More Chapters from the book whose direction has changed enough that I will not use what I've written here but still find value in having written it :-).
Nobody Cares
I once found it quite easy to believe that nobody cared about me. At the very least, they did not care about me as much as I believed they ought to or in the ways I believed they should. If my wife truly cared about me, she would wake up in the morning with me. If my kids truly loved me, they would be more ecstatic to play games with me. If my coworkers thought highly of me, they would have given my efforts more discussion in that meeting. If my friends were really my friends, I’d be getting far more than a mere post on my Facebook feed wishing me happy birthday. And if my mom and sister truly loved me, they’d have read this draft and responded with their magnificent praises within hours of sharing it with them.
It was really easy to see all the ways that other people “should” be doing things to prove their love for me. In the end, however, just how much of their lives did I expect they’re supposed to devote to me rather than to themselves? And how much perfection did I expect they should have in doing it? And how much mind-reading of what the proper response is in all situations did I expect they ought to possess to appease me?
By focusing on what other people should be doing, I was focusing on something that was entirely outside my control. I’ve since learned that things outside my control are often not worth thinking about. In the end, people will never care about me as much as I care about me. In the same way, each of these people could complain about all the ways that I don’t show them love in the way they want from me.
Rather than holding others accountable for failing me and then seeing myself as a failure for doing the exact same things, I found it far more productive to realize that we all have our own lives and we all have enough crap to deal with such that I should not be giving any thought to how much people cared about me. This is by no means a call to ignore people, but rather to let them off the hook. That person who did not respond to my text yet is likely not “ignoring me” or “mad at me” or any such nonsense--they simply have a life they are living and I am not their absolute top tier #1 priority. And if I am honest, the feeling is entirely mutual.
People may not care that much about me but they have no reason to--life is not about me for them. Their life is about them just like my life is about me. Releasing them helped release me from indignation at others and feelings of being small, unworthy, or a failure--all things that I later learned led me into depression the moment I got a whiff of such adjectives in the air. So now, even though someone may not respond to me in the way I might expect, I have learned to stop interpreting it in a negative way and simply assume the best.
There is peace in not caring if everyone else is doing as you think they ought.
I’m Not Special
Imagine a 5-gallon bucket filled with sand to about 2.5 inches from the top. Each grain of sand represents a person on this planet. Contemplate just how many grains are in that bucket. You are and I are just two of those grains. How many grains do you suppose are in a mere handful of that gigantic bucket of people?
Now, imagine 12 entirely full buckets of sand. That is how many people have ever lived. Of all those grains of sand, how important was any one of them in the grand scheme of things? For any one grain of sand who may have seemed to be important, it is quite often understood that there was yet another waiting in the shadows doing the same exact things at the same time or shortly thereafter. If Einstein did not get worldwide fame and recognition for his progress in theoretical physics, someone else would have. The world would not have ceased to progress.
In the end, I realized that whether I win or lose, succeed or fail, it hardly mattered at all. At first, this kind of disappointed me, but that’s because it was one of my depression triggers. I longed to be somebody. I wanted to be special. I wanted the world to hold me in high regard and once and for all know that I am truly worth something. Finally concluding that worldwide fame was out of reach really got me down. My happiness was dependent on becoming famous and renowned throughout the world? Well holy crap, no wonder I was depressed! This desire was entirely unhealthy and stemmed from other incorrect feelings about myself and life. I did not really need world recognition. Instead, I needed a proper outlook where my value did not rely on the unreliable actions of others.
I discovered that I felt neglected, rejected, dejected, and alone to which I incorrectly believed worldwide fame would resolve. These feelings most likely originated from my childhood and continued throughout my adulthood as I noted how nobody cared about me as much as I did. My feelings of neglect led to feelings that other people were jerks which further led to requiring the fame of the world to release me from my hatred of self.
Of course, if you ask any famous person, they often don’t feel too very different from us. For many of them, there are still plenty of reasons that their fame does not truly prove their worth. They believe that what they’ve accomplished is not all that difficult or grandiose, but if they get that one oscar, or achieve that one title, maybe that will do it. Until they get it, of course, and then need the next hit of achievement. There is always a reason to believe that successes were not that great of an accomplishment and any idiot could have done it. In many ways, the famous are just like us: human.
Recognizing that all the special people in the world were mostly just a product of luck significantly helped my outlook in life. Right place, right time, right parents, right education, right genes, right interests, etc. All things outside my control and thus not at all my fault. No one is requiring that I be great, and if they did require it, it would not be worth appeasing such jerks. I do not need to be great any more than any other person in the 12 buckets-worth of humanity. I am one grain of sand among many. If greatness bestows itself upon me, then I am one of the lucky ones. If not, then there is no council of perfect elitists to reprimand me for my extreme incompetence which led me to be like 99.9999% of the rest of the population.
