Never settle. Keep improving. Make progress. Get better. Evolve. Grow. Become.
All of which begs the question, “What Happened?” When did being a bit of a wacko stop being normal?
I have a vague but recurring feeling that something is wrong with me, all the time. In the beginning, it was great. It helped me change, widened my awareness and, if you will, made me a better version of my former self.
But as the feeling of fuzzy flawed-ness kept creeping back, life became paralyzing. It seemed like I was getting better and yet somehow worse at the same time. If something went right, there would be new things that were now wrong. It was a bottomless spiral of profound existential angst. A spiral that you may be getting sucked into, if not already.
The lazy answer to this state of existence is Social Media and the subtle clues it offers you on what a noodlehead you are. But the need to eradicate flaws and become better has been one of our most primordial needs. This intractable need to become something more took a different turn in the last decade because the more went beyond survival and basic needs. Social media put an ugly-ass face to the new needs. The need now is usually a better, cooler, revised and expanded version of yourself, a better you!
And this state of existence can be addictive. Since we got lucky to be birthed at the time of the internet, why pass a chance at perpetual awesomeness?
The time required to become something has drastically reduced. While a plethora of books, courses, and seminars, in all their crumby glory promise you to make you better and make you something more, they do little to ward off the feeling that something’s wrong with you. In fact, behind the pickup line of this sale is an underlying message that you are a loser and you can change only if you picked up whatever shit is being sold.
You are never told, “you are just fine and dandy. Go outside for a while and live a little.” Promising books only lead you into the rabbit hole of “here’s more promising stuff you should read.” And this stokes the inner desire for something more, which had just only started to settle. Now, there’s more stuff to read, watch, and do in order to become. It’s nauseating, but hey who doesn’t feel better after a good vomit.
This process of becoming something more can become addictive. It’s a perverse need to be sick in order to taste the medicine. The sickness is the gnawing feeling that something is wrong with you. This way of becoming promises a cure to this sickness, while what it really does is offer you new ways to feel sick.
The only cure for this sickness is to stop being addicted to the medicine and go out and get some sunlight or something. Treat the feverish screw up that you think your life is with patience and empathy. Feeling something is constantly wrong with you is the side-effect of the very medicine that promises to fix you.
You need to understand who you want to become is who you already are. Where you want to settle is where you already belong. And the progress you need to make is the life you are living. Becoming better is a slow, tedious and uneventful path laid through acceptance.
You are never going to meet your goals. Your bucket list is going to leak and overflow with frothing dreams. And you sure as heck are going to have a long list of regrets in the end. Nothing you do is going to change that.
Until you accept this much like the acceptance that something is and will always be wrong with you and a constant need to escape that to become something more is but an unnatural and pathetic way to spend your life, no amount of becoming will be enough.
Meditations 