Whenever you read some of those real life stories of people surmounting tremendous odds, becoming better persons...blah blah, it seems so straight forward. Like it was some great healing epiphany that fixed everything and there was never any bad ever again...the end. So naturally someone (like myself) will remain under the assumption that we have yet to reach that pivotal point.
We all seem to be suffering from this delusion making life all about getting past the present. Perfection and higher understanding are like the carrot dangling in front of us our whole existence. Somehow we are supposed to reach a point of limitless satisfaction when we can look and say its all done, and feel totally complete in ourselves.
I have lived like that, survived by this for most of my life. "If only I get over this one thing, my life will be fine." "If this situation just goes away my fragile self esteem will be totally healed." An endless series of hurdles stretching out for an eternity. Sure each step has ultimately made my existence much more enjoyable (MUCH MORE), but not a single one of them has been the great fix all I was waiting for.
And thus the truth is revealed, there is no such point in life. Poll any of these authors and ask them how life has been after their book, I doubt they could tell you that they have never again suffered heartbreak or despair. There ain't no way that they have been without the occasional crisis or general bad day. Life is life, and it goes on with its ups and downs no matter how many great epiphanies you go through. To be entirely without any pain is to be dead.
I say this now because I am at the place myself. I have jump/crashed through my own hurdles and have reached the place I long held to be the point in my life where all things would be good. But I still cry silently late at night. I get angry and feel destructive just as I used to. I'm stuck still with the same overwhelming fear and anxiety of doing wrong and being wrong.
Bottom line, I'm still the same fucked up me. That sounds sad and depressing, but it really isn't. You see once we get past this obsession with perfection and societies need to tell us we have to be full finished people at the start of adulthood, we can see the purer reason for everything. The point of all these challenges of life is to grow from them. Make the best of the things you cannot control, do the best with the things you can, and strive to know the difference between the two (sound vaguely familiar?).
We all seem to be suffering from this delusion making life all about getting past the present. Perfection and higher understanding are like the carrot dangling in front of us our whole existence. Somehow we are supposed to reach a point of limitless satisfaction when we can look and say its all done, and feel totally complete in ourselves.
I have lived like that, survived by this for most of my life. "If only I get over this one thing, my life will be fine." "If this situation just goes away my fragile self esteem will be totally healed." An endless series of hurdles stretching out for an eternity. Sure each step has ultimately made my existence much more enjoyable (MUCH MORE), but not a single one of them has been the great fix all I was waiting for.
And thus the truth is revealed, there is no such point in life. Poll any of these authors and ask them how life has been after their book, I doubt they could tell you that they have never again suffered heartbreak or despair. There ain't no way that they have been without the occasional crisis or general bad day. Life is life, and it goes on with its ups and downs no matter how many great epiphanies you go through. To be entirely without any pain is to be dead.
I say this now because I am at the place myself. I have jump/crashed through my own hurdles and have reached the place I long held to be the point in my life where all things would be good. But I still cry silently late at night. I get angry and feel destructive just as I used to. I'm stuck still with the same overwhelming fear and anxiety of doing wrong and being wrong.
Bottom line, I'm still the same fucked up me. That sounds sad and depressing, but it really isn't. You see once we get past this obsession with perfection and societies need to tell us we have to be full finished people at the start of adulthood, we can see the purer reason for everything. The point of all these challenges of life is to grow from them. Make the best of the things you cannot control, do the best with the things you can, and strive to know the difference between the two (sound vaguely familiar?).
