I am blabbering.
Inspired by psilocybe's thread "Are you actively pursuing (or living) your DREAM in life?", I'm curious to know - how many of you are simply living for that dream?
I'm living for something. I guess we all are, or we wouldn't be here. Some dream of just not dying. I'd like to think it's more than fear that keeps me here.
I've got some squishy dreams. I'm working on them. But for now I'm just kind of living day to day. Kind of like AA, but for those who suffer from personal nihilism. PNA.
I spend a lot of time trying to figure out my problems, dwelling in them. I've spent so much time trying to figure out what's wrong with how I am and how my life is that I never stopped to think just where I wanted to be. It was more like deductive logic. I know what I
don't want. My un-dreams, if you will. I don't want to work eight to ten hours a day just to pay for the car and gas I need to get to the place I work to make the money for that car and gas and for the residence I hardly ever see; if only briefly before I fall asleep. I also don't want to have to de-program myself from the robot consciousness these jobs put you into during the work week and try to get back to something resembling `humanity' on the weekend through drugs, alcohol, and so on.
I haven't much thought about what I
do want. I only realized that partially three years ago, and came to find the significance in the fact only recently, when doing a little reading on a technology known as NLP. Instead of dwelling on the problem, NLP suggests, you find out where or who or what you want to be and plot the course from here to there. A freedom to, or freedom in, or freedom as, as opposed to a freedom from. A total reversal of direction for me.
The scary thing is, I don't really know what I want. I'm quite ambivalent. I want to be at peace with myself. Find comfort in my internal center. Know my truth. I want to write for a living. Draw or paint or pastel for a living. Turn my insides outside and have these peices of me be appreciated. I want to be understood and all that rot. I want to feel as if I'm accomplishing something that's worth something to me; something meaningfull. Like I'm having a relationship with the world as a whole, working through my differences with humanity and life and make amends. I want to make money pursuing my passions; doing something I enjoy. I want to find enjoyment in life. I want to not be afraid. I want to not feel guilty or shameful or insane. I want to know that difference doesn't have to mean distance in any sense. I want time and resourses to learn what I need to learn. I want maybe a girlfriend. At least get laid again. Anchor the MDMA state via NLP.
Is that shallow? All this is too general, though, and maybe that's the problem with me...
I see a lot of people getting caught up trying to 'become' who they want to be that they miss out on enjoying who they already are. Often by the time they 'become' who and what they want to be (if in fact they ever reach that point in life - a lot don't!), they often find that they have a limited time to enjoy it. Are you happy with yourself and your life as it stands today?
No. But for the first time since I can remember, I feel as if some things have improved. Internally and externally, and in that gray area between that normal people would have a hard time understanding. I feel more positive and optomistic than I've been since as long as I can remember, at least since I was 15 (a day more than exactly ten years ago; happy birthday to me) and I'm still pretty bitter and pessimistic.
I'm not happy, though. I'm not even content -- or is that higher than happy? I don't even know anymore.
In direct response to you: if we don't strive to become more than we already are -- or to become all that we could have been, might have been, might be, can be -- or to become aware that we are more than we believe we are -- there is no growth. Being happy with who, what, where you are is good and all, but we need change in our lives. Needs change. Desires change. And sometimes the person who desires or needs change is, for some reason, unable to change. I'm a long way from living in the Now, and I think we should live in the now; it seems that's what you're talking about. But we shouldn't be so in the moment that we have no plans for the future, or new heights to which we strive to, you know? We need goals, purposes; it's what gives meaning to our lives. It puts us in the flow.
