who cares what your car looks like if it gets you safely and comfortably from point A to B? We care, because we were told to care. We were told that material possessions are indicative of who we are as people. We were told that without monetary success, we don’t deserve to be happy. We don’t deserve to rest, to relax, to enjoy the only life we are ever going to be able to live.
We think nothing of this irrational process. We bow down to it, allowing it to govern our self-direction and our self-esteem. This is why depression is at an all time high, regardless of the technological advancements we’ve made. Shit, maybe even because of the technological advancements we’ve made.
Now everyone is able to see what they don’t have, and attribute their unhappiness to that, rather than following insane rules set by an insane society.
A society that tell you it’s a beautiful story that someone worked themselves damn near to death to escape poverty, rather than saying it’s sad that we’ve created a world where poverty exists on such a large scale.
A society that tells you it’s okay to make light of people’s problems, even to use them as the punchline of a joke.
A society that tells you it’s okay, no, it’s the definition of strength, to make light of your own problems, encouraging you to ignore them and work yourself to death, rather than take the necessary time to remind yourself of your humanity.
We try so hard to understand an irrational world. Our world doesn’t make sense in the face of ultimate reality, but it makes sense relatively speaking.
When you realize the search for power, defined as being able to make people conform to your will, has misled generations of people as to what makes life worth living, it makes perfect sense we exist in a world of inflated egos and low levels of empathy.
The only way to understand a world impossible to make sense of, is to understand yourself on a deep level. This world doesn’t have the answers you seek. The world will have ten different answers for the same question. The only answers lie deep inside of you.
But will you take the time to look for them, or just continue to chase after what you’ve been told will fulfill you?
If you only feel you can be happy when you achieve something the world told you is worthy, what are you doing in the meantime?
You deserve to be happy, but you have to work for it. In this age of entrepreneurship, how about you learn how to work for yourself spiritually and mentally? There’s no need to fall into the paths society designates for us, paths prescribed not for our personal happiness, but only to take advantage of us.
I believe in you. I believe in your ability to find sustainable happiness in the face of life’s suffering. But it will require a change in your perception. It will require working towards a deeper understanding, first, of yourself, then of how you perceive our world.
I can’t wait to see you shine your light and change the world as you know it.
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This post was previously published on Medium.
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Photo credit: Paweł Czerwiński on Unsplash