Enjoying Life

What am I feeling? How do I stop? Why is everything so much more pressing and straining now than it was before?

Simply because? Isn't life supposed to be more than just surviving? Why has the world been constructed in such a way that the only reliable thing is work. Everything revolves around working and making a profit.

I just want to be happy. I don't want to stress about where my next meal is going to come from. I don't want to see people around the world getting mistreated and murdered for their differences. That isn't what life is supposed to be. The world that got built is a flawed world. Full of suffering, selfishness, and greed. Is it so hard to accept that we are all human? Why must our worth be based on what we can do for the system? Why must we live in a way that makes happiness such a difficult goal? This isn't what life is supposed to be.

My mother once said to me "Life is a gift" and I disagreed with her. Life, as it is now, is a battle. It's constantly suffering under the demands of society. Being comfortable in your own skin is a luxury, not a normality. Knowing where your next meal is coming from is not guaranteed. Life is a battle of survival when it has the possibility to be so much more.

Those in power care so much more about maintaining their grip on everything instead of caring for the people around them. It's selfish. Greedy. Life is so much more valuable when you invest, not monetarily, in the people around you.

I've spent a great deal of time getting to really know myself. Hours spent in my own head and trying to figure out why I am the way I am. Even more hours have been spent trying to understand those around me. What I've found is a high level of satisfaction when a true point of understanding and empathy can be reached. When interacting with someone you understand to some high degree, I find that instead of the insane levels of miscommunication that occur normally with people, does not if you understand someone. You analyze their reaction based off of their experience instead of assumptions you make about them based off of your experience.

Making assumptions within itself is a hard topic for me. I believe assuming anything about anyone else will cause difficulty in truly understanding. Take my sibling for example, he is one of the smartest people I know, but will always try to fix or assist my life experience from what's worked for him. His advice was almost helpful, but never quite hit the mark because he assumed I was like him. This of course, is not true. It's caused our conversations to become very difficult for me to enjoy because it feels like he's trying to fix me instead of letting me take the time to fix myself.

And that's someone who is trying to care. I feel a good majority of the population never takes the time to really understand themselves or why they are the way they are. Most my childhood was spent in a numb emotional state because of the lack of visible emotions from my parents. I've spent much of the past couple years trying to unlock my emotional bandwidth, and I still have a ways to go.

But taking so much time to understand me also helps in interacting with those around me. It is unfair for me to expect anything I feel to be the same as someone else. It is always better to ask. Listen. Truly listen to what people around you are saying, and interactions with them will likely improve.

What makes this difficult is not a lot of people take the time to really invest in those around them. It takes a lot of patience, questioning, and listening to someone else. As someone who doesn't like attention, this works well for me but there are a good portion of people who want to talk about themselves. This is not bad, unless they never take the time to listen. I think the world could be a lot better if people were more open and others were more receptive to it. One of the things that I wish I could say I'd never done is compare my experience to someone else's. This is so unfair to both yourself and them. You are not the same person. You do not have the same experiences to cause the same reactions to similar scenarios. The hardest thing I'm going through might be a standard for someone else - which sounds awful but each and every life is individual. Doing our best to understand the individual, then understand their reaction. From there, it may open up more open discussion and communication of emotion. The current amount of emotional discussion, in my opinion, is insanely lacking. Considering around half the population have essentially been ordered to not divulge their emotions, which is a fucking ridiculous standard.

Well, I guess the point I'm trying to make here is that life should be enjoyable. Life should be the gift that my mom sees it as. But, with the world as it is, life is more of a burden. Enjoying the time that you've got on this planet is worth more than any money or possession you can have. Which does not mean that material possessions are not valuable, but happiness. Letting feelings be experienced to their full capacity, and being able to understand why you feel that way allows for so much more growth and happiness. Despite being in a current life pattern that honestly, makes me miserable, I am still able to find happiness through this kind of analysis. Truly seeing and trying to understand people. The downside is that this is also an impossible feat. You won't ever be able to fully understand someone else. Their perspective is valid. Your perspective can not and will not ever override or be more important than someone else's.