| maturing? wtf? |
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| Sep. 18th, 2006 | 04:50 pm | ||||
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I'm still angry at the world, but no longer helpless. My capacity to love has been restored. I have a sense of personal responsibility to my world and the people in it. I am motivated to do something with my life. I want to educate my friends and peers, help them open their eyes, lift the veil of the media-fed propaganda and a spiritually violent cultural cosmology. I want people to live their lives, care about each other, make conscious decisions and take responsibility. Last year I was locked in a world of need, angst, loneliness and apathy with a broken heart and absent mind. I hibernated in my nasty basement, spending all my free hours drugged up on this virtual reality called the Internet. All of my social interactions were via MSN unless I was informed of a social obligation in my network of local friends. I went to class, sometimes. I ate too much food. I had no job, no money, and no motivation to work. Went out to bars by myself and ignored everyone there. Sometimes I would make a comitment to a student group at school, but typically the turnout was very low for any event I led. I didn't do homework. I didn't bother studying for tests. I sat on my ass, listening to pirated music, locked in the world of picture taking and blogging, unable to do anything productive but prepare myself unhealthy food to try to fill the emptiness inside. The internet is the worst drug going. You can use it as a tool, but soon it becomes your social life, your entertainment, your means of self-expression, your errands, your creative projects, your way of brushing away boredom, though mostly it doesn't work, and in general your escape from reality. Hours go by when you're sitting by the screen clicking and typing and scrolling. You eat, sleep, and log on. It's fascinating, but horrifying. I have since liberated myself from this evil addiction. I will not be getting internet access in my new apartment. I do not have a television set, either. I have no need for the constant feed of information that I'm not looking for. I don't want to watch what's on instead of finding the things I'm actually interested in. I don't want screaming advertisements in my head, telling me "You want this... you need this!" instead of making up my own mind and my own desires and values. I don't want to live vicariously through the lives of television characters, don't want to watch them do amazing things while I twiddle my thumbs and eat Cheetos wishing I was the one doing those wonderful things. Let me tell you something, I've realized that the only way to get through life happily is to form social bonds with everyone around you, whether you like them or not. First of all, you don't know if you like them or not without forming a social connection to them. Stop being afraid of strangers. Secondly, people like you much more if you're motivated in life, and want to do fun things. Guaranteed, you'll find someone who wants to do what you want to do, if you just open your eyes, talk to the people you're attracted to (not necessarily sexual attraction, you're drawn in other ways) and make plans. The world doesn't have to run on individual prosperity, it can run on networking just as easily. Groups of people doing good things is much better than individuals wishing they had the power to do good things. I see a lot of people doing what they want to do, all it takes is leadership, initiation and patience. I have no more respect for lazy slackers. If you're stuck in a job you hate with no free time, it's you're own fault for not making the social connections to get you into a better position. Yes, you have to know somebody to be somebody. The best way to meet people who will help make your dreams come true is to do what you love doing. Start by yourself if you have to, but do it. Busk on the street, sell your artwork in a lawn sale, build a treehouse in the park, whatever it is that mirrors your goal on a small scale. AND don't be afraid to approach people you see doing weird shit like that. They want your attention for a reason. People need each other. We're too segregated and individualized today, we're taught to fear our neighbors and hate the church, we follow a silent code of subculture racism and we believe that the friends we already have are the only family we need. We need to stop restricting ourselves to cliques of hate-filled hibernation and spark a social movement to be more friendly, compassionate and supportive of the people we care about. We need to care about people, so that they will care about us. If you find yourself in isolation, unable to associate with the people you were once involved with, worried that nobody likes you or that nobody will give you the time of day, you are wrong. Feel free to cry about it on my shoulder. I'll be pissed that you're such a social wimp, but I'd rather have a blubbering outcast in my hands than watch society fragment itself. Being "shy of" or "better than" people you don't know is supporting the growth of a national prison. It's contributing to the economy of fear and hatred that will eventually result in total surveillance and conformity. We need to talk to the people we think we have nothing in common with. We need to educate each other. This means you need to stop hating the whiny emo kid down the street, because he's actually an ally you haven't met yet. It's people like you that make kids become lonely and feel persecuted. Talk to the preppy bitch up the road and find out that she's actually controlled by her parents and informed by a capitalist notion of the good life and following the american dream because it's all she knows. Form a new place to hang out and invite people you wouldn't normally invite. I'm positive that you'll learn way more about yourself and your perceptions will change as you change the perceptions of those people. Don't fear rejection, people love attention and if they tell you to fuck off, you've probably done them a favour anyway. I'm becoming much more spiritually aware as time goes on, I understand much more of the forces at work behind my existential crises, and I suffer much less from the boredom, apathy, sickness and dependancies I once had. I don't hate anymore, I don't fear nearly as much, and I think it's very positive that people are doing what they want to be doing... even if I don't agree that it's a good idea. As long as you're making a conscious decision about your actions and not just acting because it's something to do, or someone told you to do it. We need to start taking care of each other, loving each other, respecting those we can't love, and helping to educate those we don't agree with. We can reverse the direction of this shitty society if we take action. We are all responsible for ourselves, for each other and for the space we take up. I promise, you'll be having a much better time if you don't throw away your responsibility and hide from the problems that exist in your world. The problems are your personal responsibility. You have the choice to change things until you like them, and you have the choice to ignore things until they get worse. I don't want to hear you complain about anything unless you're willing to work together with others to fix it. Encourage each other. Thank each other. Celebrate together. The power is in your hands, open your eyes and make a choice... Consume. Conform. Obey. or Think. Act. Now. Wake up. |
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