Functionality

It seems like everytime that I come to this journal lately, it is to write about how difficult life seems. I think I will just accept that. I know that it doesn't endear one to other people to continually discuss all of the problems that life has in store for us as we wend our way awkwardly through it, but this journal is more for me than it is for anything else. It is a place to grasp a few thoughts I have at these writing moments, and fix them in place. The hope is that, by capturing thoughts, they can be examined a bit more objectively in the future, but I would have to develop more of the habit of reading what I have written. Aside from a glance at the most recent previous posts, it is rare that I go back over much of what I have said. I also know that a lot of what I have already said, I have said before.

It is true that my previous post discussed an event that will have (and probably has had) a profound impact on my future and my future plans. Yes. It was one of the worst moments of my recent life, and definitely the worst all year. I cannot help but end up using at as a jigsaw puzzle piece in a metaphorical narrative about my life. Unfortunately, as that awful piece slides into place, the larger story the picture reveals isn't pretty. Perhaps I have the piece in the wrong place, or perhaps it is not a piece to the puzzle I am trying to solve. However, if I place it where it seems to fit, then the story told by all of these little events is ultimately one of failure. Of course, it is difficult to know how much of this failure is under my control. Yes, I have made some bad choices, but then again, perhaps previous experience has made some of these bad choices more inevitable than they would have otherwise.

I suppose I could look at it like this: Through no fault of your own, someone steals the keys to your car. With you keys missing, it is more likely that you will be late for work. Once late for work, you miss an appointment to discuss a new client account, and due to an argument the client had with his children that morning, he is in a bad mood and decides to cancel the order. It would be very human for the person who had their keys stolen to feel frustrated, to feel as if there was something in their control that they missed, to feel like the bad results of the day were their fault. And yet, it wasn't. It was the bad intention of the thief and the bad mood of the client that led to those places.

So, it follows that, due to no fault of one's own, a poor economy could lead to poor job prospects, poor jobs prospects means a financial tightening of the belt, which leads to poor diet, which leads to poor health and frustration, which leads to even further difficulty. It is easy for the people suffering from economic forces beyond their control to feel like a failure for not having done more, for not being super-human enough to transcend those problems. And yet, looked at objectively, they, as one individual, have little effect on a economy that is created by thousands, or millions.

This is where I suspect I am at. I have a narrative about my life that seems to fit. I have missed chances and opportunities everywhere I turn. I see some of the challenges I have had to deal with, especially ones that I know others do not have. But, eventually, I am uncertain. Maybe some of that bad feeling comes from a real tangible force that I have little or no awareness of. I could be grappling with something that isn't entirely my fault.

But, of course, even with all of our challenges that we face, we are responsible for engaging with life as it presents itself to us. We must figure out a way forward, even if there is something pulling us back. After all, I am best able to measure my own intentions and efforts than anyone. And, even after working at this problem for a long time, I keep coming up short. I keep thinking about how I should have known better, should have worked harder, should have dedicated myself to make a more genuine effort. I do feel blessed that, among the people living today, I have a slightly better insight into the kinds of behavior that are more likely to lead to a better place. This knowledge has prevented me from making even larger mistakes with even greater consequences. Still, if there was an objective third person listening to all of my thoughts, watching all of my actions, then I am not so sure I would fall into a positive light.

I do not want to feel like everything important I have reached for has escaped me. I do not want to feel like I have failed at all of the big things in life. However, after petty arguments with people who cannot be expected to be any more heroic or long-suffering than me (and I am light-years away from either condition), I feel like a tremendous failure. I am not responsible for anyone's choices other than my own. I desperately desire, but do not know how to transcend the emotional toll that bad experiences, or my own inability to live up to my high expectations, has on me. I would like to be able to float above some of the petty difficulties that, intellectually, I know do not matter. However, it is too easy for me to feel hurt and frustrated by poor choices I have made that lead me to even more disappointments.

It must be said that the crack of uncertainty about any of this grows larger when I admit that depression could be coloring all of my so-called objectivity. It is hard to judge my best moments and far to easy to condemn my worst. Still, every slip on the razor's path increases my fears that I have not exerted the right type or amount of effort to be a happier person who is functional enough to live life as an independent adult.

Difficult to Say

Sunday was one of the worst days I have had in a year or so. Life seems to hold so many mysteries for me, and lately, most of them have been unpleasant at least on the surface.

Of course, I understand that unpleasant experiences are not always harmful, or exclusively harmful. I'm sure we often learn more about ourselves and each other on our worst days than we do on our good ones, as long as we commit to learning how not to end up hurting ourselves (or others). The bad helps us avoid similar experiences in the future, or acts as a practice when we try to handle them differently. Those awful moments can have benefit, even when you are overwhelmed by strong and and poisonously enervating emotions of frustration or depression.

