Venting Am I legit or am I spoiled and wrong? pt848583

[yvmthus]

I feel so bitter and resentful that I didn't magically die before 20. The world is absolute shit and I don't see Why I'd want to stay alive when there is so much horror and sadness and grief. The belief that I would die lead me to believe that no matter how intense And scary everything is, it's at least not something I have to deal with long term, right? But I'm still Here and will be for the foreseeable future if I don't ctb and I fucking hate it. I can't handle this but I can't look away either, I'm just stuck being a witness to stuff I can't affect. I'm gonna be watching people die and suffer and the power to affect that is mostly out of my hands. And I wanna try and make the world a better place but I get so exhausted because it never stops, there is always some new atrocity occurring. I don't see how I'm just supposed to WANT to be here despite that. i don't want that, I don't want to see things get worse and worse and worse because I can't handle it. I'm afraid to get better because maybe I'll get friends and make my own family but then what? Things will still go to hell and instead I have to justify to myself why I'm not only alive but possibly brought someone innocent into it

but On the other hand, maybe Im just a lazy and undisciplined brat bc people in worse conditions have survived worse and wanted to survive and be happy. What kind of self centered asshole is gonna see All the opportunities ahead of them and not want them bc the way the world works makes them sad? Who's gonna squander all of that when others would do anything to be in their shoes? Am I just being ungrateful and whiny and filled With self pity and a victim complex? And if I am, why should I try to be better when it's quicker and easier to ctb rather than actually try and hope things will improve?

 

[mote]

Are you me? jk
PM me once you get permissions if you want, I hate laying out too much info in public but I feel exactly the same as you.

 

[GoodPersonEffed]

Very well written. I respond to it almost as if I were workshopping it in a non-fiction creative writing course, that is, it stimulates my (constructively) critical perspective, not my helper perspective. So there is no intention to influence here, but rather to reflect how I respond to what you've written.

The first paragraph seems like you are highly intelligent and rational, but not emotionless. You see what is, and it hurts. It seems like you have reached conclusions free of illusions and false beliefs that would make the world bearable even as it would be a fantasy. You seem overwhelmed by what you recognize, and intelligently question, "Why try?" Like many people with a combination of intelligence and altruism, you seem to see so many storm clouds, what one raindrop could you focus on and feel satisfied and fulfilled that you were making a difference? Would it be enough when the storms will still always rage and threaten to overtake anything good and seemingly stable?

The second paragraph sounds like guilt messages. My understanding is that guilt is not an emotion, but a message. It it is meant to negate and say, "How dare you ______?" Whatever the source(s) of the message - family, society, culture, religion - the point is that you dare not break free or do something for your highest benefit, and you dare not do anything that supports you doing so, such as thinking well of yourself, trusting your instincts, trusting outside advice, etc.

These are my questions: What exactly is it that you're talking about getting better from? What would that look like? Is there perhaps an archetypal example or ideal? Has someone told you that you need to get better, and if so, do you agree with their assessment, have they given you a concrete goal of what better is, and is that something you desire to the point that you would make effort to attain it? It's not about the mountain so much as whether or not you want to make the effort out of climbing it, and what you would get out of the journey, which may not reach the initially intended summit at all. And I almost dread to know, what is the significance of the end of the thread title?

 

[Apathy79]

It sounds like viewing it differently would be useful. You learn from negative experiences how good a regular life is. If you spend some time homeless for example, you very quickly learn the value of a mattress, pillow, blanket, roof, lockable door, etc. When you get sick, you realise how nice it is to be healthy. When you spend time in a foreign country, you realise how useful it is to be able to speak, read and write with people in your own language, have people you know and connect with around, etc. I mean this could go on forever - even walking around in heavily polluted places makes you realise the value of fresh air. One of the great tricks of the world is you don't have to experience all the downsides to realise how relatively good the standard life is, you can witness them instead and hopefully grasp the lesson. You can also see others stripped of virtually everything we take for granted viewing life as a blessing for the few things they have.

Without the backdrop of what we view as negativity, it's not possible to really appreciate what we have. It would never occur to us the value of just being able to walk around without seeing a disabled person. And everyone goes through various levels of personal experience with that. It might also be useful to look back through the history of almost constant international war and circumstances for the average person which today would be considered beyond the worst form of poverty imaginable to realise today is pretty good comparatively.

I find it useful to view the world through the lense of karma playing itself out over multiple lifetimes and our purpose here at any moment is laid out in the decisions we face today. I wouldn't view it as dichotomy - I don't like it because it's bad vs I don't like it because I'm a whinger. I'd just try to reframe it to something you can work with. Ctb is a useful fallback if personal circumstances become untenable, but I get the sense that's not your situation.

 

[a.n.kirillov]

You have written two paragraphs and I will respond to these seperately:

1. You are making it seem like the bulk of your suffering stems from having to watch the sufferings of the world so to speak – but have you ever questioned that? Could it be that you are projecting your personal frustration and suffering out into the world and onto others? Please don't get this the wrong way – maybe I am simply unempathetic; but I have certainly caught myself looking at the world through my own distorted lense, both in good times and in bad times.

(This is from the first paragraph but ties into what I have to say about the second:)

I'm afraid to get better because maybe I'll get friends and make my own family but then what? Things will still go to hell and instead I have to justify to myself why I'm not only alive but possibly brought someone innocent into it

2. One thing you need to realize, is that there are no 'oughts' and 'shoulds' in this world but your own – the ones dictated by the values you choose to adopt. Listening to you, it becomes clear that you are very concerned about how other people percieve (and judge) you, what they expect and want from you – which is understandable ... it is the default condition of most civilized human beings today; but that does not mean that you have to accept their judgements of you as "lazy", "ungrateful" or "whiny"; you don't have to accept their expectations of you: you have no obligation to want to do anything. If the opportunities that are granted to you don't appeal to you, for whatever reason – maybe your heart is not in them, maybe you desire something completely different that you can not even articulate yet – then it is your right to squander them.

why should I try to be better

Only because you want to and in the way you want to, – what 'better' is is for you to decide as well.