To be fine with being a nobody, I released so many burdens and expectations from myself that I could actually focus on what I truly liked and wanted out of life. I could please me instead of everyone else. In fact, I hardly even knew what I liked since I had tried so hard to be somebody, anybody, so long as that somebody was valuable.
In all reality, people become great by focusing on what interests them. They do not become great by determining what actions will bring them fame and pursuing those. If I pursued greatness in a thing I did not love, I would never become great and likely I would become quite the opposite.
If my interests are not things which bring me greatness, then what concern is that of mine? I did not choose what interests me any more than I chose how many follicles of hair I would retain or what foods I would find enjoyable. I simply enjoy what I enjoy based on whatever combination of genes and life circumstances brought me there. And that is entirely okay. Seeking what I do not enjoy is a quick way to be unhappy. And seeking to be loved or valued is not an interest, but a brain malfunction.
I need not the greatness itself, but rather to fulfill my own true interests whatever they may be. In such a way, I become the greatest me that ever existed rather than the greatest human to ever do that one thing I did just to be that person who did that thing so that I can feel valued and appreciated as that guy who did it.
If my greatest interest is nothing more than viewing the ripples of water as things fall therein, then by golly I can focus on that and be that one guy who really liked water ripples. And no doubt, I will learn new and amazing things that one can do with water. Even if no one else cared, it clearly mattered to the most important and special person in my life: me.
If you think you are special, it may only apply to your needs.
Specially Unspecial
Much of my anxiety and depression came from a misunderstanding of what it meant to be human. Sure, I knew humans were only human and they make lots of mistakes, but certainly they were nothing as bad as me. I somehow thought I was especially poor at being a human, but this goes right back to the previous chapter: I’m not special. Not even at being unspecial am I special. I am not especially awesome and I am not especially terrible. On average, for most everything about me, I am average.
Anything wrong I have ever done has been done by most everyone in the world. The biggest difference was that I cared all too much about it. I made my mistakes a quality of who I am and then judged myself a bad person. The fact is, most things are not black and white. Nothing is ever always wrong. And when it is wrong, there could be so many underlying factors that led to that decision that most humans would likely have done the same thing in similar circumstances.
Now, none of this is to say that we should not improve. Obviously, we would be better off with our improvement. But the thing is, we are allowed to fail at things and we are allowed to work on small portions at a time. We do not need to fix all of our problems at the snap of a finger. We can determine which ones are acceptable for now while we work on others and be fine with slow progress. After all, we all started out with zero moral capability. All morality is learned and no one is expected to have achieved perfection just yet. So we can go easier on ourselves.
Morality is mostly for our own benefit anyway. Good morals lead to a better life. Bad morals lead to a worse one. So if our morals are found wanting, it is not cause for eternal judgement upon our character or deeming us evil beings. We can merely confess that such behaviors are not what is best for our lives, but we can still progress at a rate that works for us.
The fact that we care if we are terrible is evidence enough that we are not terrible. We are simply underskilled at the qualities we desire. There is no shame in that. Recognizing it is a great start, but dwelling on it is a terrible end. Beating yourself up is a quick way to to being beaten up.
For the longest time, I basically believed that I had to be perfect. I could tell you this was not the case from a matter of factual knowledge, but it is not how I internally viewed the world. If my boss ever said one bad thing about me, I immediately took it to mean I needed a new job. I could not bear to think that my boss now thought me scum because he believed I did something wrong. I incorrectly concluded that a single mistake defined me entirely which is just ridiculous. It helped immensely to know that I can fail without being labeled a terrible person by me or others.
As bad as this may sound, one thing that really helped me was to acknowledge the faults of others and smile internally with understanding rather than judgement. Seeing someone else struggle or fail and knowing that I did not hate them helped me to realize that everyone can see me fail and not hate me for it either. We can see each other’s failures and not hate each other. What an amazing concept! Now when I see people fail, I am filled with joy that I am not the only one who fails on this planet.
Do not mistake failure to do for failure to be.
They’re Not Special Either
In case it was not clear enough in the previous two chapters, I want to stress that the average person is average. Even of those people who are above average at one thing, they are still average at most things. It is really easy to think someone else has it all together. They don’t. You know they don’t because no one does. It looks like it, but that’s only because you don’t know all the intimate details of their lives. Trust me, they’re not perfect and their lives also have stress and turmoil. Everyone does. How we deal with it, how we express it, and whether or not we make it worse for ourselves is the only real difference.
Unless you regularly express your life’s woes to people, they probably wonder how you keep it all together when they cannot. They do not know your intimate details or the working of your mind. They don’t know if you are racing around trying to make sense of the world or fighting off depression. They are too focused on themselves and their own racing minds to even care. Their lack of knowledge of your brain functionality will often lead them to the same conclusions about you that you conclude of them. The lives of others often appear easier when you do not know the details.
Lack of knowledge is no knowledge of lack.
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