Dilemma

Video: The Great Illusion - Syd Banks

Three Principles Global Community: webinar page

laureat wrote:to redirect you somewhere else like who? Like someone who aprove your defensive state of mind?

Our feelings are simple :
You hate you become depressed, have no peace of mind, have no happiness and vice versa

So im teaching you how it works: and all you do is hate and say no your unprofessional redirect me somewhere else

I'm not being given much to love. I'm at the point where it's not me saying "I don't want to die." More so just saying "Anyone got a reason why I should stay alive on this dead planet?"

quietvoice wrote:links

Is this a spam bot?

[Redacted] wrote:

quietvoice wrote:links

Is this a spam bot?

No. Can you see that I now have 1744 posts in this forum? You asked to be directed to a site for professional help that won't be asking for much money. This freely accessible site fits the bill, in my opinion.

Hi There

I have been where you are right now. I don't want to make too many assumptions as to how exactly you spend each hour of your day or what sources of information you consume -- but I will tell you what I was doing and how I felt when I was your age and you can decide whether you can draw any comparisons or not.

At 21 I was in university and I lived alone in an apartment (I didn't want to live on campus because at the time I detested people). At the time I was consuming any and all books, movies, news which I deemed interesting and usually the stuff I read consciously or unconsciously fed the narrative I was constructing within my mind about how the world worked. I knew lots of stuff. I knew all about the evolution of man and the origin of the west and the east and the travesties that occurred during colonialism and the aftermath of globalism which we yet contend with. The destruction of the rain forest and modern day rubber plantation slaves and dead orangutans and genocide and all that stuff was the bread and butter fueling my daily disappointment and hopelessness about the state of the world. Whether I knew it or not I was purposefully exposing myself to the very things that would feed the negative ideas I had about the world around me. Now we could go pretty deep into the neat chemical and hormonal processes that were occurring when I was intentionally subjecting myself to things that made me sad, but that is probably more complicated than we need to go. The only thing that needs to be noted was that I felt very much like you feel about the world, and that I do not feel like that anymore.

If you looked back on my origin story there was plenty of stuff that made me bitter and dejected and formed my world view at the time, and that stuff was probably the main contributor to why I was feeding such a negative world view. But what does that really matter? Because the bad stuff I knew about the world was real, that stuff actually happened and is happening, so what does it matter about my own feelings when the world is really, truly, bad? How could I, how can I feel good about it?

That is a tough nut to crack.

I will tell you what I think will happen to you. Right now I am assuming it is safe to say that you don't feel good. What will likely happen if you continue to live your life exactly as you are living it right now, and think the same thoughts you are thinking right now, is that you will continue to feel bad. And if you continue to feel bad, you will likely get tired of feeling bad. That is what happened to me. And when I got tired enough of feeling bad, I had to get real with myself and ask myself some serious questions. Questions like:

What is it that I want out of life?
If I could feel a different way, how would I feel?

But most importantly:

What am I actually doing to make my life more enjoyable?

The last one is the hardest to fully confront, because for the most part people who are not enjoying their lives, whether they like it or not, are responsible for why they are not enjoying it. Yes it is true that people have higher life satisfactions in certain countries and places, but the conundrum of how to be happy is the ultimate problem in life and everyone has to face it one way or another wherever they were born.

I note that you said your ultimate goal is not to be happy. I wonder if you know what the meaning of the word happy is? It sounds like you think happy means something that you don't consider to be a good feeling. Maybe you think it means being relaxed or having a family or going on a cruise or watching TV, and you don't want these things, so if those things are happiness then you don't want it. Well I don't want those things either. Those things aren't happiness to me. Happiness for me is the feeling of being driven to create the work and art that I want to create, and to feel hope about the things I want to be hopeful about, and to have connections with the type of people that I admire and am attracted to, and to experience adventure and life changing experiences. For me it is running for miles until my body feels like it is going to self-destruct and walking in the moonlight with someone I love. Happiness isn't just a generic experience that you are supposed to resign yourself to. Happiness is living the life you believe you should be living, and experiencing the world that you would want to experience, and meeting and connecting with the people you would want to know.

The realization that allowed me to be "happy" was knowing that the world and the narrative I had constructed for myself when I was 21 was just that, a narrative. The world was not terrible, I was just afraid to make the world into what I wanted it to be. All people were not terrible, I was just afraid to reach out and find the people that I wanted to be around. Life was not terrible, I was just too scared to live it the way I wanted to live it.

I was afraid all the forests would disappear and I couldn't do anything to save them. So I bought thirty acres of land and i keep it as is so I can go there whenever I want and I know that I did what I could do to preserve the forest. I was sick of being alone and hating people so I decided to reach out to people I didn't even know just to see if they wanted to play a game of ping pong or anything at all. I ended up meeting my best friend that way and consequently most of the best friends (and girlfriend) which I still have. I was afraid the world sucked and not enough people were doing any good, so I do good things for people, when I can, because it makes me feel hopeful.

I don't know if any of this resonates with you, but what you have said definitely resonates with 21 year old me (I am 31 year old me, now). I don't expect anything I've said to magically cure you, but I do strongly suggest that you consider the very real possibility that the views you hold about the world right now are not the end all and be all of life and that there is a happiness for you out there and it is real and it is unique for you and once you get a glimpse of it you will understand that life is actually freaking awesome. Until you get there though, you need to do some serious self-care and consider digging deep and addressing the issues that are making you feel bad. I strongly recommend you keep trying to see therapists until you find one that works (I saw one when I was in uni and she was terrible, so I feel your pain), as there are good ones out there who can help you. You need to figure out how to love yourself and confront the fact that you don't feel good and make a game plan on how to live the life you want to live. Feel free to message me if you want to chat either about psychology, or just world issues.

forestcritter wrote:[edit]

Well I'm becoming less keen on the idea that I need a goal in life. I feel like a life of never being where you want to be would be miserable.