Hustled Through Life

Most people, sad to say, are too rushed, frightened, and confused to think about what they really want out of life. They are hustled through school, forced into long-term decisions before they’re ready to handle them, then held to those decisions. Eventually they get old and find time to think, but even then they can’t bear to question too deeply. For an intelligent, creative, and expansive species like ours, this rush to nowhere is among the greatest of evils. And yet it continues, mostly unquestioned. At no point in the usual Western life do we stop, take some serious time for ourselves, and think about the overall:

• • What’s life about anyway? What’s the goal?

• • What’s the purpose of a career? Why should I care about it above all else?

• • Does the big system really deserve my wealth and blood?

• • Should I have a family? Why or why not?

• • What do I think is fun? Does it really coincide with beer ads?

• • Why are people driven to be like everyone else?

We don’t address such questions. Rather, we’re pushed past them. As a result, we see little motivation in the modern West, save for the basest types Status and Fear The two big motivators we face in this rush through life – fear and status – are both negative: Fear is a manipulation tool; people who make you afraid are hacking your mind. They want you to ignore reason and obey them fast. Put plainly, fear makes us stupid. But we encounter it on a daily basis and it destroys us by inches. Status is the compulsion to compare ourselves with others, and whether we’re looking for the ways we’re better than others or looking for our shortcomings. The entire exercise is a waste, but the system would crash and burn without. Fear and status are, in a sense, drugs, and if you had a choice between smoking cannibas every day or being on fear and status every day, I’d definitely recommend the cannibas. Confusion There’s an old joke that ends, “Who are you gonna believe, me or your lyin’ eyes?” That’s precisely what confusion does to us, and under the pressures of confusion and authority, most people will ignore their own eyes. Such things do not happen to people who are calm and confident. The big hierarchies of the world, however, require people who are frightened, confused, and blindly chasing status. As a Result… As a result, most of us hurry through life, never really knowing why. We follow the paths which are streamlined for us, exposing us to minimal levels of fear and shame. But that path does something else: It keeps us from experiencing ourselves. Seldom has this problem been put more succinctly than in this quote from Albert Einstein:

Small is the number of them who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.

So stop following the crowd. Turn your back on the script. Learn to see with your own eyes, to feel with your own heart. Decide for yourself what your life will be about. Make it matter. **  

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