Have you ever wondered if there's something not quite right about you? It's common to have traits or habits that bother not only ourselves but also those around us. Sometimes, we might not even realize these things about ourselves. Understanding how others see us can be tricky. Our thoughts and feelings, even our very essence, can remain a mystery, hidden deep within us. Life is full of surprises, influenced by factors beyond our control. Despite these uncertainties, there's strength in acknowledging our shared struggles and supporting each other through life's journey. Let's embark on a quest to unravel the complexities of human existence together.
1. There is something deeply wrong with you. Most likely, lots of things. You almost certainly possess traits and tendencies central to who you are that are unbelievably irritating—to not only you but also to everyone who knows you, everyone who ever has. Worse, you’re likely not even aware of a lot of it. And you likely never will be—not really. You’ll never know how you are from the outside, what it’s like to experience you from somebody else's perspective. Whether it’s a smell, a tendency to interrupt, or something much worse, the reasons why certain people have and why certain people will distance from you, leave you, and hate you, are often things you don’t fully know and perhaps can never fully know. Often, they’re things you can never quite fix.
2. You will never be understood by anyone. There are so many things that no one will ever know about you. There will be thoughts and desires—secrets—that you take to the grave with you out of choice, out of fear. There will also be feelings experiences and perceptions that you take to the grave with you out of the mere impossibility of ever communicating them. Nothing else will ever know your whole experience of everything—what and how everything is for you. Only one thing can ever traverse the same track of time and space in the universe, and you are wholly and forever alone on yours. Forever alone in your head, in your mind, in your red, in your blue, in your sadness, in your pleasure, and your truth.
3. You will never fully know yourself. So much of us is hidden from ourselves by ourselves. What are the actual sources of our thoughts, our desires, our fears, our dreams, and our actions? The unconscious mind is a solvent that all of our experiences and genetics are constantly stirred in and dissolved away into. We are the single solution where no individual component is ever clear or tangible. To know what our essence is, as a whole, the sum of all our parts, what we want, what we believe, and who we are, takes a lifetime. And a lifetime kills you.
4. Nothing is what it seems. Consciousness has given us a front-row seat to the show of everything. But it’s a magic show. And the illusions are really good.
5. So much of life is chance. Perhaps all of it. Who you are, what you think and believe, how much you have or don’t have, how much you will or won’t, where you’ll end up—everything—is a product of where and when you were born, who you were born to, what brain and body you were born with, and all the things you’ve encountered ever since. Who else can be credited for anything other than the odds? Free will and control are illusions we cling to justify our pride.
6. Happiness will never come—not in the way most of us have been told it will; not in the way most of us hope it will. There will never be a time when everything is finally perfect and nothing ever hurts; where the world is in harmony, free from chaos and tragedy; where we are at peace, free from desire and yearning. Life is mostly a cycle between boredom and anxiety. No amount of fame, wealth, control, esteem, family, or friends will ever solve that. Whatever is missing, it’s missing in us—the very condition of our being.
7. You will be replaced—by others, by technology, by progress. The days when you had to explain how things worked to those older than you will soon become the days when you will need the explaining. Perhaps those days are already here. Soon, the explanation will be futile. At some point, you won’t be important in the ways you once were, in the ways you once longed and fought for.
8. You will be forgotten. You already have been—by past friends and colleagues. You will continue to be—by everyone. Eventually, one by one, memories of you will shrivel up with the decaying minds of those who once knew and loved you. Along with them, the last remaining traces of you will wash away as if you never even existed. No matter who you are, the great enveloping cosmic dark clears the shores of all traces of past beachgoers.
9. No real story ends well. Happy endings exist solely to compensate for the fact that in real life, there are none. Things will go wrong. Things will remain unresolved. No one makes it out alive. Nothing makes it out intact.
10. In all likeliness, when your story ends, it is the end. But your story hasn’t ended yet. And despite all that was just mentioned, you don’t want it to. Despite it all, we want to continue. We want to rebel against the absurdity of it all, to find meaning and beauty in it all. And we do. There is something in us so much stronger than all of these truths. And it is found within each of them. A poignant but vital embodiment of the human spirit—the fact that we can not only endure them, but we can invert them into beauty and triumph. If you know you will be forgotten, you can decide to live for right now, while you’re still here. If you will be replaced, then right now, you are, or at some point, you were, important. If you know there is no endgame, no final peace or success or happiness to strive for, then you can search for and find reason and potency in all the stages of life along the way. In the moments between boredom and anxiety, there is an achievement, there is a sense of purpose, there is fuel to keep going, and there is an opportunity for grace. If you know life is essentially luck, if you are reading this right now, you can appreciate the likely good amount you’ve had. Existing as a human in the first place, able to contemplate the odds at all, is perhaps one of the least likely things to ever get a chance to do in the universe. And while you’re here, even if you know you’ll never fully understand anything, including yourself, you can know that there is an ever-changing self and an ever-mysterious world to constantly explore and delve into; always capable of surprising you, of entertaining and mystifying you; a magic show of everything from a unique seat in the house reserved exclusively for you for all of eternity. Understandably, the intensity of all this breaks everyone to some degree.
How could there not be something wrong with you? There is something wrong with everyone. But through unwavering honesty, expression, support, and effort, we can connect over these very truths.
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