Life's Kit—4 Quick Things to Learn in Life to Keep it Simple
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ADULTHOOD
All life begins in the womb, a confinement in another living being. Few weeks after the start of a new life a being is formed, innocent as can be. Without any sense of what morality is, he fights and survives without exactly being told what to do or how to not do it, he just survived. That’s beautiful.
Here comes complication immediately after birth, the new life cries and cries till he’s made to realise that it is abnormal to cry in this world and then he’s pacified—silenced—with a breast milk. Liberty to do as he wishes is withdrawn from him by manipulation, life becomes ugly. And at this point, the struggle to adulthood begins.
The life that lived by itself in the womb hence begins to struggle to fit in an external world as he is told what he should and should not do. This, particularly, is where all human’s madness is birthed. Most of his philosophies are ingrained into him by his parents, the struggle they fought their whole life, sugarcoated as experience, is imparted into the child as in corrections, culture, morals, and heritage. And worst of it all, the things learnt from the society he is born into.
And as he grows, he begins to find his way according to how he has been patterned to live so as to conform to the philosophies that has been ingrained in him. If he was born in a religious home, he begins to struggle to fit to the beliefs of his family—the doctrines of his religion. One continues in this course and become even more fanatical than how they were taught while another finds his course elsewhere, after has been so much confused by the don’ts and dos of some god he cannot see.
The little grown child becomes a rebel for adding extras, excesses, to the damages these philosophies have brought him. He struggles to fit in the world that does not have the same values that he does. He struggles to extricate himself from “the home training” because the “how to live” that he was taught at home was based on the way his parents viewed life in their time; and this does not exactly correspond to the way life at the moment is for him or at the places he has been to. His struggle remains in a loop. So, it becomes true to him what Mark Manson says in his book, The subtle act of not giving a F*uck, “Travel is a fantastic self-development tool, because it extricates you from the values of your culture and shows you that another society can live with entirely different values and still function and not hate themselves”. A truth we cannot disprove. Some communities go about naked and they don't rape eachother. Hence, indecent dressing is not the real cause of rape.
Your philosophy is your problem. Mine is my problem. The reason why everything threatens you and me—our philosophy, our problem. Our philosophy is the culprit. Only if we all could get a hold of it and strangle it in the neck till life falls out of it, then we would be free. But then this is quite impossible to do. One cannot exclusively live without a sense of value, moral or way of life—we cannot function without believing in something. This is why one cannot exactly be without a problem and will kill us—it’s killing us. We handpicked our own devils growing up, some was ingrained into us under the guise of care and protection.
I wouldn’t have struggled with masturbation if it was normal to me as drinking water and have not learnt that it was bad. You wouldn’t have struggled with saying what’s on your mind and expressing your feelings and emotions to a man as a woman if you were not particularly taught that it’s “boys stuff” to chase and that it makes a woman appear a slut when she does. Everyone would love to be explicit about sex talks if growing up there existed no cocoon around the topic in particular. Instead, we are rather superficially prudish and fundamentally kinky, making a face, a façade, and hence, we struggle our entire life to fit. We calculate the things we say before we say them so that we don’t come off rude, improper, immoral and out of place; leaving us perplexed, confused, depressed and all that’s related to psychological breakdown. Rather than being descriptive we evaluate—not detailed. We don't want to offend the out listener(s) who expect better from us.
Fuck morals, fuck standards. Fuck everything that makes right and wrong. We made good and bad of everything that is good and bad. I agree more with science, the physical laws of nature, than culture itself—you cannot alter nature. No human suggested its design. Humans are strange and fallible. Culture is a making of human. Culture may, therefore, be flawed because it is proposed by an imperfect being, whose perfections and imperfections are a function of what he was taught by another imperfect being—his parents, grandparents, forefathers, society, and religious leaders.
This is when you have become a grown-up, when you have stripped yourself completely off the philosophies that you were taught and have come to a realization of what you fundamentally desire—your beliefs, whether religious or not, your philosophies about life, etc.—and you genuinely, and straightforwardly act them out without exactly apologizing to anyone, seeking approval of any kind or holding anyone, but you, responsible for whatever devils and angels you are now choosing to torment you and accepting the general physical laws of nature which also includes that everything is vanity and that all must die—living and non-living. This is when adulthood is complete. The little light from the womb now is big.
Life is a mess, a conclusion we must all come to at some point in life whether or not we want it, whether or not we desire to. And by mess, I mean vanity. Nothing is exactly worth the terrifying checks and balances; death is the only inevitable just the rest are uncertain. Friendship and relationships, uncertain. Health, uncertain. Good morals and philosophies, uncertain. All man must die, rich and poor, healthy and unhealthy; but when, too? Uncertain. Meanwhile, legacy, we tell ourselves we're building, a lie that helps us find sleep at night, while our struggle awaits us the next day. Legacy is vanity, all will come to an end one day, not as in rapture according to religion, but as a function of demolition and civilization—nothing lasts forever. Adulthood is acknowledging these things and choosing to not commit suicide anyway.
