My Experience As A Feeling Human

For the majority of my life, I have this deep desire to know everything. What’s going on? Who will be there? What are we? Where is this thing going? For me, knowing has always provided some form of comfort. It is an internal desire to have the answers. An attempt to prepare for the inevitability of failure and letdowns. It is the bracing of the wall, a bolstering of my defenses. If I know what is happening then I know what to expect, and how to behave. What this does is kills all-natural tendencies to give it your all until the situation allows you to. A showing of the cards, if you will. It’s hard to bluff when the other player can see your hand. The problem is, people don’t show their cards. They also do a hell of a job bluffing.

But one thing I do know is that people fucking let you down. People have been hurt themselves and work on their guardedness and they themselves expect the other person has some level of guardedness of their own. The expectation of an outcome is strictly derived from the sum of all our interactions up until a certain point. My expectation has always been that of disappointment. Now I’m not saying this alters my behavior in any manner, on the contrary, it feels as if I have doubled down on the whole, “being myself” thing. But perception is a tricky bitch. It shows us part of ourselves that fucking sucks and it screams in our face. It shouts out all those glaring imperfections, the ones we overlooked for so long. It brings us to a point of clarity that wasn’t widely available, before this acquisition of these new perspectives.

So, I’ve been thinking. Why not surrender to the flowing of life. I mean people come and go and you will get hurt and cry and scream, but why not let what comes, come and let what goes, go. Why not just let things be just as they are in that moment and look no further. This is hard to do as we as humans face this dreadful thing called life. It is crippling in its ferocity. We want to know that this person will be my person forever or else I’m just wasting time. Or if I’m making the right choice for my career and if I’m failing myself. Why not live right there, in every moment, as if whatever choice you make IS the right one. Fuck the heartache and perceived difficulties. Keep moving forward, on to the greatness that is life, pain included. There is a simple freedom that comes from no longer having to carry the stress of not knowing.

I was having a conversation with a friend yesterday. We were discussing life’s tests. A series of opportunities given to us to change the course of our lives and alter our destiny. An ability to change from our old habits. This I’ve found is the core tenant of this human experience. I think it best to place an example here for clarity’s sake. Let’s say you know you struggle with self-esteem problems and feel like everyone is always talking about you. Once you have discovered this truth, the universe will give you many scenarios to practice acceptance and change your reaction. I struggled with this very same affliction. I was working out at my gym and I was lifting weights on a level slightly higher than my ability, my subconscious triggered a series of thoughts that told me that the other members of the gym were making fun of me. It completely ruined me. I had a harder time working out, I couldn’t focus on the weights. The only thing I could do was think about what those other members thought about me. It wasn’t until the workout was over and I had stepped away from the scenario that I realized what had happened. I was projecting my own insecurities externally, and allowing the internal struggle out onto the external world. I knew I struggled with this, and I think the core level of disappointment came from a belief that I had failed. I had failed the “life test”.

Now, these life tests are not pass-fail but are continual opportunities to pause, reflect, comprehend, and make adjustments. They’re micro-adjustments that need to be made to be better versions of ourselves. Now the hard part is making the connection and realization of what actually needs to be changed. Where is the adjustment to be made? What could have been done differently? What was the purpose of the universe's testing? I typically like to ask, “what is it I am supposed to learn at this moment?” It’s these continual resets and readjustments that keep us growing. Growth is the primary goal. There’s a problem here, the more you practice, the more the changes in amplitude of comprehension increase. The more comprehension increases, the more opportunities arise, and so on. It is a truly painful experience, but so beautiful at the same time. It’s the brutal rearranging of one's self, through trial and error, hopefully for the better. This scenario also works in reverse. One could become so conditioned by the world to completely close their doors to; love, friendship, companionship, and experiences that they never have a truly fulfilling life anymore. I have found the latter to be more true in most cases.

I find the most difficult rearrangement of our core self lies in the rearrangement of ourselves once we've swung to the negative spectrum. That requires deeper levels of work. We have to confront our shadow selves. We need to identify our traumas and their effect on ourselves. To identify our traumas, we must have an understanding of them. Self-knowledge is the number one way to accomplish this. It requires reading, listening, and searching. It takes real work, it takes a level of honesty with yourself that is hard to embrace in some cases. Mostly it requires a desire to change from the shelled being you were, to that of a more open accepting person. If there is one thing I may add here is that, this is a fucking brutal process, so be gentle with yourself. Take it easy on yourself when things get tough because things will get tough. You will potentially lose friends as you continue to raise your vibration, which is okay. Just know that everyone isn't here forever. You will most likely beat yourself up for past mistakes but please don't do that. You can not be upset at yourself for how you acted when you were uninformed. You need to know that this all part of the process and no one is perfect. Find peace in who you are and where you are right now. Find happiness within yourself as you continue to grow. You will realize as you go that things keep getting better, and a lot of the time, you won't realize this until you are on the other side. Keep going and find peace in the process. Trust it and have faith that as long as you are continually looking to better yourself, the universe will respond in kind.