There's Room For Love

I get the sense that many people see me as somewhat of a loser. They see a man who's gifted with great potential, but who can't get out of his own way. They see that I know so much, that I am so smart, yet I never seem to achieve much of anything. They see me as talented, and they think I'm throwing it all away. Or perhaps they don't think much of me at all. It's much more likely that they're only thinking of themselves, just like me. Thinking of themselves, they are also obsessed with their position in the rat race. Just like myself, perhaps they too are envious of those "ahead" of them. They want to secure themselves and be surrounded by like-minded people. Everyone wants to be around people they want to become more like. That's the sense I get anyway. 

For me, this chase for the better has always been fueled by a deep sense of lack. Ambition fueled by insecurity. Maybe if I'll achieve this or that, once I look better, dress hotter, smell sexier, and feel good about myself, that's when they'll love me. Love. Like a destitute begaar lying helplessly on the street, everything I want to get, everything I hope to achieve, all my dreams often amount to nothing more than a mere ladder, that can allow me to get from this hellish life, to a heavenly one. This life, filled with rejection, discomfort, and frustration. Where nobody gives me the attention I crave. If only they'd support me, perhaps even I could succeed. 

The rich are lucky and I'm not, and it makes for a world that's rotten to the core. Money, status, power, skills, ability, and resources. All of it, is meant to be used for something. They're all things, tools we've built for manipulating the world around us in order to fit our needs. Chase that win, build that business, nurture multiple streams of passive income, and attain this nirvana-like state of orgasmic enlightened financial abundance. Then, you will get the body you've always truly deserved, you too can live the ultimate fantasy portrayed by those celebrities. Nice cars, luxuries, impromptu vacations, luxury interior design, a home that reflects your inner beauty, and private jets. 

Good food, good liquor, great drugs, and a picture-perfect life. That's what we all want, isn't it? But no, no, I'm keenly aware of the interests of my peers, for they are very much similar to my own. So many of us want to make a positive impact. So many are doing it for their parents and/or loved ones. They want to uplift others, and leave a world that's better than they found it. In fact, a majority of my peers seem to belong to this category, after all, I'm fortunate enough to be born in good company. Nevertheless there remain some serious logistical difficluties. For one, you can't give all your money away. What's the use of redestribution of income, if we end up with the same amount of wealth?

What's the use of helping people, if you grow poor doing it yourself? Whose life is to be valued more? Are all the fortunate people supposed to stop while the less fortunate catch up to us? And so on and so forth. Indeed, you cannot pour from an empty cup. If you are unhappy, if you are suffering, feeling lost, alone, and struggling to get through the days, how can you ever hope to help anyone else? I see a lot of people that want to do good things, but they inevitably come face-to-face with these horrid beasts of reality that are limitations. Your time, energy, and resources are limited. So are your skills, mental faculties, and abilities. You can only do so much by yourself, but who else is there?

Little to no people around you seem to share a majority of your perspective. So many of us have become true individuals with niche interests and unique identities. This makes it a threat for us to interlope with the world at large. Those hungry masses that ache for a grain of rice and a drop of water, they will strip you dry. Subconsciously, we start to recognize this, and it fills us up with dread. The divorced nature of our inner worlds violently collide with our misaligned outer lives. We want to be a force for good, but we end up conforming every single day. The whole thing fills you up with a deep sense of restlessness, until your mental circuitry blows a fuse, you crash into the ground, go up in flames, and end up a burnt out mess that just want to wrap itself in a cocoon and seek comfort. 

At lest, that's how it's gone for me. So perhaps it's better to focus on ourselves and really try building something sustainable. Surely, there will be a tipping point after it goes on auto-mode. Indeed, almost everything has a tipping point, yet most people never experience one. Why is that? Well, once youdecide to put your head down and get to work, taking the pieces of your life and polishing them one by one, it keeps you really busy, but the problems never seemed to go away. There was a reason why you wanted to do things in the first place, and I believe that for a vast proportion of us, it came from a place of lack. What it results in, is stress. Perhaps you don't feel this stress much, because you've learned to deal with it. Perhaps you built have the perfectly calibrated system after tons of tinkering and you've got it all locked down. 

