Changing yourself for others
It annoys me, as I write, I can feel the voice peaking into the room and spewing all of his nonsensical, inescure talking points at me. It’s a bit like life. You are there, present in the moment and then that voice just nips in from its smoke break, reeking of desperation and changing the whole vibe.
I think, how certain people will perceive, and then I think, fuck that.
You see, we walk around everyday with masks. Nietzsche says in BGE:
“Every profound spirit needs a mask: more, around every profound spirit a mask is continually growing, thanks to the constantly false, that is to say shallow interpretation of every word he speaks, every step he takes, every sign of life he gives.”
We don’t understand each other, we never can, I don’t know the life that’s lead you here and neither you me, we should not pretend that we can characterise a person in their entirity through a simple impression. We can learn and recognise behavioural patterns, but we can never understand completely. With this realisation there comes detachtment. The words and ideas impressed upon us are not who we genuienly are, they are one in 7 billion unique perspectives that have lived entirely different lives and relate to each other in entirely different ways. You only allow yourself to be hurt if you take it personally, and realisitcally it’s impossible to. “Oh that’s just stupid and psychopathic.” It kinda is to be fair isn’t it. But it has weight.
In the Untethered Soul it says:
“What it means to live spiritually is to not participate in this struggle. It means that the events that happen in the moment belong to the moment. They don’t belong to you.”
Being hurt by someone’s comments and thoughts is taking an event that has happened in life and making it personal, identifying with it. I’m identifying with the perceptions other people are putting on me, WHY? They are not my perecptions. They are not even of a realistic perception of me, it is not possible to know what life events have lead me to writing a post like this. In the same sense, what life events have lead you to do what you do. The nagging insecurity is something that is tolerated and accepted, not empowered and resisted.
Better to take a stance and staying true to yourself than kneeling and bowing your head to someone who doesn’t know you and thinks they do.
Through discovering Nietzsche I’ve really been able to get to terms with the thought. His idea of no objective morality meaning we should create our own and live by it as a bastion of our will resonated with me. For so long, for some reason, authority and condemnation scared me, I didn’t want to step a foot out of line. Now, I think why was I so scared, now I am able to fully express myself as best I can creating an idea that I really resonate with. We may live by different values, I value philosophy, you may not, that’s ok. No one is more right than the other, we’re different and if anything that’s good. It’s good to be different because when people start agreeing and clumping together like magnets, lots of nuance and meaning is lost. Better to risk being yourself and being ridiculed than losing yourself for nothing.
Plus, no one cares, surely no one reads this far. Changing yourself for the ones you love is not the one. What seems to be an act of good conscious leaves you lost in a field following perfection. But perfection is a star in the sky, is a rainbow, that you will never reach. You follow and follow until you suddenly look down and realise you have drifted so far from who you were, you don’t even know how to get back. And that journey is tough, exhausting and beautiful. It’s good to get lost, to restart from scratch. A blank canvas to live more honestly to who you are. Be weird, be embarassed, be you. Don’t let other people tell you who you are. What you should be, who are they to impose their values onto you? Life is a constant struggle of having will to paint whislt stopping other people painting on your board.
So paint, the more authentic the painting, the more enjoyment you get out of it. And the one who has the most fun is surely winning, right?
