it always boils down to learning via ‘ships of all sorts. connections. perceptions. explains so much about how i live. i’m a completely relational human being.
what i’ve observed/experienced/realized over time is that so many people in this town (or maybe just at this point in their journey) are lonely to some extent. which is crazy to me because i can never recall a time in my life where there was such a collective sense of involuntary isolation. the twenty-somethings plagued by unmet expectations in all realms. it’s such a competitive place and time, with this undeniable and unspoken system of alienation where we all feed into trying to seem more popular, desirable and accomplished than we are. generally not with malicious intent, but rather just to keep up with the joneses, to have x, y and z as a testament to the fact that we’re not some wannabe try-hards like “the rest of them.” we validate our worth by such worldly standards, desired by all and achieved by few. we’re busy drowning in the unattainable…and we allow ourselves to.
this competitive social construct…it’s like it’s gone just a biiiit too far where it becomes destructive rather than motivating or encouraging. i wonder (in that little utopian brain of mine where the impossible is allowed) what it would be like if it were just wiped clean, replaced by a system where we help each other solely because we care, because we love, because we believe in the cause of others - intrinsic motivation from our heart, rather than selfish motivation from our heads - to not use people as stepping stones or chalk situations up as failures if no personal gain is achieved. the current just fosters such resentment that will make all us youngsters so horribly bitter at a not-so-old age. too many of us just drinking the kool aid. we should probably never ever drink the kool aid.
we were created in the image of something much greater than ourselves. so on the topic of standards and bearing a certain image…forget that not.
