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The crash of a bad day can lead to blaming others.
What happens to your empathy when you feel self-pity? Under the mask of outward anger, your heart is turned inward, reserved for yourself.
In this closed state, you are disconnected from loving others as much as you block yourself from the love and support of others.
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I abhor the common refrain, often an excuse from responsibility, that we need to “find ourselves”.
Yet, without a small gap or space in which to practice pointless tasks you will not find what resonates deeply with you. Without grasping what brings you joy without needing function, or utility, it seems unlikely you could ever be a “self.”
You risk being a “being” produced by the society by not discovering, on your own initiative, your own priorities.
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For dignity we pursue honor, love, or power. These often take the form of conquest, simultaneous desires, and discipline.
The conundrum is to distinguish our singular “self” we become embroiled in self-defeating behaviors. The more victorious you are, the more divided you become.
And yet, this game persists, and the trick is to play it well.
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Nature is a concept that needs to be clarified.
If nature exists outside of areas man has civilized, then it is an artificial notion of otherness (an alien space to which we visit.) Extended, we are not natural but temporary inhabitants keeping nature at bay.
It has colonial roots and enlightenment germination and harbors the seeds of bad faith, yet it is still the soil from which we derive sustenance.
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Once people have made several incremental and voluntary commitments, they form increasingly complex interactions with community, which is how they establish themselves as individuals.
Dewey argues there is no going back: There is no return to the simple self.
Any return is a simulation of simplification, and maintaining those artifical and antithetical stresses would necessarily distort any commitments, producing a “bewildered individuality.”
The nostalgia of return is itself antithetical to the simple life, due to the stress it causes.
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It’s hard to be somebody; try being nobody.
Consider the weight of being "somebody," and how that persona drags you through a life of desires and mechanical repetitions.
To begin being nobody, continually ask "why?"
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The worst part of people opening up is not that we become closer, but we clearly reveal our uncompromising nature that is afraid and seeking stability.
Our transparency, vocally stated, is one-directional: it is the depths of self-revealed, resplendent in need, fear, and longing.
Clouding the waters with murk obscures you and can protect you, but it also keeps people on the banks, only tiptoeing into your shallows. To expose your depths is to invite deep relationships.
As well, your openness models openness: reciprocity of genuine comradery.
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There exists within you an "economy of selves." However, let’s call it a community or a troupe, where each personality (or partition) with its concomitant desires proclaims its importance to running the whole self.
In such a case, to remain entire the whole must sacrifice to save the fragment.
Some parts of you must do things harmful to other parts, essentially triaging desires. The whole will always be sick (divided against itself) because of this.
The difficulty of a singular self (or universality) to emerge, or to transcend to an ideal state, is the need to either rid or harmonize discord. Optimizing the self is radically tyrannical to the self.
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There are thousands of ways to optimize, reduce, or contract: these are control methods, not human exuberance or creativity.
Each has its place. Without over-indexing (on control or chaos) we can realize reactions that expand us (into a greater self), and those that contract us (for specificity).
To improve yourself in measurable ways has an allure, but limitation for expansion constrains the self into a nearly mechancial, narrow channel.