These difficult experiences, combined with my age, is helping me to realize, in a tangible way, that I will not experience many things in life I have been exposed to. I will never travel around the world seeing its many wonders. Now, I understand that I will probably not have a family of my own, or a house, or a well-paying career that would be emotionally or financially fulfilling and provide me with a positive sense of purpose.

These handful of moments, these light sketches on the pages of life, are ephemeral. Everything is washed out by a greater unveiling of lights where it suddenly takes on a new or changed appearance.

I am not sorrowful that I will not experience them before growing old. No, the challenge for me is to try and not feel sad about not being able to share all of those experiences with the people who I have grown to love throughout my lengthening years. Things don't matter, neither does a new or exciting experience, unless there is someone whom you care for (and care for you) to share it with.

Dream that persists throughout the Day.

Today was not as productive as I would have liked, but I did manage to get some things done at work, as well as try to assist my family in feeling better about their personal troubles. I still need to mail some important letters, but I will get that done tomorrow.

The most interesting part of my day was the nap I had this morning. I have been feeling especially out of energy lately. My night routine isn't much of a routine at all. Aside from being below perfect health, I go to bed at irregular times, so it is often that I wake up at a good time, between 5:00 and 7:00 am, but I wind up falling back asleep around 8:00 or 9:00 am. This was one of those mornings. It was during this extra sleep between 8:00 and 11:00 am that I had a dream that I was working in some non-teaching capacity at a school, perhaps I was even attending some college level class there. It was while I was in the auditorium, helping to clean up or assist with the other younger students that I met the most beautiful and vivacious teacher. Her dark auburn hair and lovely figure was not the most intriguing thing about her. The most intriguing thing was that she seemed to be genuinely interested in me as a potential romantic partner. She wanted to go on a date, not as a way to fill an emotional need of hers or to play out some predefined cultural role that dictated how she should find a partner. It was a genuine interest in me as a person. I remember feeling disoriented by it. I could be a confident person in almost any other scenario except this one. I was pleasantly surprised, uncomfortable, and slightly incredulous and suspicious.

It was this dream that hung with me all day more than anything. More than my sister's complaints about her life's struggles. More than the work that I needed to do. More than the television shows I distracted myself with. And more than the chores I did before going to bed. I am not sure why these internal journeys of the inward spirit take so much precedence over the more tangible ones of the outward being, yet in this case, it did.

Personal Goals for Improvement

I need to spend a little more time reading classic literature. It has a mysterious quality that helps inspire and invigorate my internal life just a little more. For example, just before going to bed, I read the first chapter of Madame Bovary by Gustav Flaubert, and the richness of the translation was—how else can I put it?—savory. When I first discovered some of this classic literature in college, my experiences were a bit limited just because I had not yet experienced many of the classic troubles that refines a person's character. While youth has its many advantages, age brings sorrows and sorrows bring wisdom and understanding. (Of course, as no one is omniscient, that particular wisdom and understanding that age brings is necessarily confined to each individual's vision and personal perspective.) As I grow older, my own perspective on the text gains a lot of this depth.

Today, I plan to take care of some personal tasks I have been putting off. I need to mail some letters, and I should make a trip into the larger city to look for clothing. It would probably help me greatly to make a list of the various tasks I need to complete, as well as figure out a weekly plan for achieving my goals. Spring seems like a good season to do this. The trouble for me is that I sometimes get so bogged down in the plans, or making plans for plans, that I never get anything started. It has helped me to have a personal pad of paper that is not a "journal" or some kind of sketch book with refined art in it. I tend to treat those things with too much trepidation, as if they themselves were the final pieces, and not a workbook that ideas should spill onto in a chaotic mess.

To clarify some of my goals for myself, I should read each day to be a better writer. I should draw each day to be a better artist and visual thinker. I should work on mastering wordpress development so I can have more flexibility with my blogging/writing. I should learn more about computers and networking in general, web design and development, and coding in other languages. This is as good a place as any to explore some of my plans for myself.

Trapped inside the Emotions.

It's nearly been a year since I last wrote something here, and the previous post (after having just read it) is something I really could have written yesterday. The feelings, those pent up emotions that stagger around in my head and crash into each other from day to day, are still the same. Nothing has changed. Nothing.

And, that means, I've really haven't made progress. In fact, in some ways, I feel worse now then I did before. (Of course, there is the chance that I can't be objective enough to see the progress. Yet, looking at it from just the surface, I am a little stunned at how much of what I have written then is the same now: I still feel like I need to improve in all of the major and minor ways I mentioned. Even the bit about "motivation following practice" is something I thought the other day, and until this moment, believed it was an idea I had only just discovered.) Reading, I see a foolish person that year ago, whining about needing to be better and not really understanding how much worse it could be. I need to forgive myself, they say. I need to not be so hard on myself. However, looking on all of my internals in a way that those friends and my family cannot, I see the pain and the failures more closely. Worse, I know how much I could have achieved, but through laziness, fear, and ignorance, see how much has escaped me. I will return to a better life (with more challenges) soon, and I will attempt, yet again, to overcome my failures.

