4/30 Journal
On the emotionally incompetent and wasting our lives away
8:30 AM- As far as I can tell, I’ve successfully completed all my coursework. I’m pretty much stuck in limbo for the next couple of days. I don’t expect to fail, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility, so though I’m calm, I can’t yet rest.
I wanna talk about something more serious today. Something that digs a little deeper.
The first thing that comes to my mind is my experience this morning.
I had to drive to North Charleston to drop off a catering order. That place is a mess. It’s one of those areas where the main streets are lined by disgusting franchises, and misery permeates.
The traffic was astounding. I think it took 15 minutes to move a quarter mile. There was no beauty for me to admire in this delay.
I just don’t understand why anyone would want to live a life like that. I'm speaking from a state of ignorance, of course. I know many people don’t have much of an immediate choice. They have families and bills and they don’t know that they could make changes . . .
People really don’t see that they only need a job because they think they need to have stuff. All this stuff is not necessary. But somehow, people come to exist believing there is no way on this earth without ten pairs of shoes, a BMW, and a bed fit for a rhinoceros.
Now, I’d prefer that the majority of people weren’t on the road or whatever, because most people are messy and lazy . . . When too many people get near a beautiful natural area, they tend to destroy it.
I can see why people get addicted to shit when they live in places like that. I think one of the best cures for addiction is natural immersion.
The place I delivered to was some sort of manufacturing warehouse . . . Not sure what for—I saw model engines or something in the lobby. The receptionist, I’m sure, was a good person, but she seemed utterly miserable. I would be, too, if I were stuck in that God-awful box 40 hours a week.
I have no money, but there is absolutely nothing that could get me in an office for 40 hours a week. I don’t care if they paid me a million dollars a year. I would not be rich if my days were spent in some air-conditioned shed.
9:25 AM- I really don’t like being around people who are so emotional. They’re nothing more than children in adult bodies. I don’t even think it’s fair to children to call those people children, though, because children often act more maturely.
You can tell when someone is completely emotionally incompetent. They’re the ones around whom you must be careful what you say. And they think they are always enlightened . . . They think they know things about the world that other people somehow don’t just because they’ve experienced it themselves.
This just really shows how stupid these people are, because they can’t fathom another person’s perspective. I think the smartest people can take on an array of perspectives, especially at once, without getting emotional.
It’s not that emotions are so bad, but that they are not us. They are, like a rash on our skin, indicators of how our bodies (because our brains are our bodies) interact with the world around.
But so many people today, especially, I’ve noticed, those who think they know everything, cannot divorce themselves from how they feel. It is around these people that we must walk on eggshells.
6:51 PM- It often feels like we do nothing with our lives. Like each day is no different than the previous, and that we are wasting away the most precious years we have.
Even though I don’t feel this way right now, I have recently, and feel compelled to share my experiences.
The times I’ve most felt I’ve been wasting away are not the times I’ve worked too hard, or the times I’ve not worked too hard, or the times I did things in vain, or the times I’ve earned poor grades on tests.
They are, instead, the times I’ve been alone.
Something about being alone, more than anything, makes me feel like I’m wasting my life away. Now, this isn’t perpetually the case: I’m alone right now as I’m writing this, but I don’t feel like I’m wasting my time. There are things you can do when you’re alone to feel like you’re not wasting your life. Doing things that you deem important certainly mitigates these feelings. But if all I did were write and work, I would feel like I was wasting my life away.
Perhaps the best way to think about this would be to imagine what you’d do for your ideal day . . . As a side note, I once saw a video of a person saying that you should live your life as if you have 90 days left to live. I don’t think this is the optimal approach . . . Nor to live each day as it is your last. In fact, I don’t think the syntax here is as important. Perhaps having the idea that you will live each day as if it is your last in mind is helpful to others . . . But what’s most important is living your life as you’d like to live it.
We feel like we’re wasting our lives away when we don’t do what we actually want to do . . . And with good people. It’s actually quite simple. When we do what we think we should instead of what our intuition wants, we waste our days away.