If that's true, then that's great! I'm super stoked to hear that! I am genuinely happy for you if you're going about your days stress-free and content because you've basically won at life. For most of us, though, the picture is not so rosey. I think most of us end whom don't feel particularly stressed, have put some coping mechanism in place that does more harm than good in the long run. For me, that's weed. For others, it's cigarettes, porn, sex, masturbation, shopping, instagram, video games, alcohol, sugar, fat, or anything else out of the million things people are addicted to. The way I see it, most people who focus on themselves a lot, find out that it is hard work, and the only ones that succeed, are the ones that are mentally healthy, grounded, and have regulated emotions. Being more or less content, they are able to work for the future without getting stressed about it or about how to bridge the gap between the present and the future. 

They simple have a plan that they focus on executing, while enjoying the process. But how can one do that if they are unwell? We all want to improve our situation precesely because we are struggling with all that. It's like you need 10 years of experience to get an entry-level job. The rich grow richer, poor poorer, and all that. So the whole game's rigged then? There's no getting out? Might as well say fuck it and find what litlle wins you can. Might as well drown in pleasure and get what little joys possible. When facing inevitable, inescapable pain, with little to no hope of an end in sight, it can be hard to get motivated. If only you had a little support, you could keep your chin up. That's one of the first things that used to come into my mind, anyway. I figured I was just shit out of luck, and it made me curse my existence. Yet I never wanted to give into despair, so I kept trying anyway.

Effort followed by burn out followed by binging. Cycle after cycle, with little to no progress to show for it. Seems like a bleak picture doesn't it? What's missing from this world? Isn't it something essential? I thought love meant taking care of each other, being avialable, and having each other's backs. I thought all this was meant to be more meaningful than this. Why does it feel so wrong? 

Turns out, there is a clear answer to those questions. Turns out, love is the answer after all. You see, when you feel love in your heart, you don't feel a sense of lack. Love is that supernatural emotion that breaks all bonds. It's that special frequency that never stops beating, that reverbarates through and through, it's the well that never runs dry, because it comes from a different place altogether. There's a lot to love, and people really misunderstand it. Infatuation, lust, admiration, adoration, acceptance, foundness, trust, gratitude, understanding, and more. No one can agree on what it really is, because it's so many things for so many people. It might be more helpful, then, to think about what love isn't, because there is some real consensus on that, it seems.

For one thing, love is definitely not manipulation. It also has nothing to do with utility, and this is the more important distinction here. You don't use the people you love. Your friends are not to be used for entertainment. That's what television is for. Your lovers are not meant to be used as a source of comfort. That's what a nice shower, good mattresses, and air conditioning are for. People are meant to be loved. They are supposed to be seen, heard, understood, and whenever possible, appreciated. They are to be accepted as they are and trusted to offer companionship. It's about comradery, not comfort. Sure, there are plenty of horrible villains out there, and you certainly won't befriend most people you meet. Yet the fact remains that when people are treated as an end in themselves, and not a means to another's end, that's when love spreads.

But all this talk of love is meaningless to the one who's suffering. The one who's never known love from another in their entire life. It's more common than should be, but it's almost impossible to envision a loving life when you've never known the feeling firsthand. You can't really know love when you don't love yourself, and you can't love yourself if you've never been loved. So the question becomes: How does one begin to love themselves? It certainly helps to get to know yourself better, but that can be a neverending journey in itself. In my experience, the greatest love in the world is the love of God. And I don't mean going to church and finding Jesus, not necessarily anyway. If that works for you, then go ahead, but the more important thing is to feel that you belong.

God is particularly powerful in that regard, as a source of constant meaning in our lives. For me, this is a very personal and unique relationship. Born as a hindu, grown up as a buddhist, and educated in a catholic school, I was always interested in spirituality as a whole. I recognized that every religion is like a finger pointing to the moon, and I chose to focus on the moon rather than the finger. Here's how I see it: before anything there was nothing, and it must have been rather uneventful. I image a completely intangible world, where thoughs become reality. In this form of infinite existence, after a while, you'd get bored of doing whatever you'd like. As time goes on, you'd start to look for a challenge. Perhaps you give up a part of your power to forget about it and experience vulnerability. What could be more thrilling for an all-powerful enitity?

