a 26 year teenage existential dilemma…
Posts tagged meaning
wonderful poem
Jun 21st
I’m nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there’s a pair of us –don’t tell!
They’d banish us, you know.
How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!
Emily Dickenson
Updating, yes I’m still here, sometimes…
Jan 9th
So I feel guilty about not updating at all in December.
I hate feeling guilty.
In a way its why I hate being in debt (to anyone for any reason.)
I also hate new years resolutions, but since I had such a great time over the past few weeks, I made one this year.
Its not the typical resolution, I can’t stand people that think an incremental change of “1” is going to suddenly improve their fortunes in life, love, business, etc.
Just because the year is now 2010, doesn’t mean you’ll suddenly get a great promotion, or lose 20 pounds, or get engaged/married/pregnant/etc.
The year isn’t the problem, WE are the problem, and we can change whenever we want.
But yeah, so rant aside, I made a resolution, its a stretch (not really a lie, right?) to say it was entirely a “new years” resolution, because really its been on my mind since the day I was discharged from the navy last september.
I can’t even post the real resolution, because its too personal, too raw, too absolutely insane, and I’m way too scared of how people will react, friends I might lose, and family that may disown me.
Instead I’ll post a uselessly vague sentence that could encompass an infinite number of issues/problems/etc. and hope that its enough to set my mind at ease for now.
So what’s my hopelessly vague sentence/resolution?
To finally confront my deepest/darkest fear/issue/denial, and hopefully find some solace and help in making future decisions, and relieving these intense feelings of guilt and uncertainty that plague me every day of my life.
So much for writing a happy blog post.
So yeah, I’m still here, life is fairly normal, there are ups and downs (and of course an infinite number of overlapping waves to these cycles) and right now seems to be coming off a short up, and hopefully into a short down.
I really don’t like being on the down/bottom of these curves/waves, but I understand that the ups can’t last forever.
Everything balances out somehow, right?
exploration and beginning…
Nov 21st
And I’ve realized tonight that I have more un-resolved issues to reconcile than I previously thought.
Thinking of the past, and fantasizing about what lives my previous acquaintances might now have, it makes me feel lazy, and unimportant.
(both might be true)
Maybe its a last-ditch attempt to try and impress old friends and make old flames jealous (even though they ought not be?)
I’m not sure of anything anymore, except that, regardless of how socially awkward I was and still am, I miss my old friends.
Frankl said it best, life can have meaning in one of 3 ways, and one of those was by experiencing something OR encountering someone.
Maybe meaning can be found by simple encountering friends, even if they have no super-meaning for society as a whole?
Or is this another futile, fruitless attempt at self-affirmation? Another attempt to direct what little ambition I have left at defining myself in spite of what I have failed at, what I may have succeeded at, and what I have still yet to discover about myself?
P.S. Paradigm shift
Nov 10th
An addendum to my writing on the topic of “affirmation.”
To pre-empt any confusion (though I believe cousin Catherine understands precisely what I wrote about) I’m talking about affirmation as written about by Conrad M. Baars, M.D. in his book, “Born Only Once: The Mirracle of Affirmation” which I absolutely devoured tonight, in one sitting over coffee.
The section on Self-Affirmation was enlightening, not merely as a means of learning that I alone cannot affirm myself, but as a means to build a deeper understanding of my closest friendships as well.
It also saddens me to realize that the state of being inadequately affirmed is so prevalent, especially among my generation.
I won’t apologize for my sadness, but instead, will try and ponder everything that I’ve read tonight, to see how I can truly, effectively come to “be” and then as a result “do” whatever is best to help be an affirming person, once I myself am properly affirmed, however long that may take.
Likewise, I’m not going to apologize for being angered by the occasional actions of my friends, but I do hope that I can learn to help my friendships be mutually-affirming instead of mutually-denying, and at the same time, I hope that those friends of mine who are themselves inadequately affirmed, just like I am, will examine their own attempts at self-affirmation, and realize that there is so much more out there for them, just as there will be for me, once we come to be fully affirmed.
Affirmation
Nov 10th
I suppose this is a message intended for everyone, and yet only one person at the same time, or perhaps more precisely, that it will find some meaning with all, but most meaning with only one.
I’ve spent a while tonight reading about “the miracle of affirmation” and how central it is to finding true human happiness and joy, and I’ve come to see that while I am likely not totally unaffirmed, I am certainly inadequately affirmed.
But more than that, I think my funtional decline in life is tied to a continually decreasing level of affirmation, which I’ve tried to compensate for through self-affirmation.
I also feel that my declining affirmation level is aggravated by my being surrounded by so many people who are also inadequately affirmed, or totally unaffirmed, but are yet materialistically successful in civil society.
I think my siblings fall into this category too, and as such, any attempt by them to help affirm me, is futile.
So how do I reconcile all this and halt, and begin to reverse my recent declining level of affirmation?
I have some ideas of course, but am perhaps too scared to attempt to act on them yet? Or perhaps I’m too scared of being let down again, by myself, or others?
Or perhaps I just don’t yet know for sure that I’m ready to attempt it?
