It’s time to wax philosophically. Also, this is not aimed at anybody in particular.
It’s all a matter of perspectives.
Some thoughts on sadness & depression – One might feel like they’re at their lowest point, but how much of that feeling is just a sudden manifestation of discontent in the current moment? If a person takes the time to measure such lows against the other experiences in their life – the experiences they conveniently push into the background so that their moment of angst has its moment to shine – they might see how fleeting the feeling of this “low” is, within the context of their life experiences. Could also depend on how stubborn a person is. I find that I was more stubborn when I was younger & I think that was because I was fully invested in “being correct” and “not making mistakes”. A stubborn person might be less likely to think outside of the situation, which is an important strategy for dealing with negative emotions. This isn’t one size fits all though – there are many people who are born with clinical depression & need medications/therapy to simply exist. I’m not writing the definitive solution to sadness in a blog post, after all.
Living in the past, living for the future – Both mindsets are nebulous. I think people should not live off of past laurels; living for the past is sad & wasteful. Yet living for the future is avoidance of the present, the “now”; in many cases it’s escaping responsibilities. Living in the present is preferable – it’s like living on the edge of a blade; the smallest adjustments change the course of your life, for better or worse. The seemingly innocuous choices one makes in these moments is truly living, I think. I don’t think it’s reckless (at all) to live firmly with your mind in the present, just so long as you have an appreciation of the past & of setting goals for yourself to follow. Finding the balance is the hard part, I guess.
Thoughts on lamenting one’s life – What if a person lives until their 80th birthday, and they feel that they haven’t “achieved” anything in their life? I would say that such a perspective is narrow. Not everyone has to affect change unto the world like Newton, or Obama. We don’t have an obligation to breed, to make the world a better place (although that’s an admirable way to live); to leave a “legacy”. We were all born at some point, and we are all here to lead a life of our own choosing. We might choose to start a family, we might choose to live life as a hermit, we might choose to live a nomadic/drifter lifestyle. We might choose to eschew all of the responsibilities of being “adults” and just … live a bohemian lifestyle until we go. Are any of these the “wrong” choice?
Thoughts on judging how others live – Would you be the one that shouts “What a waste of a life” to another? Would you be willing to juxtapose your life side-by-side against the life they lived, and have others judge you, as you do others? Is life simply a case of measuring achievement & impact? At some point, I feel that such people have forgotten to “live”. You might think this all veers a bit too close to religious “judge not lest ye be judged” territory, but this conscious stream of thought is merely a call to curiosity. What sounds more reasonable – to live your life unrestrained by the criticism & judgment of others, or to live your life under a set of rules you neither asked for, nor intended to follow? So what if you didn’t invent time travel? Many mistakes/regrets, so you “failed” your life?
Thoughts on judging in general – A friend told me once that we all judge people, all of the time. I do think that this is true – I’ve made a post judging people who judge :/ That’s why my ethical philosophy has always been to attack the idea, not the messenger. If I disagree, I need to explain why without veering into insults. Past track records of dodgy people shouldn’t be excluded from such conversations, but they can’t form the basis of the criticism.
Might write more posts like this, depending on my mood. I enjoy trying to see where my thoughts are trying to lead me. I’ve also edited this since I first posted the page, because I think it was too difficult to follow; also, some parts meandered and I felt I didn’t make a sensible point. Wax on, wax off – I need to practice writing more (it’s been literally decades since I wrote posts like this).
Peace.
