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Friday::Aug 02, 2024

Finding Yourself

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ou either find yourself or you don't. If you do, you are by definition fulfilled and happy -- or at least as happy as it is possible for someone who is "you" to be. If you don't, you're repressed, unhappy, making life miserable for others, and probably spitefully trying to prevent them from finding themselves. Other people are judged on how much they help or hinder your quest to find the real you.

Often times, the "you" you're trying to find is pretty dang specific, and this paints a bleak picture of the human experience. There's something you were made to do -- if you don't feel good about some part of your life, it's probably because you're living the "wrong" one. You might have to change anything, or everything. You're facing a dartboard, and you have one shot to hit you.

I think this attitude is pretty obviously poisonous, and enculturated people to it likely causes a great deal of harm to those persons and society more generally. It's such a fragile way of thinking; there's one job, one life partner, one way of dressing, one way of acting, that is truly expressive of your soul, and if you don't find it you're fucked. Thinking this way causes us to undermine everything from which we might draw stability and strength to overcome the difficult, inevitable parts of our lives.

The fact is that a given human is certainly very tolerably consonant with a great diversity of types of lives. We have to potential to be many things, and the relative number of truly, morally unacceptable states of being is quite low in comparison. Given limits on what we are able to be our circumstances, 9 times out of 10 we ought to accept them, and be the best version of them we can be. Given a lack limitations, we should be honest about the fact that chance and whim are going to be some of the primary determinants of where we end up. Look for opportunities, and take the first one that seems tolerable, and learn to live.