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THE FEAR OF UNCERTAINTY
The way our dreams usually plan the playback is awesome. You'd find yourself dreaming about a thing and the second the "action" is about to happen, boom!, your alarm would sound, or somebody would just call you or mosquitoes would bite you. In the end, the dream is truncated. You're left in the suspense.
Life generally is full of suspense. The uncertainty of what lies in the end—where's this going?—that's what makes it beautiful. And the earlier you adjust to this truth, the better is it for you; the more relaxed you become, the less careful you become.
Everything cannot always go your way. Everything cannot happen the way you've planned it. Stuff change, things crumble and you don't get to do anything about it. Your friend today might end up being your sworn enemy tomorrow.
Live life in the present. Hold on to the truth you have today because by itself, it changes, too, with time. Take each day one at a time. Don't let the past dictate to you what lies in front of you today. I have misjudged people based on what they do that I've seen done by the people I hated in the past and have hurt me. That's wrong. That's a defense mechanism that made me stuck in my past. The feeling was not good at all. It took me tons of books to get myself together and just lead a normal life without suspecting everyone.
I feared uncertainty mostly in my life till I understood that it's inevitable. Qué Sera sera—what will be will be. You cannot be certain about anything or everything till you die. You cannot know everything. Just live each day as it comes. Love the people you're attracted to and be honest about your intentions at the moment.
Rather than seeking to be certain about anything, turn the process into an adventure. Make it fun for you. You will understand people—different psychology, different culture. It's okay to not know which way to go, what to do and what to say or how to. Just dive into it, do anything anyway, say anything anyhow. Be sincere when you do. You will learn many things even as you unlearn a lot more.
Don't be rigid, be flexible. Be like water that takes the shape of the container (bottle) it finds itself. Adjust to the present. Seeking to be certain about anything, everything, leaves you rigid, and like stone or other solid matter, you become difficult to contain. You become paranoid at the slightest agitation. You become worried that it's not going according to plan. You injure your health in the process—anger, depression.
Just live, quit the quest for certainty. Uncertainty is inevitable. That's how life is designed. That's some shit we all have to live up to. No one knows exactly when he'll die or how. That's what keeps everyone on their toes. Adjust to this wholesome truth—accepting that the only way to deal with uncertainty is accepting uncertainty. It's not a curse to fear, it's freedom to embrace. Explore.
The way our dreams usually plan the playback is awesome. You'd find yourself dreaming about a thing and the second the "action" is about to happen, boom!, your alarm would sound, or somebody would just call you or mosquitoes would bite you. In the end, the dream is truncated. You're left in the suspense.
Life generally is full of suspense. The uncertainty of what lies in the end—where's this going?—that's what makes it beautiful. And the earlier you adjust to this truth, the better is it for you; the more relaxed you become, the less careful you become.
Everything cannot always go your way. Everything cannot happen the way you've planned it. Stuff change, things crumble and you don't get to do anything about it. Your friend today might end up being your sworn enemy tomorrow.
Live life in the present. Hold on to the truth you have today because by itself, it changes, too, with time. Take each day one at a time. Don't let the past dictate to you what lies in front of you today. I have misjudged people based on what they do that I've seen done by the people I hated in the past and have hurt me. That's wrong. That's a defense mechanism that made me stuck in my past. The feeling was not good at all. It took me tons of books to get myself together and just lead a normal life without suspecting everyone.
I feared uncertainty mostly in my life till I understood that it's inevitable. Qué Sera sera—what will be will be. You cannot be certain about anything or everything till you die. You cannot know everything. Just live each day as it comes. Love the people you're attracted to and be honest about your intentions at the moment.
Rather than seeking to be certain about anything, turn the process into an adventure. Make it fun for you. You will understand people—different psychology, different culture. It's okay to not know which way to go, what to do and what to say or how to. Just dive into it, do anything anyway, say anything anyhow. Be sincere when you do. You will learn many things even as you unlearn a lot more.
Don't be rigid, be flexible. Be like water that takes the shape of the container (bottle) it finds itself. Adjust to the present. Seeking to be certain about anything, everything, leaves you rigid, and like stone or other solid matter, you become difficult to contain. You become paranoid at the slightest agitation. You become worried that it's not going according to plan. You injure your health in the process—anger, depression.
