…by shattering the old ones.
My current comfortable but dead end and far too limited life can be seen as a self-reinforcing pattern, like a standing wave, which is extremely stable – and that’s the problem in a nutshell.
Because it isn’t good enough. I need so much more out of life than just video games and masturbation. I can do so very much more than merely entertain myself and I am eager to go out into the world and prove myself and make my mark.
But I can’t find the offramp. Everything in my life reinforces the existing inadequate pattern and all roads lead right back to the exact same dead end town.
That can only mean one thing : the pattern has to die.
And that means deliberately destabilizing my life, and that goes every instinct I got. I inherently seek stability, safety, and comfort, and the problem with that is that sometimes that which is the most stable, safe, and comfortable is also toxic and repressive and stifling, and the only way you can be happy is if you leave the comfortable place in search of a better way to live.
And that is exactly what I have been too scared to do, especially since my hospitalization last summer. That whole experience, with its stultifying boredom and crippling dizziness and soul scarring humiliations (like using the “shit in a box” portable toilets and… not using them but pooping anyway), really broke any sense of stability I had and I don’t think I have entirely recovered from that.
After all, it’s not like life went back to normal after I got out. I have to use a fucking walker to get around now. The problem has still not been fixed.
Or even diagnosed properly, for that matter. For fuck’s sake.
Don’t get me started.
And that reinforces my feelings of weakness and fragility and puts a big thick double underline under my need to escape harsh reality by staying in my nice safe world of virtual diversions and mindless amusements.
It certainly does not make my timid, frightened self feel like going out into the big bad world to find my way at age 50.
Not alone, anyhow. And that’s the only way I know how to do anything.
My life has been so solitary and sealed off from the world that I never did learn how to play well with others.
If I had someone to hold my hand and keep me anchored and talk me down when I am freaking out and help me get out of the emotional pitfalls that leave me suddenly feeling utterly lost and confused and helpless, then maybe I could move on.
But I don’t have someone like that and I doubt I ever will.
And it is easy to say, “You will just have to be that person for yourself”, but you can’t escape a pit by standing on your own shoulders.
If I had the strength to “be that person for myself”, we would not even be having this conversation. Where exact do these twittering twats think I am supposed to get the ingredients to make this person anyhow?
I don’t have a source of power external to myself to draw upon in order to perform this miracle of creation. I am an obligate introvert. What I have is all I got.
And it just plain isn’t enough.
More after the break.
The paradox of wealth
Rich people are, by and large, not happy.
And that is the paradox, because while we all tell each other money can’t buy happiness to each other in order to better cope with our envy of the rich (in a sour grapes kind of way), the truth is that we all think we’d be happy if we had more money.
And this is true of absolutely everybody, including the rich.
Our need to believe that money will make us so strong that no amount of money can contradict it. We are perfectly capable of repeatedly convincing ourselves that the next acquisition, big or small, will be the one that takes us to our happy place, no matter how many times in the past this has proven to be false.
The alternative would be to face the truth that all those material things do is, like a drug, make you happier for a little while but then it becomes the new normal and you have to get back on that treadmill of acquisition in earch of your next fix.
And this is true on every income level. That’s why there is no such thing as “enough” for these socially deranged billionaires. They have to keep hoarding wealth in order to keep the dream that more will make them happy alive.
And the thing is, if you’re poor, more money DOES make you happier… up to a point. The latest estimate puts the plateau between $60K and $80K a year.
That’s where diminishing returns sets in, and the amount of happiness each income increase brings drops off rapidly.
Because that is the scientific truth of the matter : there IS such a thing as “enough”. It begins when you no longer worry about money. There is enough money to live a comfortable middle class life with a nice home in a good neighborhood and enough left over for vacations, eating out, going to the movies, and other indulgences without having to worry about whether you can afford it or what you will have to do without in order to pay for it.
Past that, you have to make increasingly absurd expenditures to keep the dream of future happiness alive.
Simply sticking the surplus money in a bank account is unthinkable. Then you would be committing the ultimate crime of settling for less!
Ergo people are compelled to find things to spend it on. But their real needs are well met. so they have to dream up fake needs in order to keep the lie going.
And all because in a society fanatically devoted to “more”, saying you have enough, thank you, is to betray all the other greedy little piggies squealing for more.
Because if “more” won’t make you happy, what on Earth will?
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.