Holding on to Pride, Clinging on to Death

Holding onto Pride, Clinging onto Death

I must be honest. It is exceptionally difficult to maintain sanity in this world. We are expected to love and treat everyone with some measure of kindness-- to succeed in the midst of endless distraction, varying mental states, and a twisted system of existence predicated on social constructs drenched in contradiction. Some of us are held to religious beliefs and goals that make it dangerous to follow your emotional, some may even argue logical, instincts for fear of eternal damnation ( I'm talking about killing yourself)...All in all, this makes for a very angry and confused population. You may not feel the world is this bad, this heinous, but these issues do exist...for each and every one of us.

I never was a happy person, but after a couple years of dealing with some really iffy situations, I became fed up with the universe. I didn't like it but it was the only way I knew then to deal with my circumstances--by shutting people off. In a place full of unreliable, unmotivated, dirty, cheating, lying and dishonest individuals, I found maybe a handful of people who looked out for my well being. I appreciated them, but also scorned the fact that I needed them to pull through my situation. It's a feeling unlike any pain I've ever endured. I valued independence more than life itself. My pride was the only thing keeping me alive. For my sake, I hoped the people who screwed me didn't live to see my success, because I most certainly would never, EVER, forget. I was engulfed in a vengeful rage, an unwavering determination to triumph that kept me from releasing all that hate in one fit of crushing violence. I knew the satisfaction from such a thing would be great for that moment, but would inevitably be followed by self pity and ultimately death. So I was faced with a decision to either be ruled by pride and sentenced to death, or find some other means of peace.

In light of that, I pondered how I might stop being ruled by pride. The first thing I realized was pride was the most inefficient means of overcoming whatever issues I had in life. If I couldn't accept help, then I'd try to do everything on my own and that's just ignorant. For a while I thought independence meant being doing everything alone, but independence, as I see it now, is maintaining the ability to make decisions for yourself. Letting those decisions be ruled by anger and emotions was not independence at all. In fact I was more bound then than ever. Understanding that was my first step towards becoming a realist. I decided that the circumstances around me were only the foundations of a blueprint for effective solutions. Now I take everything for what it is and deal with it accordingly, doing my best to maintain a level head.

But I still had to deal with my views on people. This lead me to the second thing I realized-- Some forms of pride are good. Popular culture seems to have embraced this "swag" concept, but I'm not talking about it in a superficial sense. For me, swag is your individual bottom line. It's the part of your personality that operates constant and independent of any and all outside influences. It's very important because the people whom you get along with without compromising your fundamental personality traits, are the people who vibe with you the best. This also saves you a lot of trouble in the romantic realm. The trick is finding your "swag"--but that's another discussion for another day. Lately I've realized not a lot of people are truly comfortable with who they are as individuals. That's why other people's being inconsiderate has such a damaging effect on them.

I'll discuss more of these concepts in later posts. but in the meantime, BE REAL WITH YOURSELF IF NO ONE ELSE.