There is never a time when we are only doing one thing. Whether it is simple automatic tasks like breathing, thinking, and blinking, or the more substantial juggling of working, feeling, managing relationships, and trying to survive, there are so many levels of need that must be addressed in order for us to be well in life. For many of us that is not recognized, which typically means that we make no strides to address them all. Some of us have gotten a handle on certain things and leave the rest for the Lord or whichever power, if any, we believe in. Some of us simply languish away in the belief that life is suffering until death either ends it or begins another phase of it. These are our general beliefs and principles that govern how we approach and deal with life.
We do not only need at the physical level. We have mental, emotional, and spiritual needs as well. The reason for the refrain, “Money can’t buy happiness” is because money is a man-made thing that has been used to take the place of our own work and knowledge that could make ourselves the things that we want and need. Most of these things in the larger societies have been put behind pay walls. Humans existed far before systems of money were invented and they were able to survive just fine. Did they live as long? Perhaps not. We truly cannot know. All we know is that civilizations and empires have created and perpetuated systems that often make it so the best means of survival is by collecting large amounts of money. To the point that indigenous people are shamed as poor for not having money in spite of the fact that their systems and ways of being do not call for money. They are able to build homes, grow food, make clothes, and use the resources available to them to continue to live life, often as the true stewards of the world. Indigenous people do not try to own the world; they recognize that it is our portion to take care of it. Most indigenous societies that I have learned of are far more into the emotional and spiritual than nations are. In more over-complicated societies that have built systems around subjective rules used to tell people how we should be with no regard for our individual needs and desires. As a result, there is an over-emphasis on certain areas with total neglect of others.
We have seen time and time again, that the incredibly wealthy and well-known do not fair well in times where they do not effectively deal with their mental, emotional, and spiritual needs. It is true that those who lack for basic necessities suffer in ways that in the societies that they live in money can help them to manage. Even after you are guaranteed food, shelter, and other basic necessities, however, there is still much more that needs to be fulfilled before happiness can be achieved and sustained. The problem that I find myself often struggling with is having to participate in systems that I serve, but do not serve me, while still having to train to work on my own well-being and strive for personal fulfillment. In countries like America, people not born rich have to overcome a great deal before we can even get to focusing on ourselves enough to develop into people that can regularly achieve joy and effectively validate our existence with what we put out into the world. My stomach turns at all of the lives being wasted on things that have nothing to do with the individual. We were not made merely to hold the line on the prevailing systems. We have a purpose to serve that is particular to our own being and not to be dictated by things that existed far before we did. We should not be subjugating ourselves to other humans. We must cultivate our own sense of purpose and decide who we want to be. It is not a simple task, but that is life. Life is not one simple tasks. It is the accumulation of every task.
Work being the baseline valuation of life in physics has struck me since I learned it. Work gets a bad name. The average working man suffers it because it costs us so much in time and energy. The wealthy hate work and continue to build and maintain systems that enable them to avoid it while still profiting massively. But work in and of itself is not a bad thing when it can be done with dignity and we can truly benefit from our own work. Over the past 5 years or so I have been looking at my life and acknowledging my general lack of happiness. I have always been a person who tried to do the “right thing” and what I was “supposed to do”. I tried to be a good person in the ways that I was taught and do the things that are put before us to do. I worked. I got my own place. I got a car. I bought status symbols. I participated in social activities. I tried to live in the templates put forth by TV shows, books, movies, and the general consensus. I found myself working very hard for a life that did not make me happy. No matter how much satisfaction I tried to gain from being able to show other people that I was living up to expectations, I continued to suffer. I began to look at myself and try to figure out what “was wrong with me”. It took a lot of time and searching to realize that there was no happiness to come from performing to expectation. I was not happy because I was not trying to be. I was simply surviving; getting by with occasional pats on the back and dollops of joy here and there.
So often when I tried to do the things I wanted to do I found myself ceased with some form of shame and guilt. That I was being selfish and not being “responsible” by prioritizing my wants over what I felt I “should” be doing. I lived a life of constant sacrifice, trying to feel good that I was being strong and taking care of myself. By that care was mostly invested in keeping myself upright to continue to participate in things that I didn’t even want to. Just to conform and be accepted. I am still in the process of learning that as much as everything else, my purpose in life is to take good care of myself. Your quality of life is going to be based on how well taken care of you are. That’s not a responsibility to pass to others; it is one that we must take up for ourselves. Because from the time we are ripped from the womb until the end of our physical presence on this Earth, we have ourselves whether we like it or not. It takes a special kind of insanity to evade yourself. You have you. Not only you, if you are fortunate, but you have yourself and there are just some things only you can do for you. Nobody else can know how you feel if you don’t communicate it. Feelings are our reactions to what is happening. They are to be processed, not avoided. We do not need to try to be like other people. We need to find our way to be ourselves in a way that serves the world as much as it serves us.
I have found that I write because it is what I love to do. I find fulfillment in it. I have also found that my writing can be used to serve the world. My dreams are not just for me. It is odd that people claim to believe we are not given desires that are not to be fulfilled, but we do not understand that our dreams are almost certainly our purpose. That is if those dreams are based on direct fulfillment and not some convoluted plan to get what we think we need and want. If you are painfully insecure, putting yourself in positions to be seen by many will not cure that. It will only make it worse. You cannot avoid the need to develop yourself. It is supposed to be done through our childhoods with help from our parents, however, most parents don’t seem to comprehend that. Many parent to their own needs with no true regard for their kids as individuals, which lends itself to us not registering ourselves as individuals. So we just try to go with the crowd. We do what we “have” to do because we are led to believe that is a thing. But there is no one size fits all and it hardly seems necessary for there to be billions of people made to serve any one thing.
As I continue to determine for myself who and how to be, I continue to move between the different areas of my life that need me. Sometimes I work really hard to collect capital because I do not exist in a space that would respect my right to make space for myself without participation in the many mandatory systems. I cannot just go find land, build on it, and furnish my living through my own hands without first buying that land and the materials. Things are not left for us to just get and sustain ourselves with in America. Look at how people who are homeless are viewed. With disgust at their lack of contribution to the parasitic systems that many of us suffer for participation in. All the same, I have gotten to the point of freedom where it matters more to me what I make of my life for myself than how I am perceived. As I juggle living and its many moving parts, I find greater confidence and satisfaction in the ways I make for myself than the ways in which have been handed to me by others. That is not about only caring about myself. It is about the acknowledgement that if I do not take care of myself, I won’t be able to be much for others either. Each day is another we live in and have to determine how to piece it together with the ones before and after. Happy people are those who are where they want to be doing what they want to do. It is as Audre Lorde once said, “If I did not define myself for myself I would be crushed into other people’s fantasies of me and eaten alive.” We must self-determine and take full possession of ourselves so that we can make good use of ourselves for ourselves as well as the world. That comes one task, one idea, one day, and one self at a time.
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