Confidence

I find it particularly interesting that we glorify confidence as one of the hallmarks of a strong, resilient character, when it has proven time and time again that it fails us.

Is this tenuous, fragile state of being self-assured and the act of being assertive actually contributing anything to help us understand a situation for what it is, as opposed to merely how we feel about it? All too often, our compulsion to maintain an image of confidence becomes an obstacle to reason and  objectivity. 

Confidence is only good when it is conjoined with lucid and rational judgment. But even with sound judgment, how can anyone be so sure? Why be sure, when in this paradoxical, hostile, and chaotic world, it’s not only nearly impossible to be completely sure from an objective standpoint, but, even being justifiably sure, it’s more than likely that our selfish, narrow-minded, and erratic emotional tendencies will inevitably undo any rational judgment we once had? 

Lest we continue to conflate confidence with character, charisma with competence, bravery with bravado, and certainty with success, when in reality they all belie the truth of their counterpart. 

It should be good to be unsure. It should be good to say “might,” “maybe,” or “perhaps.” 

And above all, in an effort to whittle down and disintegrate this pretense of confidence at its roots, it should be good to say, “I was wrong.” 

Resilience

If I am doing the right thing,

If I am trying my best, 

If it’s impossible for me to know the future, 

If I am fine with death, with the thought of losing

absolutely everything

in the mere blink of an eye,

what reason remains 

to be afraid?

To remember

To remember to be brave.

To remember what I’m meant to do. 

To remember that the past is past, and that I’ve changed. 

To remember to do things that put me in the mindset to do what I set out to do. 

In the midst of conflicting desires and our recalcitrant emotional impulses, our mind struggles to remember. It becomes maddeningly difficult—when we so desperately want to prove something and teach those who wronged us a lesson, when we so desperately want to indulge in the warmth of blankets, to bask in the innumerable and inexhaustible pleasures that envelop our lives, to wallow in our apathy, to give into the temptation to dip our toes into the idealized freedom that comes from simply forgetting about everything, from giving up, from hiding. 

Mindfulness—the ability to remember, even in the midst of oppressive circumstances—can only go so far. It is but the first step, the impetus to push us to build lifelong habits to become the person we want—no—the person we need to become.

Only Human

“We’re only human” should be a phrase used by both the accuser and the accused, instead of merely by the latter. 

In the same way there seems to be nothing more human than imperfection and making mistakes, there also seems to be nothing more human than impulsively shaming and ridiculing others; both are as integral to the social relationships and hierarchies that we build as a society. 

What matters is that we constantly exercise this duality of self-awareness and empathy as a means to discern and recognize the humanity within one another—to take our actions at face value, but our intentions to heart.

There’s a time to give up as lost,

and that time isn’t now.

If

If there was just slightly less evil, 

If there was just a little more kindness,

If we could just get rid of the suffering, 

maybe the world wouldn’t be better. 

What does “better” even really mean? 

Perhaps everything is already in balance. In the same way nature needs predators as it does prey, death as it does life, famine and drought as it does abundance and prosperity, storms and gusts of wind as it does sunlight and gentle breezes, it could be that we need antagonists just as much as we need protagonists, chaos just as much as we need peace, anger just as much as we need kindness, urgency just as much as we need patience, laziness just as much as we need industriousness, deceit just as much as we need truth, evil just as much as we need good, and suffering just as much as we need joy. 

Perhaps the question is not whether we can win this battle against suffering—not whether or not we should suffer—but it is rather a question of how and why we suffer at all. The question merely becomes what battles we choose to fight and what sides we choose to take.

Yes—the specific act of exhorting the people around us to be just slightly less evil and a little more kind may indeed be what is necessary to maintain this balance, but there is a world of difference between demanding that others be a certain way versus demanding that the universe be a certain way. The former is diligence, and the latter is insanity. 

But within the scope of our capabilities, perhaps, in the end, it makes no difference to us. Perhaps the pathway towards change, or the very pathway towards a meaningful and purposeful life is by this paradoxically futile yet valiant endeavor to achieve the unachievable, to win the unwinnable, to make possible the impossible.

Why—why fight a battle is both unending and without victory? 

Because—what else is there to do?

Remember to choose.

“Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been. 

It can ruin your life only if it ruins your character. Otherwise it cannot harm you—inside or out.”

— Meditations 4:7-8

Complacency threatens

I’ve always hypothesized that within my lifetime, it is extremely likely that one or several severely catastrophic events caused by human activity will occur because there’s simply far too much simultaneously going on within such a small time frame; the advancement of technology, the increasingly complexity and intricacy of systems that become nested within other already convoluted systems, the incessant battle of conflicting geopolitical, national, community, and tribal interests—these all progress at an immeasurable rate that by far exceeds the rate of progress we make in terms of developing cultures that inculcate within us a sense of responsibility, a sound morality, and a commitment towards humanity as a whole to create a world we can all equally prosper in. 

We were on the brink of complete and utter destruction of the human race less than eighty years ago, yet where is our sense of desperation? Where is our sense of indignation? We act as if we’ve progressed, as if we’re beyond the ignorance of the “dark ages” of the 20th century, when in reality all that’s changed is that the risk factors for disaster have been multiplied tenfold. When our pride, our ignorance, our obstinate and selfish beliefs about the meaning of life, and the amount of vapidity and banal distractions in our lives only seem to proliferate more and more, day by day, I’m increasingly unsure what hope I should have for the future.

“Is it worth it?”

Until the day we die, we will never know.

Deserving

The more we try to succeed, the more we fail. 

The more we try to fix it, the more it breaks.

The more we try to love, we are pushed ever further away. 

The more we try to be right, the more we are wrong. 

The more we try to find clarity, the more we delude ourselves. 

The more we try to find direction, the more we become lost. 

The more we try to find meaning, the more it eludes us. 

Pouring out our hearts and toiling our way through strife and struggle to no avail, it seems as if we never get what we deserve. It seems unjust, inequitable, and absurd. It seems as if the world is out to get us. It seems as if there’s no sense in trying hard when the result isn’t even guaranteed. It seems as if nothing makes sense, and we should just give up. 

“I again saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift and the battle is not to the warriors, and neither is bread to the wise nor wealth to the discerning, nor favor to the skillful; for time and chance overtake them all.”

— Ecclesiastes 9:11

I keep coming back to this excerpt from Ecclesiastes to constantly humble myself, to ground my thoughts within reality, and to periodically detach from my consciousness the oppressive constraint that is this precarious notion of deserving. 

The fundamental problem with this notion of what we deserve is that it operates under a certain preconception that we innately understand this infinitely complex world we live in, when the truth is that we have but a modicum of understanding. It is inevitable that many events in our lives unravel themselves in a way we didn’t expect them to, and the more we obstinately latch onto the belief that everything in this world should be reliable and predictable, the more frustrated and disconcerted we become amidst this chaos. 

The solution is merely to let go—to eschew what we think should happen, and why.