Kamu perlu tahu kalau ada dua dunia yang berbeda: dunia nyata dan dunia di pikiranmu. Keduanya ga sama, dan yang ada di pikiranmu belum tentu sesuai dengan kenyataan.
Dunia nyata itu apa yang bisa kamu lihat, sentuh, dan rasakan langsung. Ini adalah tempat kita hidup, berinteraksi, dan berbagi pengalaman. Dunia nyata punya aturannya sendiri, dan kita harus menyesuaikan diri.
Sementara dunia dipikiranmu adalah hasil dari pikiran, perasaan, dan imajinasi. Di sini, kamu bisa bebas memikirkan apa aja, mengeksplorasi kemungkinan, dan menciptakan sesuatu yang baru. Dunia di pikiranmu sangat fleksibel dan bebas, tapi juga bisa membuat kamu khawatir jika tidak diatur dengan baik.
Dengan memahami perbedaan antara keduanya, kamu bisa lebih siap menghadapi ujian hidup dan membuat keputusan yang lebih bijak. Jadi, penting untuk membedakan antara dunia nyata dan dunia di pikiranmu, agar kamu tidak terjebak dalam ekspektasi yang tidak realistis.
"Love is a subtle endeavor that does not speak out loud; yet bears no secrets. Without exertion, but a nudging to follow it into an unknown warming embrace of mutual understanding." ~ Mise-n-abyme
1.) | Be unapologetically yourself
Many will want to try and change you to be more like them out of fear of being wrong; people feel threatened when they are confronted with ideas and beliefs which contradict their own. Try not to take it the wrong way, realize it is out of fear for their safety and comfort. Human nature tends to seeks out comfort zones out of safety and survival, when a different opinion contradicts our own it can place our minds in a mode of survival and to 'defend' ourselves in order to feel safe.
2.) | Help others when you can...
Help a person who is truly in need— anyone who is in need of food, water, or shelter; provide what you can if you can. Help out with little things as well, you never know when a small and kind gesture can change a person's day (or life) around. If a person sends you kindness and you have appreciated it, pass the kindness on to someone else; keep the energy going. That small kind gesture just snowballed into a large kind gesture which has helped many people have a better day, as many have continued to pass the torch down to others from a simple kind act.
We are creatures of habit, the more we help others and the more we see others help others; the more positive habits will be reinforced into our communities.
3.) | ...But don't be afraid to help yourself as well
There will be times that you may need to help yourself, be there for yourself if you can. You do not always need to be positive and happy; this can actually be harmful to a person's well-being, as you are not being apologetically yourself. Be okay with not being okay somedays— do not try to fake-it-until-you-make-it, accept completely what you are feeling; come to terms with what you feel, accept it for what it is.. in time, you will grow. Do not worry about when you will grow, just like a plant or a tree doesn't worry about when it will mature. Just like a farmer doesn't dig their seeds up everyday after planting them in the ground to check to see if they are growing. You have done your part, whatever you resist will persist regardless; faith and trust is what is needed at that moment.
Some things we just cannot control, we just have to try to make the best of a situation with the level of our ability; continue to water and nurture these seeds when needed, rest on the days when mother nature provides water and nurturing for these seeds— rest when life takes care of some of your worries naturally. If something does not work out as you planned, it was not meant to be at that moment, rather it was what was needed for something which has yet to come.
Some seeds may not mature or grow to their potential. Stand strong, be patient; if you are truly working towards something with effort you will see the fruits of this effort later in life. A farmer does not plant a fruit tree in the morning and expects it to bear its fruit overnight. The more patient one is, the sweeter the fruit will be; as the fruit will naturally fall at peak ripeness when it fully matures.
The beauty comes from witnessing the growth of the fruit tree throughout the years before it reaches maturity.
4.) | Be honest with yourself (and with others) to the best of your ability
When we lie to ourselves, we only cheat ourselves in the process. We may have reached our destination more quickly by being dishonest, but at what cost? We may have gained the prize; but is our conscience clean? We may have gained external freedom, but what about internal freedom?
When you cheat yourself— you will remember it, and when you reflect on those memories; you will not see the sacrifices in which you made to earn what you sought after, instead you will remember all of the times you have cheated yourself during that time in what could have, rather than what should have.
Being dishonest with yourself will breed self-pity if an individual has the self-awareness.
5.) | Be okay with being selfish from time to time
No matter how altruistic a person will be, we are all selfish to a degree; we all need food, water, and shelter to survive. We will have to put ourselves first in order to replenish these necessities, sometimes we can have a fear of insecurity if we are faced with a situation when either of these things appear to be in jeopardy to us. Nobody will live our life for us, thus nobody can change our life for ourselves. Only we can do this for ourselves. People can help us along our journey, but it is ultimately up to us to continue when there is no help.
If you do not take the time to live your life, naturally you will not progress in your own individual life. We all have our own personal journey and goals, it is our responsibility to fulfill them; do not let other people persuade you that your journey is not important or not a priority.
