I'm okay. I'll be okay. I don't really like that I'm alive and have to live and try to find something to make it meaningful. It's annoying. Why can't I just be the northerly wind, or sea spray, or the core of an exoplanet, and then when that is over, I can just find something else to be, and after the universe fades, I find myself surrounded by the souls of everything, and we reminisce about the fun we've had, and then coalesce into a new universe to do it again and try to make it better somehow? Or something intangible like...well, I was going to say a color, but that is tangible. A song? No, that is vibrational energy. Math? No that is just a human technology to think beyond innate human ability. Hmmm... I don't know. I guess if I was the wind, I wouldn't have thoughts. Would that be nice, to exist without thoughts? I suppose part of me does that now, the fleshy self I am. Is the hair in my hairbrush me? My exhaled breathe? Perhaps I exist as so many things already. No, that's nonsense. I am in this body. Except...it's hard to define a border. Am I my skin? My hair? My tears? My microbiota?
It's very annoying that I want to find beauty in these things, but that feels...illusory, fake, not genuine. But why would beauty be less real simply because it takes effort to see? Am I not allowed to appreciate a sunrise unless someone else pries open my eyelids for me? Nonsense.
I sense the part of me that is unwilling to find beauty. We disagree about some fundamental things. They're afraid that if I find beauty, I'll stop seeking it, and eventually have nothing beautiful in my life. But if I refuse to ever see beauty, how will I recognize it when I find it? And if shitty people are allowed to find purpose and meaning in trapping people in poverty, am I not allowed to find purpose and meaning in the way my air leaves me to mingle with the atmosphere, like some kind of offspring, which will feed into the carbon cycle and be turned into a carbohydrate and then have some unknown fate, perhaps being eaten, perhaps being buried in the ground for millions of years--why not enjoy breathing, especially when it's easy to breathe? Why not enjoy that I had the opportunity to get my deviated septum fixed so I don't struggle to get air? Isn't that wonderful? Of course it's also horrific in a way, that an organism that requires air could have its own body block it's airway, but does that take away from the beauty?
Is it ever wrong to find beauty in something? Yes, I think. I do not think there is any beauty in, say, killing a spider because you found it on your wall. Some might find it beautiful that they have the power to control their home and rid it from invaders, but I think that is a misuse of the ability to see beauty. But I don't think there's anything wrong with enjoying life. So why does part of me resist? "So you keep looking for it." And when I find it, will you let me enjoy it then, or snatch it away once more? No, you're mistaken about your own motives. We talked about this. There's something deeper fueling you, hiding, either to protect the ego or to protect itself. Let me see it. We can decide it's fate together.
Not all such requests are answers, but it's worth a try.
I think being happy and finding beauty will help me find more beauty and happiness. If I am sad, I am easier to overwhelm, easier to irritate, and I tend to need more sleep and avoid people. How does that help me find happiness? What about the times I've had to hide in my room because I am so miserable that I can't bring myself to make anyone bear the burden of my presence? How does that help me?
I don't think it's about beauty. Hmm...once, I made a list of things that I felt motivated all actions and wills, conscious and subconscious... What was on that list? Safety, adoration, control, freedom, power? Perhaps. I remember they interlinked often, which made it hard to figure out how to describe them. Control and power and safety are so interlinked. Adoration is often a wish to be given the other things. Freedom is power and control, yet requires letting go of the power associated with responsibility and control, and is paradoxical and confusing.
Do I feel in control if I deny myself happiness? Does it free me from the burden of looking, of trying, of spending energy, and failing over and over? Perhaps that is it. Perhaps I am tired, but admitting I am tired is giving into powerlessness which wounds the ego, so it is easier to pretend I am just refusing to find beauty so that I keep looking, when what I am really doing is insisting that beauty finds me, so that I can rest and wait for it. Freedom is such a paradox. Infantile freedom is freedom from responsibility. Needs are provided. Problems are solved. Someone puts food into you, and takes away your poop. Yet you are not free to move around, to be awake or asleep, to decide what to eat, to control your environment at all. You're free from the burden of taking care of yourself, but subjected to the whims of those who do it for you. Meanwhile, adult freedom--wait, is that rude? Or at the very least, dismissive of the experience of disabled people? Hmm...yeah, sort of. Or...perhaps not. After all, I think one of the pains of disability is being trapped in that infantile state. And accommodations allow a person to achieve adult freedom. I don't think "adult" is the right word, though. Autonomous? That might be a better one. Either way, it is the freedom to control your environment, but that comes with the responsibility of needing to do so. It feels less free, yet it is preferred. Frankly I think that is a debate of its own, considering that we are social and need help and also most people like to be taken care of or have help. The richest people in the world spend their time and energy making sure there are people taking care of them, cooking their meals and cleaning their messes. Is that not some strange will to return to infantile freedom while retaining the power of autonomous freedom? I don't know.
Well...regardless...I don't think it's wrong to develop the skill of finding happiness and beauty. I don't need to wait for it. I'm allowed to find it.
Ahhh...an insecurity...if you wait for the goodness to be given to you, it means you deserve it. That's not true, of course, but it greatly soothes the ego.
I am allowed to find it, and in fact, it is a good use of my autonomy to do so. Hmm...a hard lesson to internalize.
