Perspective Is Everything.

"How do you do, fellow alligators"

What you just described is like.. a critical chunk of the Human Condition.

The feeling of not being capable of the thing you're "meant" to do is such a human struggle, and it's something that everyone feels. It fundementally stems from the fact that our instincts are unaligned with our way of life, and when those instincts aren't met, we become miserable.

So we feel abandoned even if we are surrounded by friends and family, because we have abandoned ourselves by abandoning our instincts. We get punished, and try to compensate. By creating. We want to put our mark upon the world, to let others know we existed. That's why we built pyramids, and later wrote graffiti on said pyramids, and later yet made Tumblr posts about Greek graffiti on the pyramids.

And the thing is, creating doesn't fix the Human Condition, the same way acceptance of the loss of a loved one doesn't conclude your period of grief. But it ensures we can at least die knowing we achieved things. A small consolation, but nevertheless, we chase it. And there's nothing wrong with that.

The thing with humans is we create. We create such advanced things that draw deep parallels into our own selves. Not only that, we draw those parallels. We compare everything, we build those thoughts and put ourselves into the shoes of others.

And this is a silly thing to be upset about. I absolutely do know that. I watched the Steven Universe movie. Great movie, amazing music, adorable stuff. Mature as well of course, since the show itself has a lot of deep and important topics that are enjoyed by young and old.

I'm sure someone already said something about it before. But Spinel. She was sweet. Designed for fun. Designed for Pink. To avoid boredom, to keep her happy. And seeing yourself so plainly in another character and the parallels of trauma can be heart shattering.

To be created for someone's joy. And then they grow bored, annoyed. Bothered by your existence. They become too mature for your antics. They anticipate the trouble you can bring. Neglect, abandonment. To be left alone so long when all you wanted was to bring joy and pride. To know they dropped you off for others they did find joy in. To be forgotten.

Not only that. Knowing that you have trauma and don't really want to cause trouble in the end once you're awake to your actions, yet can't stop yourself. The pain runs under the skin. You lash out, and you can't take it back after. You can't begin again. Moving on is hard. You can't go back to your Pink, you can't fix those old friendships either. Or worse, Pink is your family. And now, you can't even go back to them either. The shock and darkness that would follow. It's just a lot to consider.

I doubt he cares but the sentiment is correct. You are bolstering and enforcing real sickness from people around you by promoting ED. Shame on you.

i always think about how ed sheeran must feel about the tag #ednotsheeran

Finally found where this came from.

On temptation

Temptation is a word that is loved to death by christians, but is actually used to describe any old impulse the body or mind may have. Temptation is wanting to eat all the time. Temptation is the desire to lay in bed on a monday morning. Temptation, temptation, temptation. The thing is, though, that temptation also has a different meaning, which is the 'actual' definition of it: Being tempted (be it by yourself or others) to do some thing. Horrible explanation, so let me use an example: If you want to stop cracking your knuckles, a christian would say that cracking your knuckles is a form of temptation. But I would say (not from stoicism in particular) that temptation was the feeling you get when you don't crack your knuckles and you then start wanting to. That's temptation. This kind of temptation is directly linked to dicipline, and it can be used to train your dicipline.

Instead of avoiding temptation, you have to expose yourself to it in a controlled amount. If you just supress your desires (which come from a natural place way most of time), you will not achieve anything and it will bounce back some way or another. But if you instead tempt yourself on purpose, imagining and telling yourself how easy it would be, you will build up your own dicipline, especially if/when your brain takes it up as a habit in itself. Train it up, see what happens!

Because they are sure as shit looking at you.

Eyes of the forest. Aspen trees

Trying to explain the nature of dicipline.

Dicipline, and especially self dicipline, is not something that you can force through sheer willpower. You have to do useless things to get it. And you can't tell yourself that you're doing it for the sake of dicipline, it doesn't work like that. You have to do things for no reason. And if you find yourself asking: Why am I doing this? you should answer: "I'm doing this unnecessary task because it is unnecessary."

After all, when your boss tells you to do a task that is useless for your work, or you have to learn calculus that you will never, ever use in your adult life, will you have a better time with a brain that is geared towards hating unnecessary things and will feel frustrated over the task, or one that not only is used to dealing with these types of tasks, but can even find meaning in the meaningless, through dicipline.