Just live, quit the quest for certainty. Uncertainty is inevitable. That's how life is designed. That's some shit we all have to live up to. No one knows exactly when he'll die or how. That's what keeps everyone on their toes. Adjust to this wholesome truth—accepting that the only way to deal with uncertainty is accepting uncertainty. It's not a curse to fear, it's freedom to embrace. Explore.
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WHAT WILL PEOPLE SAY?
Oftentimes we are caught up in this question when we are about to make a decision as to what we want to do. Most especially when it's something we have never done before, something we are not sure the ethics of our immediate environment allow or not; something that is against our own personal values based on experiences or something we have at some point in our life devalued, that is, spoken against.
We feel this new attitude or action is a threat to our personality. We feel we are betraying the people that trusted us and see us as their role model and are becoming a bad example. We feel it questions the very core from which our beliefs—religious or not—are formed. We feel as though we are about to lose ourselves or have already lost ourselves for ever thinking of doing such a thing in the first place.
See, if there is anything I have come to terms with in life regarding decision making, it is this: do not do anything because you want to make anybody validate you. People are fuck-ups. Within the next minute, the very people you are trying not to offend would tell you something like, "Did I ask you to do it?" And you know what? They are right. They did not send you. I have seen this happen a few times. Having a people-pleasing mentality—doing what people expects of you, not wanting to hurt them—is what drives many crazy in the end, not even the decision that they are about to make. I have been there. It hurts very badly.
Okay, let us assume you are in a market and everyone is telling you what to buy. The noise would disorient you. Following everybody's suggestions will make you broke. They will drive you nut. People will drive you crazy. They are a symbol of numerous thoughts on how to do a particular thing; how to say things, what type of clothes to wear to certain types of occasion. And it is just only you there is. Just you alone trying to meet up to these distinct views around you. That is enough to make you literally out of your mind.
You are responsible for yourself. You make your own shit happen. Nobody is to take the blame for what you do/did wrong. You will pay for your own sins except that Jesus did otherwise. Well, nobody is Jesus on earth and anyone who claims to be him is an imposter. I am sure the Pope would renounce him. Many other Christians would do the same, though some would still be gullible. You are the driver of your own life. You fuck up, you clean your own shit. Nobody is exactly responsible for you. Nobody will warm your bed in the hospital when you drive the car of your life into a ditch, just you.
You have your own values. You have your own standards. Stick to them. Let them guide you. Be better at them. Master yourself. Know what you want. Learn what you need. Follow it to the end. Do not compare yourself to others. When necessary, take advice from reasonable people who share similar values with you. But make sure that the decision that you are making is ultimately what you have weighed and found that will lead peace into your mind—something you are comfortable with. That is what therapists help you find. They do not tell you what to do. They help you figure what you really want to do.
Do not always externalise your decisions. Make it something from within you. Something you think and feel you want and need. That is a good decision. Because that is when you can really manup and take responsibility for whatever the outcome is. But reverse is the case if you are pressured by external factors—validation from people around. And if that happens, it is not worth the risk. More often than not, it leads depression into ones life.
"But what if I'm wrong?", you say.
Well, you will never learn to make right decisions if you do not, on your own, make some wrong decisions first. This is because you will always, consciously or unconsciously, blame people that made you do that thing. This is not healthy.
You go to a place you do not want to go to because you cared so more about what you friend would say if you do not go. So, you went. There you go, a valuable stuff of yours is stolen and the first thing that comes to your mind is "Fuck! To think, I didn't want to come." Blame shifting from you to whoever/whatever made you go there has a psychological impact on you that compounds over experiences and years. Read more about blame shifting.
But on the contrary, you go because you really want to, the narrative would be different, "I fucked up". You take responsibility for yourself. The psycholoclgical impact here is positive. Read more about being responsible for yourself. And by the way, it is okay to be wrong. Nobody always has it right, not even the people you are trying to please. Ask them, the often make wrong choices.
In conclusion, friend, worry less about all that could go wrong. Focus on a lot of things that could go right. Just do it. Enjoy the experience like it is an adventure. Take notes—journal. Expand your scope. Build yourself. True, people love to tell you what will or will not happen if you do something or do not. But instead of making decisions based of their experiences, why not form your own experience? Adjust your values in the process. Worry less about what they will think. Just do what you desire and find comfortable or reasonable or both at the moment.
Be yourself. Make your own decision like a grown-up that you are. Only kids thinks of making mom and dad happy by trying to not do what upsets them. That is what adulthood is all about—doing your thing without exactly giving a fuck about what anybody thinks about you. Let God be the judge of your intention and actions if you are a religious person. But to make people the determining factor of what you do is a disaster. People change. Their values change. When tomorrow comes, seeing that they have changed, you blame yourself for the things you refused to do because of them. You lost. You become angry and bitter. You were foolish. You can change the narrative now. Have your own opinion. Nobody other than you should make your decisions for you. You cannot lead a stress-free life if you depend directly or indirectly on people's thoughts of you. You do not need their validation. What you think of yourself is more important. Be well. Be committed to your growth.