You have the judgement to know when you need to take the time to be busy establishing your life. Just remember to keep this in check, don't go too overboard with treating yourself:
Excess pleasure often breeds suffering.
6.) | Be curious
A person is only as youthful as their curiosity, having a sense of wonder and wanting to learn new things will continue to help us grow as a person— not just academically, but introspectively, intuitively; emotionally, and spiritually.
Being curious and asking questions allows creativity to flow, and prevents complacency.
7.) | Be particular with what you consume physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually
Such things all correlate together, if we aren't eating well and are deficient in vitamins and mineral; we will be deficient and weaker physically. If we are not physically well, we will not be mentally well. If we are not mentally well, we will not be emotionally well. If we are not emotionally well, we will not be spiritually well.
What we consume mentally also has an effect on who we are and our mental state. Think of your body as a temple, and your mind seated in-between this temple, it is of great respect if we treat our temporary body as we would if we were visiting somebody's house. We would not want to leave blankets and pillows and the house unkempt and track mud across a person's floor.
Treat yourself and your body with the utmost respect to the best of your ability. Drink enough water to hydrate you when you can, get enough sleep when possible; move your body when you can. Our body and organs are made up of mostly water, more than 60% of water, staying hydrated is crucial to our health and should not be taken lightly.
8.) | Take accountability for your life and your actions
When we do not take responsibility for living out our life and purpose, we suffer. It can be easy to want to help other's when it is us who needs the help in our life, life is not always guaranteed; but we can guarantee life when we decide to actively take ownership of it for ourselves.
Life is a seemingly endless series of problem-solving when things do not go according to plan; and usually life does not go according to how we perceived or expected it to go. Sometimes we may need to take a detour and improvise, this could mean our plans that we have for ourselves may take longer to accomplish than what we anticipated, and that's okay. By taking responsibility for finding another way, soon our goal will be close as we envisioned it to be like before. The sooner you take responsibility for your life, the better it will be.
This is where intuition comes into play, when life throws us a curveball, use your inner guide to point you in the direction to get back on the path.
9.) | Take what resonates with you, and leave out the rest which doesn't
The world is filled with knowledge and wisdom in every corner, many of which has different degrees of understanding. This does not mean we must try to understand everything if it does not interest or have an impact on our life, if something does not peak our interest; it is best to leave it be and find something that does for the sake of valuing time.
It is good to try new things, though it is good to know when something does not resonate with you and move on.
10.) | Don't forget to have fun
Take time to enjoy the process in life, we can sometimes get too caught up in progress that we forget to enjoy the intermissions of life; the great subtleties. They can be easy to miss, as it comes and then goes as quickly as it did when it arrived.
We sometimes miss the opportunities to take everything in, such as taking time to look around and enjoy all of the beauty of a nice day during our short walk to our mailbox, or enjoying the aroma and comfort of your coffee on a cold and peaceful morning, or spare time to watch a thunderstorm as it passes, looking at the patterns of the lightning and the sound of rain, or perhaps finally planning a trip to do something adventurous after a long series of hard work during the year. The main theme being taking some time out of our busy lives to do something that isn't very serious.
Enjoy the little moments that you can— you never know when you will have another opportunity to do those things again!
Man sacrifices his health to make money, then he sacrifices his money to recuperate his health. He is so anxious about the future, that he doesn't enjoy the present. And he lives as if he's never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.
"I'm happy when I'm with you" is a sweet confession but for me this is the most painful one. Just think about how dependent you are. That how helpless you are in love that you can't even stay happy in your own company. Love is an important need of human life i know, but that anxiety, helplessness and dependency, which lead to loneliness and unhappiness, make it hard for me to love someone. It scares me more than anything.
my self-conceptual journey has been a chaotic one. starting last year, i've been trying to be who i am; moreover, trying to find who i am. throughout my childhood, i've based my core beliefs and goals on a defined set of attributes upon which i've formed my personality. back then, i thought this would be enough. if i stuck to these core principles and outlooks then i would be true to myself. in reality, personality runs much deeper than this.
i first started contemplating this when, after covid and subsequent hours a day spent on tik tok and other social media platforms for over a year, i noticed my friends and i acting the same way. not because we spent time together, but because of the personality traits made "popular" on tik tok and instagram. this almost immediately catapulted me down a spiral of trying to figure out who i was outside of social media's sphere of influence.
as a person, i'm very hesitant towards and aware of society and its' all-consuming nature. how it seeps into our opinions and affects how we view certain things. how we presume we have one idea, but upon hearing the opinion of the masses we immediately change our entire belief system. this stretches many aspects of life, from fashion to things as vital as laws and ethical justifications.
