Video games, anime and all the assorted antisocial bs we spent our time on as kids essentially made us turn out neglected even though our parents loved us. They thought we were happy doing it and let us be, turns out we were basically just addicts getting a fix, estranging and distancing ourselves from our loved ones. This whole subculture of internet boys and the adults that sprung up out of their withered husks of childhoods are basically neglected orphans mentally even though many of us came from loving families.
We got lost before we knew any better. Now we're finding ourselves.
Press up against the things that make you uncomfortable. The things you know you should do but shy away from because of anxiety/depression/low self-esteem. As you do this more often, things facing struggle will become easier and you'll be able to take on bigger challenges with bigger rewards. And the best part is, along the way, you'll learn who you are.
Self discovery is something earned through the personal decision to face hardship and the effort put in to persevere in the face of it. That's what we missed out on. The power process that makes people feel actualized is goal->effort->achievement of goal. That's where character gets built, that's how we sculpt ourselves into who we are and sketch out the lines of who we will be.
That's why a lot of us get the feeling that we're aliens. It's where that gnawing sensation that everyone else is a person and somehow, we aren't. We grew up guarded and isolated, divorced from the experiences of our peers and alienated by the distractions we clung to because they felt more real than real life. Our physiological reward circuits in our brains were hijacked by brightly colored skinner boxes. We traversed the hallway of smoke and mirrors searching for meaning, looking for the one sparkling technicolored door that would hold the key to filling the void where our personality and purpose should've been. And somehow, no matter where we followed the scintillating soft whispers, we always came away empty handed, pawing at the incorporeal mists of other people's dreams, achievements and creations. Yet doggedly we continue down the same path because it is what we know.
This is the human flaw that confounds and cripples us. A transformed life resides in disbelief until achieved. And without the reserves of self-esteem and hope that build up over time through putting forth effort to achieve personal goals, it feels as if there is nothing in the world that could animate us into pursing a path other than an endless search for meaning through the glimmering frenzy of amusements always at out finger tips. What we know.
The locus of control must become internal. We externalize it as a means to defer and default on responsibility for ourselves. To eschew and shirk our needs and our wants as we don't have the tools to get them and feel as we never will. These are the lies we tell ourselves because they feel true.
Fight for others or for no one and you will wither. Giving into apathy and stagnation is a desecration of all your ancestors fought for. You have the blood of men who tore their right to life and the lives of their families from the calloused hide of the world. You have the blood of hunters and warriors in you. Shall we really give into despair? Are our battles really so insurmountable? They feel that way but I promise you they are not.
Fight for yourself and you will bloom.
Men and boys of the internet are but unlit candles waiting to be lit by a spark only we can conjure from forcing friction between ourselves and our challenges. As we spark and fight the fire will grow. The potential to burn like the sun lives in each one of us and waits for us to wrestle it from the claws of the aether. Our hearts and lives will open and as we know ourselves, we will be able to know others.
Discard the half life and demand the full.
Seek not that which shines, seek to shine yourself.