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The service I attended two Sundays ago emphasised an awesome lesson that I do not intend to forget anytime soon... or let me say, that I do not think I will ever forget in life.
As the worship was on, everyone was just there, following the normal order of service. You know, Sunday school, praise and worship, offering and all that. This woman stepped in, communicated with the Pastor that she would like to do a Thanksgiving. The pastor allowed her—she was blind and was assisted into the church by a little boy.
As soon as she mounted the pulpit, she praised God, she was a singer who had studio albums already and currently in the middle of producing another one. She sang so beautifully. This woman narrated a lot of stuff that had happened to her since she lost her sight. Her testimony got me and I was going to cry. Not for her experience really, but for the fact that with all that stuff that happened to her, she still went from church to church sharing her testimony, praising God.
She was not in the church for the money really, she was just there TO PRAISE GOD; to share her testimony; to motivate people and make them value the things—eyes—they have but she no longer owned. And after she was gone, the service changed, the real atmosphere of worship was felt in the church and the pastor could no longer preach. Everyone just worshipped God for the gift of “whatever they could think of”.
What am I saying exactly? This woman found purpose in her lost eyes, she found that it was necessary to spur faith in people with her story; rather than just stay back at home with three kids and cry everyday with eyes that was no longer there. She energised the body of Christ to worship instead; she energised people to be more thankful for what they have.
Friend, rather than wallowing in self-pity, and self-doubt because of the experiences you have had in the past, why not make a value code of it? Why not make it into a blessing for you and for the people around you and for the world at large? I mean, the rejection, disappointments, failure, loss etc.
I converted my blog from Religious only to include matters that pertain to physical Life and Poetry because I once battled depression. My relationship life did not really work as I had envisaged. You know, being turned down repeatedly by women (even spiritual ones) for being good: “You're a good person but...” etc. And I was always like, “The fuck?! Why y'all want bad, phony and manipulative guys?”
I had blogged a little about it but no details given, perhaps because I was not ready to make the stories public yet. Of a truth, that really got to me over years and almost damaged me, coupled with the loss of my mother. Hence, I dedicated my entire blogging on lifestyle to helping readers overcome depression and its siblings—anxiety, fear etc.—via my experience; because I did already. However, I still hate that phrase though and I do not really want to hear it from any girl, ever again... like, shut the fuck up, I know I am a good person.
Read it here: Why Do Women Seem To Not Know What They Want Exactly
I gained victory over anxiety, depression and fear of all kinds. So, rather than hating my experience, I saw them as a means through which I could help people battling with depression from loss and interpersonal relationships with people. “If I got over it, you can get over it, too.” I made a value code out of the experiences that I had. Rather than mistakes and failure, I saw ways to better help people become far away from their worst fears; from depression and the feeling of guilt and unworthiness. I give hope to people—hope that works, not the kind that breeds laziness—Christian or not.
And it was not hard. All that the woman did and I did, too, was that we changed our attitude. I changed my mindset, I changed the way I viewed my experiences, I saw them as adventure—stories I want to tell people. Stories I want to tell my children. Stories of how their dad did this and that to motivate them to act whenever they face similar challenge(s) as mine in life. Because, let us be sincere, life does not always throw us goodies. Honestly, I do not know who/what made it that way—maybe God or sin—but shit just happens and the only way to remain sane is to keep in mind that “SOMEONE MADE IT THROUGH THIS, I CAN, TOO!” This is why I share my story. This was what the blind woman ministered, as well, in her own way.
After she left, people worshipped God more. After reading my stories and experiences, people thanked me for helping them through their situation(s) and that my story gave them hope and spurred them to do more; helped them learn how to handle stress and anxiety. And for that I am grateful.
The conclusion is not much really, it is all in the title: With A Positive Attitude, Value Can Be Created From Anything That Happens To You In Life. The attitude is simply acknowledging the good in every situation—seeing the hard times as learning processes that are equipping you for greater events that are yet to unfold. No misfortune, no room for depression, no more overthinking mistakes and failure, no more fear of uncertainty, just living—an opportunity to expand your scope for you, first, and then, for the people around you.
Further Readings
- "Approval Addiction: Overcoming Your Need to Please Everyone" by Joyce Meyer
- "The Subtle Art of not Giving a Fuck" by Mark Manson
- "Feel the Fear... And Do It Anyway" by Susan Jeffers
- "The Disease To Please" by Harriet B. Braiker