There's a reason for that, you know. When the body is near death, the brain decides that ultimately, it wants to not die, and so it goes into a special, extremely harmful state where it presses every body on the keyboard and releases as many positive chemicals it can, to try and keep itself awake. What you are doing is effectively the same as huffing gasoline. You are getting high on your body's very last survival mechanism to try and prevent a total organ shutdown. And you enjoy it.

if u starve for long enough u start feeling like ur high sometimes its my fav thing ever

Comparing yourself to others, and why you should do no such thing.

This one will be short and sweet. Don't compare youself to others. Think about it, okay? If you compare yourself to someone else, 2 things can happen.

You think you're worse than that person You think you're better than that person

Now, if you think you're worse than that person in some regard, congratulations! You are now less happy than before the comparison, about something that you cannot do anything about, no less. I mean, sure, you can lie to yourself to make them seem worse than they are, but I don't need to tell you why that isn't very healthy.

However, if you think you are better than that person, one of two things will be the case:

You will feel good about it

You will not care or mind (in which case, why would you even compare yourself to them in the first place if you don't care?)

If you feel good about yourself, that's not great. If you need to be better than someone else to be happy with yourself, that must be because you aren't fundementally at peace with who you are and what your place in the world is.

There is a secret third reason to compare yourself to others, which is healthy, but it requires that you can show some emotional distance from the comparison. This is comparing yourself to someone to see how you can improve yourself as a person, either by doing what they do or letting yourself be inspired by your differences.

If you can do that, great! I can't, personally. So I don't compare myself to others, and you (probably) shouldn't either. Alright, that's all!

Have a nice day!

Why I think self-pity is the bane of our joy

Stoicism is an old philosophy which is only now starting to have a modern rennecaince with new ideas and concepts. This is great, because it allows us to develop brand new doctrine to fit the world around us, and terrible, because it means we don't have the answer for everything. However, one of the things that are being explored the most as of now is self-pity. This is a very prevalent state of mind in the western world, where it has become so common to complain about the small things that it can seem almost competitive.

Our ability to complain has combined with our ever-rising standard of living to create cartoonish complaints that we are gasping to share with the world around us, who are trying to voice their complaints. As Vers writes: "Alle kalder ud, men ingen gider at svare" (Everybody needs to be heard, but nobody is willing to listen). This has lead Neils Overgaard, a man I deeply respect and look up to, to create what he calls the "immigrant test": Basically, you take whatever thing is bothering you in the moment, and you imagine that you have to tell it to a mother of 5 children who has left Sudan, crossed the Sahara, been illegally exported across the Mediterranean, and finally landed in Greece, ready to live out the rest of her life at the lowest bottom of our society. Your task is now to look her in the eyes, and tell her about the problem that is letting you down, and if you think you can do that, THEN it is worth thinking about.

Self-pity is not the same as complaining, though. I would argue that self-pity is what happens when you systematically feel rightious to complain and the world around you validates this feeling. And what you're doing on a psychological level is train your mind to focus on the negatives and hold on to them, so that you can pass them on to others. Surely, my friends, a brain that only notices and focuses on the bad things is not a happy one, right?

So how do YOU avoid self-pity and the need to complain in general? Well, you're not out of options (though it may be tempting to say that you are). In this post, my advice will be to FORTIFY. Back in the day, people used to say "man up", but that's kinda turned into a toxic thing that means "push it down", and it's also only for men. So now we have the new word "fortify", which is much better. How do you fortify? That's up to you, but it should ultimately make you a more emotionally resilient person. Focusing on the next step can be a great way of fortifying, for example:

Your car breaks down on your way to work. You are going to be late. Do you: A. Have your mood be ruined over the situation, complain to your boss when they ask you why you are late, and get pissy when you get the repair bill? B. Accept that the situation is out of your hands, focus on getting your car towed and finding another way to get to work, and calmly explain to your boss that your car broke down and you still showed up ready to work?

It's entirely up to you, but option B is not only a calmer, more pleasant way to handle the situation, but it also makes you a more resilient being in the future, because your brain will recognise your handling of the situation and be calmer the next time something unpredictable comes up, thus marking the start of a good spiral.

There will be more in the next post, to make it easier to digest.

Love you all! - Anthony