The way I see it, you, me, every other lifeform, and all of matter, we're all part of the same thing. We can call that thing as God. We're connected to it, just as we were literally it at some point. Somewhere along the line, we decided to become this mortal creature in a reality where a sense of free will was possible. A world full of chaos and control, unpredictable, yet not too much. When I think of God in that way, they become this benevolent spirit that just wants to have fun. They cause immense pain and suffering, so that they may overcome it. Writing this down, I suppose this sounds just as crazy as the bible itself. But my point is simple, when you love yourself as an essential part of this world that's connected to everyone else, you learn to accept yourself fully. You remember that life is meant to be enjoyed, and heaven and hell are just short experiences in our limited time on earth. 

When you feel this connection inside you, when you ground yourself to this truth in the present moment, you start to get used to being at peace. And it's not just about using things instead of people either. It's about recognizing and feeling the truth of your life in your bones so clearly as to understand that this present moment is a gift. That you didn't come here just so you can spend time worrying about the future or running away from the past. When you really start to internalize that fully, it becomes so much easier to accept your situation. You start to feel like you're in an amusement park, and you start having the time of your life. Feeling that infinitine presense inside you, seeing how it's guided you, and designed the perfect life for your preferred game, that's when you start to feel the love. 

I believe that this is one of the most accessible ways to reach love for anyone, as the source lies within all our hearts. From that state of love, everything simply changes. Now, you don't look to others with empty hands trying to fill yourself up. You use a bed when you are sleepy, eat food when you are hungry, and watch a movie when you feel like it, but you no longer feel the need to spend all your time chasing highs. Whether it's chasing highs in the form of ego pleasures, achievements, hedonism, or physical relations, you start to lose your sense of desparation. Now, I don't think you need to find God to do this, even though it is the easiest way, I believe all that matters is that you have a connection to something much bigger than yourself.

When we step outside of the stuffy restrictions of our small lives, when we stretch our legs and breathe in fresh air, forgetting about all the insignificant irrelevant white noise that doesn't really matter, that's when we can really open our hearts to love. When you love yourself fully, you accept yourself, flaws and all. You don't want to change yourself, and you know what matters to you most. Yet, you don't spend much time thinking about yourself at all. The thing with my spiritual understanding is that we're all born with a few options to participate in a game that truly engages us. I believe that we all have access to something that demands our all, something that we would genuinely have the time of our lives being engaged in. Whether that's erecting a building, playing football, helping animals, growing plants, or baking bread, there's something out there for everyone. 

More than being a contributing memeber of society, it's more about the kind of experience you want to truly dive deep in. As a divine spirit, we all have a few dreams that led us here, and if we try out enough things, we can remember what it was. After that, we get to spend out entire lives being engaged in these experiences. Now that a live filled with love that's worth living. In fact, there's some real love of life in that experience. Coming back to other people, when you are enagaged in something that's meaningful to you, when you're having experiences that give you the love of life, all you want to do is share it with those around you. When you discover these sources of endless love inside you, all you want to do is give it all away, because what will you do with it otherwise? You certainly don't need it anymore. So you spend your days mining for treasures inside your heart, and then sharing it with everyone else in the world. Who wouldn't love a person like that?

With so much inner peace and light radiating from your core, you only look to others to give them love instead of asking for anything. Not that it'll always be this way, we know that the hight of today's joy depends on the depth of yesterday's pain, and so the cycle will continue. You'll have times when you are full, and at times you will be empty. But no matter where you are or what you're struggling with, there's always some room for love. So don't look to things and other people to satisfy you, and no need to go sit inside a cave neither. I belive that as God, you gave yourself everything you need to succeed, right where you are. If you find yourself surrounded by darkness, you can believe that you are the light. 

Finally, please for the love of God, big or small, lazy or ambitious, make just a little space in your busy life, and watch as it automatically fills with love. Then, you will know, that this is your true nature. Just as the demons in your belly are always waiting to pounse on their next prey, so do the angels await for your signal to start singing their divine music. Take some time today, give it a little listen.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Changing The World

Why I write

Dream Manifesto