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Resignation and desperation are the dominant moods in the world nowadays.
It’s late fall. The trees have shed their leaves in the Northeast where I live, the heat has been on for weeks now, and already we get up in dark, and end work in dark.
And people are sitting on their fat asses… doing nothing. Have given up. Resigned.
When they look, the future is gloom and doom.
Humans tend to be happy, if the future looks better… Resignation means: the future doesn’t look good… and today it looks that there is nothing that can make it better.
David Thoreau said: the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.
But I dare to argue with Thoreau on the second sentence.
- Desperation has energy.
- Resignation has none. It means: giving up. Throwing your hands up and declaring that there is no hope, it is over, you are dead.
It’s over, says the little voice, and you think it is your inner wisdom. Why bother? It is never going to work!?
A few have equal amount of desperation and resignation, but most, unless it is a death sentence, won’t lift a finger to change what they can change.
People hope for an easier life, more money, better health to be given to them.
But the kind of work I ask you to do isn’t to make life easier… Life is life, and nothing makes it easier. But you can get stronger in the face of life that’s difficult.
Werner Erhard also says something important, when he says:
Create your future from your future, not your past.
Now, there is no ‘already’ future. The future is somewhat predictable… From where? From your past. And yet, the prediction, unless it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, isn’t a future, or not necessarily. It ain’t necessarily so.
You, unless you completely throw up your hands, you can create your future. With your words. With promises. And then with integrity.
- I have a long time currently ex-student, who has a long history of being full of shit.
Recently he saw that in fact he could finish his dissertation he had given up on years ago.
The new game he’s set up is a competition between his history, his self-fulfilling prophecy, and his newfound word. He has surrounded himself, I think, with people who are more likely to keep him straight than his former environment.
Don’t be mistaken: your environment has more influence on who you are going to be, what you are going to do, than anything else I know. Source says: 91% influence.
Wowzee! That’s a lot!
What about the environment that does that?
I think it is mainly how they see you that matters.
A year ago I spoke with my older brother and a University friend regularly. Both saw me in comparison to themselves. They saw themselves as superior. Therefore they HAD TO SEE ME as inferior. A loser. Someone who needs their help.
My student in question: his parents, his main environment, see him also in comparison. See you in comparison is the only way people can see you, given their high about-me score. So if they feel good about what they achieved, then they will have to see you as less, the needy little creep… Will give you no respect, will not be able to see you as infinite possibility. Will not see as capable.
They have to see you as less. Exactly the way you see them!
Until and unless you start seeing them as people. Valuable, knowledgeable, worthwhile, they will see you only as an object, whom they want to dominate or whom they will tolerate.
Your only job will be for you, in the relationship, is to see them as generous, magnanimous, and successful, not in comparison to yourself, but as people.
Ugh, right?
And that is nearly everyone you associate with…
And every relationship, ultimately, heads the opposite way, all the time. With everyone. No matter how it started. Friendships, affairs, marriages, co-workers, parents/children.
That is the human condition.
- I have a student who’s caught herself being like the human condition… comparing, superior, judgmental with everyone in her environment. I helped her to catch herself… Catching it is 90% of success. It is very important.
So this past month, maybe longer, she has been gently making a trimtabbing slow turnaround. Amazing, because it is not easy.
You need to invent yourself as not someone, not wanting to be someone. Not be in competition, not be in comparison. Not being the arbiter of the Universe. Also, not being smarter, better than others. Or even less than others.
Hard? If you are not doing it, you haven’t experienced hard yet! Because the entire human condition conspires against you.
Why do you think George Santos is doing all that posturing and lying? To be considered somebody. We are all deadly afraid of being nobody.
My student is doing well. There will be a point when her husband will truly experience being seen as a person, and will grant personhood to my student as well.
And then she will have the environment where the sky is the limit to her growth.
But it won’t happen unless she does that to him, for him first.
I feel you frowning… lol.
Yeah, you are not going to get what you are unwilling to give!
You cannot change the future that is given by the past, unless you change your relationship to the people around you.
- Of course, and this is the example of a third student…
If the people, mostly your family, aren’t people who are likely going to support you in creating a future that is discontinuous, because to them it would mean that you are leaving the crab bucket. If this is your situation then you’ll need to find a new environment, with people who are in a bigger crab bucket, or out of any crab bucket… so what you do will not make them feel left behind. So they’ll not pull you down.
I have been a loner, a lone ranger, because I haven’t found anyone who isn’t in this comparison/competition place when it comes to me.
Now, going back to the Thoreau quote:
I think it is mighty difficult to create a distance, a separation, detach yourself from the prevailing culture, and from the people you frequently spend time with.
And detach yourself from your thoughts, even your past, even your desires… the desires that tell you you should be further ahead. The hurry. The jumping. From everything other than what you invent yourself, for yourself.
And then, gently and step by step, start re-adjusting your ATTITUDE, your behavior (ACTIONS), and your ATTENTION to make what you invented a reality.
By the way: if you GRANT beingness to people, personness, then they will let you be too. So curtail judgment, curtail giving advice, curtain being the one who is always right, the one who knows everything…
Those are all triggers, triggering the worst in people.
The key to this is the allowing part. And for that you need to detach yourself. I teach that in a course
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