2017-07-14 - Some rambling about things and stuff. Maybe I had something in mind before I wrote this, hence the title, but it came out odd.
Children are born with a kind of innocence, but they also have a truly advantageous perspective on life and the people around them. When I was little I saw in adults the kinds of frailties I always thought would be overcome with time. I thought that adults would have long-struggled with the lack of understanding and courage which children face. I aspired to adults until I learned to see that these qualities were commonplace.
Lacking the innocent faith which most children seem to have in adults -- parents or role models -- I struggled to find some sort of solid perspective from which I could grasp this life stuff. I think a lot of what a person goes through in life is a struggle to find some sort of meaning and placement in life.
Over time, a person learns how preparation and understanding are real advantages for facing certain randomnesses in life. The passing and learning of knowledge is something that goes beyond our inborn abilities. It is something which can be sought in various ways regardless of one's luck or lot.
But when faced with the notion that the qualities which adults grow up with don't appear to have resolved the issues they had when they were children, it has appeared to me that those qualities are lacking. If adults grow up and they still have have so much of the confusion and purposelessness of children, then what good are they are role models? What good would their knowledge be?
That is a limited -- a child's -- perspective. Yes, there are intricacies in life which adults have spent their efforts in preparation of and perhaps the focus is not on the child-like situations but instead on adult-like situations. Perhaps there is good reason which a mere child could not grasp from their perspective.
It's been a while now, and I've grown up a little. Not much, but a little. I've at least been able to consider and absorb various adult-like qualities. I can say from my new perspective and capacities that no.. adults still don't get it.
What I see everyone wanting is the same thing children have always wanted. They want a sort of love and assurance. Because of the various ways things have worked, they end up having the need for assurance cultivated within them. Parents care and love their children, maybe because that's what they wanted when they were young. Children learn to lean on, depend on, and want that love. I know it's an insultingly basic way of looking at it.. but I mean to illuminate that there is a sort of need to offload ones worries into the hands of another. This need is even and especially in adults.
And yet because I know about this sort of thing, and distrust this sort of thing, I don't participate in it. For various reasons, I can see the fnords.
But beyond that, my complete lack of faith in a role model concept means that I will pick apart and integrate the strengths from what another would call a model.. and that I would rather absorb and learn to wield and project those qualities than to give myself away to faith in those qualities as locked away in another.
But have I decided upon cutting open the goose that lays golden eggs? I can't tell. All I know is that these people others call role models, and the qualities others aspire towards are neither making the role models nor their fans happy.
I say it this way because I see how there are other and deeper personal qualities which are actually the driving forces for happiness. Because, at least I believe, I have learned to see past certain layers to at least try to understand underlying motivations.. I'm able to glean little snippets of inspiration. At the very least, since I've actually made an effort to understand my needs, and pay attention to the more underlying needs of others,
Ugh.. how do I seguay this back into what I was supposed to be writing about.
Because I experience life with so little of the motivations which drive others, I'm extraordinarily unhappy. Rather, that is, happiness is something which is solely internal and those fires are not easily stoked by external events.
Don't get me wrong.. I've fallen in love. Boy have I ever fallen in love. I've also had my heart broken in one way or another by every woman I've ever known. I suppose it's because even though there is that suspicion I wrote of above, I still have this undying quality of innocent optimism. It's terrible, really.
That underlying innocence is the child-like nature I've held onto even through all the hell of growing up. It's the only thing I've always had, which I can actually continue to cling to. That, and an undying lust for a sort of self-understanding.
In the end, I still want what everyone else wants. I want help. I want to have unwavering faith in some complementary something.
This could mean any number of things. In fact, some of those things might be interchangeable in various ways. Maybe I should just keep searching.. searching for the other pill so I can get back into the matrix. Maybe I should blind myself to the fnords and let myself be lulled into sleepwalking.
But I don't think I'll ever fall for it.
Last updated 2023-03-19 at 05:23:43