Disappointments
Not that I have abandoned this blog, far from it. It's simply that I do not feel the same motivation that I had for writing that I once did. I know that isn't much of an excuse, but at least it is an explanation.
It's somewhat fair to say that I been feeling poorly, but perhaps that is a bit of an understatement too. I've been grappling with a lot of issues related to my self-concept. It feels as if I am falling into a direction in life that I wouldn't have chosen for myself if I could have avoided it. It seems that, for the rest of my life, I will be as poor as ever. I have far too many debts from school, a tremendous burden that will sap the opportunities for a life with simple pleasures: a wife, a home, a family, etc. My naivete was extreme in my college days, but there was no-one to tell me where I was headed. And of course, I might have not listened anyway.
I feel a bit upset when I consider how a future life of poverty was incurred as a result of my striving for something better (a PhD and professorship), and then failing at it because of my ignorance of myself, my difficult and (also failed) romantic experiences, and seeming inability to endure it all. But there it is. It cannot be bargained with or changed. It was real and it happened. Therefore, I must continue on and face consequences of actions that I did not know I had chosen at the time.
I am trying to make the best of it. One of the things I most frequently hear from friends and family is that "life is what you make of it." True enough to provide some hope and thereby small measure of comfort. And yet, while one can try to improve life and circumstances to a degree, no-one seems to acknowledge its severe limitations. Life restricts opportunity as much as it provides it. The difficult life lesson is learning how to accept its restrictions with calm equanimity and be unperturbed in the face of failures.
I wonder how people who experience a persistent and oppressive injustice in their life learn to cope with the outside forces that prevent them from attaining their visions of comforts and happinesses. I should consider myself lucky that I do not experience racism, persecution, hunger, and etc. that many people the world over do. I suspect that the key is to ignore the restrictions imposed from the outside and learn to be content with the life one leads on the inside, but as with everything, knowing something isn't the same as doing it. Or in my case, feeling it.
I hope to continue on my internal path of change, so that I conform my behavior to my vision of a better and happier self. Faced with frustrations, depressions, irritations, and unhappiness it seems hard for me to get there. I will not, and cannot ignore restrictions. Most modern folks I talk with say this is the way to get happy, but really they seem to be advocating blindness and ignorance. There should be a richer path of acknowledging injustice, pain, and disappointment without it sending your emotions careening over the edge into an expanding void. I grasp at the solid iron bar of calm acceptance, but it still seems a little out of reach.
It's somewhat fair to say that I been feeling poorly, but perhaps that is a bit of an understatement too. I've been grappling with a lot of issues related to my self-concept. It feels as if I am falling into a direction in life that I wouldn't have chosen for myself if I could have avoided it. It seems that, for the rest of my life, I will be as poor as ever. I have far too many debts from school, a tremendous burden that will sap the opportunities for a life with simple pleasures: a wife, a home, a family, etc. My naivete was extreme in my college days, but there was no-one to tell me where I was headed. And of course, I might have not listened anyway.
I feel a bit upset when I consider how a future life of poverty was incurred as a result of my striving for something better (a PhD and professorship), and then failing at it because of my ignorance of myself, my difficult and (also failed) romantic experiences, and seeming inability to endure it all. But there it is. It cannot be bargained with or changed. It was real and it happened. Therefore, I must continue on and face consequences of actions that I did not know I had chosen at the time.
I am trying to make the best of it. One of the things I most frequently hear from friends and family is that "life is what you make of it." True enough to provide some hope and thereby small measure of comfort. And yet, while one can try to improve life and circumstances to a degree, no-one seems to acknowledge its severe limitations. Life restricts opportunity as much as it provides it. The difficult life lesson is learning how to accept its restrictions with calm equanimity and be unperturbed in the face of failures.
I wonder how people who experience a persistent and oppressive injustice in their life learn to cope with the outside forces that prevent them from attaining their visions of comforts and happinesses. I should consider myself lucky that I do not experience racism, persecution, hunger, and etc. that many people the world over do. I suspect that the key is to ignore the restrictions imposed from the outside and learn to be content with the life one leads on the inside, but as with everything, knowing something isn't the same as doing it. Or in my case, feeling it.
I hope to continue on my internal path of change, so that I conform my behavior to my vision of a better and happier self. Faced with frustrations, depressions, irritations, and unhappiness it seems hard for me to get there. I will not, and cannot ignore restrictions. Most modern folks I talk with say this is the way to get happy, but really they seem to be advocating blindness and ignorance. There should be a richer path of acknowledging injustice, pain, and disappointment without it sending your emotions careening over the edge into an expanding void. I grasp at the solid iron bar of calm acceptance, but it still seems a little out of reach.
30 September 2011
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