while trying to figure out who i am, i thought: "why don't i just do whatever the fuck i want to do and say whatever the fuck i want to say". i started to incorporate the idea of optimistic nihilism into my life and thought that if i acted as if nothing mattered, then the way i behaved would surely be authentically me. and oh baby, if only it were that easy. because at first look, even when one thinks they're doing this, there's a good chance they're still doing what they "want to do" in the context of other people and society's judgmental eyes. this is at least true to me, a people pleaser, in how i believed i was doing what i wanted to do when in actuality i was acting in a way that was best received by others. studying psychology has only cemented this retrospection, as i've been learning that our sense of self is formed by unconscious feedback received by the people we interact with. this led to me outwardly posing opinions i didn't truly believe in and saying things i didn't actually mean. this was made clear in an interaction i had the other day, where a friend presented one opinion to which i agreed, and upon my agreement, he reminded me that earlier i had said the exact opposite. later that night, i traced the steps of the opinion i had first stated and discerned that it was one i never even believed. this exchange made me question the nature of the ways i behave and the things i say in social interactions.
following this, i've become determined to be more mindful, and instead of defining who i am with concrete characteristics, simply take the time to respond according to what i actually think. however, when throughout your life you've formed opinions in light of others, it can be extremely difficult to think of yourself outside of society's grasp. this may present one with an existential conflict, the dreaded question of "who am i, really?"
in my educational track, we have to take a history of psychology class where we learn about the philosophers and their philosophies that lead to what we now know as modern-day behavioral and cognitive psychology. descartes is a dominant figure in this, and his axiom "i think, therefore i am" has never been more true to me than it is now. this axiom has more history behind it than i'm able to cover in this essay, so i'll let britannica summarize it: "because even if an all-powerful demon were to try to deceive him into thinking that he exists when he does not, he would have to exist in order for the demon to deceive him." and i think this applies almost exactly to the impact of society on our self-concept. in this case, society is the demon "tricking" you into thinking a certain thing, but the mere fact that you can think proves that you are your own entity, capable of existing out of its range of influence.
now, to apply this axiom directly: if you give yourself time to think (outside of the range of society, which i acknowledge is more complicated than simply stepping out of its reach), then you give yourself time to form your own ideas on the situations you find yourself in. instead of being a perception -> response robot, responding the way that you've learned is best received by other people, you can think: "how do i actually feel about this? how do i think is actually the best way of handling this?" and that is how you can begin to handle things in ways that best suit you, as a unique entity.
going a step further with this, i propose the buddhist truth of the ever-changing self, anatta. this belief states that we humans don't possess a non-changing soul, and the personality that we think is solid, we only cling to out of the fear of change. clinging to this assumed personality is what begins our spiral away from our actual beliefs, whether they're conscious or unconscious.
to clarify, i'll provide an example: say you've been raised to believe that stealing is wrong. this is what your parents have taught you, and what you've grown to believe in yourself. now, after years of believing this, it's now developed into a core ethical principle. this is, until you find yourself in an ethical dilemma. in a store, you catch someone stealing food, and they explain to you that their family is starving and they have no money for a meal. this leaves you feeling a cognitive dissonance. you've been raised with the idea that this is wrong, but you still maintain your empathy for this person. a person who was afraid of changing their personality would go down the route of judging this person, or even more extreme and reporting them. a person aware of the ever-changing soul would lean on their empathy and let them go, changing their belief to now accommodate situations such as these, or even reframing their principle altogether.
of course, this is only one situation among the many that we encounter daily. but, this ideology can transfer to any situation in which one may find themselves needing to reevaluate themselves or their attitude.
so, after the many months of introspection i've oh so neatly laid out in this short essay, i've come to a (still very open-to-adaptation) conclusion that to be true to yourself outside of the influence of others, it is best to employ all of the methods i mentioned. optimistic nihilism, the axiom of "i think, therefore i am", and the buddhist belief of anatta, all together. i've found that adopting these philosophies/ideas in isolation has led to confusion and feeling like a knotted ball of yarn that just gets more knotted as you try to untangle it. however, that's not to say that i'm untangled, in the slightest. the journey to self-discovery is lifelong and requires thought and consideration, but it's worth it.
i've decided to write an essay on this because i've been seeing that many people are confused with who they are and who they want to be, especially on social media. i hope this essay provides some comfort that it's okay, and your journey is in the hands of the wind now. let it carry you.
disclaimer: i am in no way deeming myself an all-knowing figure. this is only what i've concluded from my own research and contemplation.
okay, maybe by the end of this essay you feel a bit of information overload, especially if you've never considered these things before. so, i'll wrap it up in a nice little bow.
TL;DR:
society is an all-consuming beast who, to reach who we are, we need to escape.
utilizing optimistic nihilism to achieve an accurate self-concept is only useful when utilizing it in a mindful way.
descartes' axiom "i think, therefore i am" is applicable even now in the perspective of society, and to be yourself you have to think before you speak.
the buddhist truth of anatta frees you from gripping onto your self-assumed personality.
