Pondering Fulfillment and Meaning

It's been a while since I've made a post. I have several on the back-burner, though, I wanted to try posting what is more of a journal writing because there really isn't a reason why I can't share this with other people except for the fear of being judged and as you will read, I'm trying to reduce the amount of fear, anxiety, and negative feelings I feel so here it is. Enjoy :) 

I like having photos on the cover page of my blog and thought I would use a photo of Kafka because he inspired this pondering and I chose it to be a photo of him as a child because in many ways I feel that I am speaking to my 14-year-old self when I am thinking about my anxiety around feeling accomplished.

I read a Wikipedia article about Kafka tonight and then read a synopsis of his ‘A Country Doctor’ story, which I think I have read before. The commentary that the book makes on existentialism prompted me to think about how actively I am crafting my life versus letting the events of life push me along.

Am I taking stock of my existence, or letting life push me about?

I have done well in the last few days to cultivate a more even mindset, which is something I have enjoyed and appreciate.

When I think about what I want in my life, a few things come to mind:

·      Be a warrior prince

·      Enjoy my life

·      Feel fulfilled about my work and the impact I am making

Are there any other things?

·      Have enough money to live a comfortable life for myself and for a family, if I choose to have one

·      Collect beautiful fabrics

·      Have an significant impact on the lives of people

I put significant in italics because this is the thing I get hung up on. What and what isn’t significant is something I define. I determine what is it, and often that comes down to a binary of whether or not I am satisfied with my impact. For much of my life, I have felt unsatisfied by my impact and my progress, and I’m tired of feeling that way and I think overall it is silly. I won’t stop having an impact, that is just who I am. I don’t need to feel satisfied to stay motivated to have an impact. Moreover, I have found that positive thoughts and feelings are more empowering than negative thoughts and feelings, so this idea that never feeling satisfied will propel me to achieve more is false.

Really, I’ve just lied to myself. I feel a deep sense of unsatisfaction about myself. I have a need to feel loved. And I have told myself that if I just achieve “enough” that I will find someone to love me and then I will feel loved. Hm – that’s really it. Plain and simple. That’s the construction I arrived at at 14 years-old and have been more-or-less following since then.

However, feeling loved and satisfied is a state of mind. It is a feeling that I can create in myself by showing love to myself through various ways, one of which is by telling myself that I love myself and that I am satisfied with my work and my progress.

If I dig a bit deeper, I think I can find an interesting pattern – I think when I am feeling less loved (by myself or other people) I work more. My work is my cave and my defense, it’s a safe space for me. I suspect that I started working more when I started to feel distance from Natasha. I can appreciate that I was still working a lot beforehand, but I probably started to feel more anxious about the relationship and as a response started working more.

I think working is a safe space for me because I can see the tangible outcomes of my time. I can see myself progress through chapters, or lectures, or courses, or projects. It makes me feel good to make that progress. It reinforces that I am someone of value.

However, at this point in my life, I know I am someone of value. I feel it. I don’t always feel that way, but more than ever before, I do feel that way. And so I don’t need to prove that to myself or other people. I just am. And that gives me a lot of power. That belief in myself is a great source of power – hm – I don’t like how that feels. Once I describe it as power, I am then afraid to lose it, and the negative feeling of fear creeps in.

I shouldn’t be afraid because one day I will die and that will be the end of my life. It’s not that nothing matters. Many things matter, but we create the things that matter to us. And I know that once I die, my ability to create things that matter to me will end and so my sense of meaning will end. Others’ sense of meaning will go on, but mine will end, and I (think) that I am ok with that.

I am really proud of myself and happy that I am making the time for this introspection as it better shows me that making time for myself has a lot of value and will help me have an impact on the world.

I think something that I need to consider is the value that money will provide me with. I think that I need to have a certain amount of money to have a family so that say I could have the freedom to choose to send my children to private  school. However, what may in fact matter more than my children attending private school, is that their father has a good sense of his priorities and of who he is in life and also that he then chooses a mate who reflects his values, rather than has XXX amount of money to send his children to private school.

The more and more I think about things, money isn’t something I need to accumulate. It’s a tool, but to focus on it is silly, and in many ways, it can be very distracting. I don’t feel that I am someone who is so easily distracted by money, but I know that it has power over me, and it think it would be good of me to erode that power. It may not even be so much that I think it would be good to erode that power, but rather I am drawn to the idea of eroding that power. It feels like the right thing to do for me, and more and more, as time goes on, following those instincts and feelings seems like the right thing for me.

Following those instincts doesn’t feel like blindly trusting in my emotions over a sense of reason, but rather a trust in my intuition that has been built up over my life thus far. Moreover, the pursuit of money and esteem and power is stressful, and I don’t need to feel stressed.

Just as when I was 14, I don’t need to be accomplished to feel good about myself. Feeling good about myself comes from my making active efforts to feel good about myself. It’s internal, not external. And feeling accomplished is important to me but that feeling comes from me recognizing the effort and accomplishment that I am achieving every day. To feel accomplished, I must make the effort to ensure I feel accomplished. There’s almost a circular relationship there, but it’s true.

I’m really proud of myself, and I’m glad I’m making the time to write down these thoughts because this writing is one of the ways that I will feel good about myself. I am reinforcing the thought patterns that will make me feel satisfied with myself,  and I relish the independence of mind that this mindset will promote. In many ways it feels like true power. If my sense of well-being can come from within, I feel that this positivity will gush out of me like a well-spring. And this well-spring will be the source of my impact and influence. It is the source of me making the world that I want to see, and it will make me feel good as well. I am the universe and am a source of positivity for the universe, and that is a beautiful thing. And that is all for now.

Cheers,

Dustin