I'm so confused. I feel so detached from everyone. Well, with one exception. Which, I suppose, gives me some hope... And one can't say I'm not trying here. Offline, anyway. It seems like the more social I am offline, the less social I am online. These days I can't even seem to have a decent MSN conversation with people, let alone anything like emails, forums, chat rooms... I just can't hold the attention, it doesn't feel real any more at all. Online communication can only have my attention if it's relevant to "real life". Which imposes pretty big limitations on the kind of people I get to interact with.
Maybe I'll feel better when I get to the international linguistics olympiad... which I'll be off to tomorrow, btw. Yep, 5-6 days of (hopefully) getting to meet a bunch of interesting young people from all over... um, Eastern Europe mainly, though with some exceptions like Holland, Spain and a couple of others. It's unlikely that the international philosophy olympiad "miracle meetings" will repeat, but at least there'll be new people, action, excitement. I'm not sure if I actually want to get very emotionally attached to anyone I might meet there, last time that happened, it didn't end too well... or, now that I think about it, such things not ending well is the usual state of affairs... but I think I'm actually starting to understand the concept of "I'd rather feel pain than nothing at all" on this level.
I guess it's like, I know I've got personal issues with this, but - as that one person I do feel things about goes to show - it's not that I'm incapable of experiencing connectedness. Maybe it's just that for developing that, there needs to be some sort of harmony, similarity, resonance that goes beyond the everyday surface. If not to the core, then at least deep enough to feel personal. It's hard to form strong emotional attachments with people who are so obviously "walking a different path". I don't want to be lonely, I'm rather sick and tired of it really. But I can't give up who I am in the hope that maybe, just maybe, that would somehow improve the situation a little.
I suppose I've managed to start annoying anyone who actually reads what I write here. What can I say... it's an important issue for me. These days, it feels like the single most important issue a lot of the time really. So I think about it relatively much. And therefore write about it.
Anyway, I guess this will be the last time I write here before the olympiad. So hopefully I'll be back with something new and interesting to say after that.
kanaljee
4 years ago
3 comments:
Annoying? No way, it's all true what you said about deeper connectedness, can't have it with just anyone and it could take ages to find the right people who would earn your complete trust...
It makes me sad reading that you think what you write is annoying. I want you to know that some people are touched by your words; they read your posts again and again because it makes them feel understood. You seem to go through a lot of changes right now. Changes are extremely challenging, especially when we are the ones responsible for them as we want to change ourselves. There are probably patterns in you that became fixed over the years. It touches the core of personality to change those. They cannot be conditioned overnight.
In addition, the price for change is high. You have to give up a lot. You have to go through a lot of pain. You will experience failures; you will feel detached. You will suffer from weltschmerz and even if there seems to be no reason for it. Then you hear this voice telling you that everything is pointless, the "evil judge". He hates change. He hates it when you reach for the stars. He hates it when you finally find people, become social and want to be happy. So he whispers that you can't ever change anything and everything will stay as it is. You'll always be lonely and feel empty; even when you have actually achieved and found what you've been searching for.
Don't listen to him. Don't believe him. If you are courageous, you can even laugh at him. The more you believe in yourself, the more the judge is pining away.
After you got over a failure, looking back will make you laugh about it and think that you've learned your lesson; this cannot happen again. But unfortunately…it will. You're going to fail again…and again. This rollercoaster of feelings can make you insane. Just do not give up….that's exactly what the evil judge wants. He even claims to reward you if you lose hope. "No matter. Try again, fail again, fail better." It is worth it. Stay persistent. For sure, it's not enough just to think positive. But if you really know why you are doing this and why it is important to you - then you're on the right way. And isn't taking this risk better than eternal solitude?
Of course all these failures have a meaning in our life. You have a lot of knowledge. That is a good fundament. But knowledge is not everything – to know how to put it into practice, we must go through experiences in reality, especially when it's about Psychology. You're a very emotional person. Sensitivity may have some disadvantages, but it is also a special gift. You can probably feel more subtle than others, you see things other people do not see, you can talk about your life much more detailed than most people. That enables you to develop an extraordinary empathy in order to understand people and help them, maybe people who are as special as you are. You want to study Psychology and you read books about Therapy…have you ever thought about the possibility that you destiny supplies you exactly with those experiences you need to develop for that?! Failures help you to get to know emotional depths of the soul and to remember important things you have probably forgotten.
Some aspects of our existence are very confusing, some we forget, some we repress, with some we can deal…and we won't ever know them all. But by loving and trusting ourselves, we find solutions to solve some of the riddles and find out a lot about what we really are :-)
(I wouldn't have the right to give you advice or to talk about you – I seem to have written mostly about myself)
All the best
(and good lock for that linguistic Olympiad)
I completely agree with, well, both posters really, with a deep, respectful bow to the anonymous poster here...who seems to have a lot of knowledge of psychology. Experiential knowledge, too. (S)he is right that the experiences you have been going through may become very important later on. I know another very sensitive person (Glenn Miller) who was able to help another person over the Internet because he had suffered the same way in his youth, and had overcome it. (When I say 'know', I mean I've read a number of his articles. He is a very gentle person...really a healer...)
I believe Carl Jung said that you could not heal somebody if you did not have a few wounds yourself. And you remember the book I had to review, The Art of Listening? It had one book in its bibliography which was called The Wounded Healer by Henri Nouwen. (And guess what country he is from? (smile) His biography is on Wikipedia, and there are some beautiful quotes too. I know you like reading things on the Net: check it out!)
The Wounded Healer...a book written by a man who suffered from clinical depression. A book written about a man who so loved the world that he gave himself, body and soul, to redeem it. After reading your post and the reactions to it, the idea makes more sense than ever.
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