It’s been a while since I can remember feeling BAD. It’s probably a lot shorter than I realize but this may be the longest i’ve ever gone without some kind of emotional crash, either due to external circumstances or internal dissatisfaction.
I’m not saying I haven’t been sad or mad but these feelings don’t get in the way of anything and they don’t distract from anything. Bad news comes and I do what I can to mitigate it. Good news comes and it becomes fuel. There is no negative ruminating. There is no fixation. There is hardly any worry. I just don’t do it anymore.
I’m finally free. I’ve finally trained myself to keep my eye on the prize. I can’t ever be sure I’ll even get there, but if I don’t I will be as sure as I can that it nothing to do with a lack of efforts. And I know deep down that I am on the path I’m meant to be on.
It may not be the path I’d choose if I could go back in time, but it’s always the path I’ll feel best about choosing tomorrow.
When I think about how I got here, it all feels a bit abstract because I tried for years and years with varying results but then suddenly one day it just clicked.
I started enjoying the whole process.
But telling someone to enjoy the process is like telling them to just be happy. If they don’t know how, it feels like telling someone to be 15 cm taller. It feels like something out of your hands.
I think the biggest change that made this possible was a full commitment towards giving myself everything I wanted, starting with the things I had immediate influrnce over.
First I let go of all guilt around being happy. That means even if others are suffering, even if people call it selfish, I have to prioritize my own mental state.
(And interestingly enough you can actually feel sympathy and even deep sadness and full happiness at the same time if you don’t judge yourself for how you feel. The emotions come up and if you just let them be, they can co-exist.)
Then I started to face my fears and battled them one by one. I started dressing in ways I was scared to dress before. I said things I was scared to say. I got rid of all the pleasantries that drained me (obligatory participation in events, meeting friends when I felt tired) and kept the ones that feel good (like making someone feel welcome or showing appreciation).
I stopped hiding myself from my students even though it meant risking my salary, but even if I lost a student or two, the rest became even more appreciative and I’ve built a much better reputation as an artist as a result. I was invited to play a show by one of my top 10 favorite Japanese bands, twice, and became acquantinces with another. Friends started paying attention to my work again after years of a lukewarm response.
We seem to associate prioritizing our happiness with being selfish and it’s not. Selfishness is when we disregard others out of spite or laziness. It’s when we beleive that we have to sacrifice our own happiness to make other people happy and then try to recoup our losses.
I can see through most “bad” people. They are almost all people who weren’t good enough to themselves and put someone elses happiness before thenselves until they couldn’t bear to anymore and decided to say “Fuck it!”, OR they are people who believe too religiously in zero sum games.
Not everything is a zero sum game. Some trees bear enough fruit, and some cups runneth over.
A nice person is someone who puts others first and betrays themselves.
A good person is someone who never gives up on practical alternatives to zero sum.
I do not aim for nice.
I always aim for good.
That being said, I will never go out of my way to hurt someone and if I am put in a situation where one of us has to lose, I look for a different kind of framing that all parties might agree to, or at least have fewer problems with.
One trap I find people falling into is giving too much authority to others over their own life. You are allowed to be who you want to be and do what you want to do. It’s hard sometimes because self sacrifice is the norm in almost every culture (otherwise how do you get people to pay taxes abd join the army) and sacrfice is not always a bad thing if you truly believe in what you are doing, but in those situations, it no longer feels like sacrifice, it feels like honest devotion and it will make you excited.
Sometimes it’s easier to lie to ourselves than to face the fact that the people around us overstepped in a way that forced us to betray ourselves. If you found yourself in a job you hated becayse of your parents you know what I am talking about.
It can be very hard to live true to yourself.
We may also find ourselves full of spite and without a moral compass when we detach from social support networks and belief systems that have allowed us to betray ourselves. In my experience this is a case of fatigue and disconnection from passion, too many years of silently allowing ourselves to be a victim to the whims of the world.
When you rediscover your passion and pursue it head on, it’s impossible to remain spiteful and feeling like a victim.
So if you sense a darkness in you as you pursue your own happiness over others, remember that that isn’t you, it’s your neglected inner child that needs acknowledgement and love and support, and once you give it that you’ll see it become more compassionate again, so believe in goodness and aim for it, even if it feels like a lie at first.
Being able to afford true deep appreciation and unconditional love requires us to give that to ourselves first so we may need a fair bit of rewiring.
I try to follow my joy wherever it leads, even into unfamiliar territory, with the exception of when it would impose upon the freedom of others. Everyone should be allowed to follow their own path and everyone should be able to say no if they don’t want to follow you down yours.
I don’t completey disregard consequences, but I don’t exaggerate them, and I always look for where I might be letting my fear cause me to overfixate them. Then it just turns into a simple question “Am I willing to pay that price? Or “Am I willing to take that risk?” And I trust and devote myself to my first instinct answer.
You may have to build more trust within yourself and start to understand your fears and motovations more before it becomes this simple, but you can get there.
The rest is just a game of faith and devotion to yourself. You either believe that you are going to be able to live the live you are aiming towards if you devote yourself to it, or you stop caring about getting there and instead just focus on showing up for yourself no matter what, even if you were to end up losing, because losing on your own terms is better than winning on someone elses
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