Envisioning a Future

I've been thinking that I really need to be a little more serious about writing. Now that several years have passed along and I have had a few years trying my hand at finding my own way in the world, I've discovered that, despite what I may have wanted in the past, what I thought would be the best course of success in life, success isn't going to be found in personal preferences and talent, but instead in improving myself to the point where, even if I don't wind up doing what I would like, I have become a decent person doing whatever I find myself doing in the future.

(It's a bit hard to explain just tapping it out quickly on a keyboard as the thoughts arrive. At points, it appears we live in an information age where the information we receive is incomplete, distorted, or plain wrong. Forgive what may seem like moralizing or solipsism, but working through these personal thoughts is sometimes messy even if I hope to one day transcend them.)

I worry about not being able to pull out from underneath the hidden assumptions that afflict us all. Nevertheless, despite the potential presence of my own assumptions, the people I see around me, according to my particular viewpoint in the world, seem to feel that future regrets are hidden in not achieving the material successes they incessantly desire. Hidden in failing to achieve a life of material comforts that do not extend beyond their too-myopic dreams. But again, to my point of view, most of those same people do not realize that the vision of material success to which they strive is so far out of reach that failure is an inevitability. We admire achievement and success when it happens, but we do not seem to recognize how rare those things are, or the kinds of troubles they will eventually bring. Instead, we burn in the fire of vague personal frustrations, treating each other poorly because our sense of who we are and what we feel we deserve has been distorted. It's as if our failure to build ourselves in a material image that has always been false is a tragic injustice, that the world has somehow wronged us for not providing us the false comforts of a rich and famous lifestyle.

Which is why it seems to me that life is about becoming a better person through trial and errors while struggling to avoid the overwhelming waves of ignorance, contention, and selfish thinking. And of course, it is not easy or pleasant to think about. But, as seems obvious, the happiness people seek in things, achievements, and worldly success is a mirage. Happiness itself is a virtue that is found in aligning oneself to the better qualities that make us all truly human. And in that sense, it can developed and practiced. I only hope that I can develop it as a professional athlete develops muscle so that I may use it confidently and unconsciously and feel, ultimately, all the better for doing so.

Transformations

Not sure how to describe an illness where the main symptom is a dissatisfaction with yourself so intense that it makes you feel ill and puts you slightly out of time with the Universe. Life continues to swirl around you with the same vibrancy and colors it always had, but instead of a warm and satisfying red, or an enjoyable rich blue with a calming coolness, everything is pasted over with a light pastel yellow that, like a sticky film, clings over everything you happen to glance upon.

There is something about my life that feels a bit unsatisfying, perhaps tinged with the portent of doom or trouble ahead, or an anxiety about the course of the future that will not lay flat, and I cannot shake it. I want to. People who I am close to say that is nothing more than common anxiety, or perhaps it is yet another flare up of a lifelong battle with the inane minor demons of depression, but no. It somehow seems more than that. More frightening.

I have been imploring the benevolent forces in the Universe to guide me to a transformative path, a path where I find the calming centers inside myself, the ones I have been seeking and fix my feet firm upon it to walk straight ahead into both joy and sorrow with an equanimity that has still somehow remained elusive. There is an honorable and dignified course of life that feel remains out of my grasp.

Part of the problem, I suspect, is that I am always seeking the difficulties in life rather than allow myself to be human, to love myself with an impartiality that can acknowledge my failures without berating me for them. Love, not the weird definitions of it that exist in my current culture, seems to be the only proper way to motivate myself to good course in life. Too much sorrow leads to either despondency, or a defeated resignation that permits failures as just another one of life's "horrible" inevitabilities. I need to be able to feel the sorrows, to forgive myself for the pain they cause, and trust that I can endure without succumbing to the worst of them. If I can somehow cultivate the habit of joy, then I will be fortified against the onslaught of sorrows.

Habit, now there is an interesting word. Since the mundane chores and duties of life must be dispatched along with the goal of self-improvement, the best way to handle them is develop good habits. I've wasted too much time thinking that overcoming pain or sorrow or improving myself was an intellectual exercise of the mind more than a life practice that requires regularity in its execution. One of the lessons of the world is, obviously, this: if one wishes to become good at something, one has to practice. Personal transformation of one's inner life can, it seems to me, be encouraged through good habits which help you practice being a decent, good person on a regular basis. As such, the first habit that I need to develop is "discipline." Discipline, as a virtue, is, it appears to me, nothing more than an expression of "Faithfulness." You must be faithful to yourself, your obligations, your spirit, and the larger world around you. Motivation follows practice. Heat produces motion, stillness freezes us in place. This is one of my first tasks in the process of transforming my life: encouraging and practicing the habits of a good character, to becoming a devoted person, morally upright, and always prepared to do the right thing no matter how hard it might first appear to do so.