How Low Can You Go

Lately, I have been feeling pretty shitty, but have been soldiering on doing what I need to regardless. Feelings are just feelings - they aren't even necessarily based on reality, rather just some kind of sense of reality filtered through our perceptions, which are filtered through all kinds of preconceptions and conditioning - so how accurate are they really?  It is easy to make ourselves feel better though, as all we need to do is lower our expectations. A lot of people have mentioned this to me recently (and over the years) but I always question whether it is a healthy approach, or just a race to the bottom. If we just keep lowering the bar of what we expect in order to make ourselves feel better, where do we end up? It is akin to the "everyone gets a prize" teaching that started filtering into the schools a few decades ago - making kids feel better about themselves, without them having to do anything for it. As I see it, there should be a *cost* to feeling good, and that is generally the time, energy and effort it takes to learn and accomplish something. If the "high" comes from a lowering of the learning and accomplishment required, it is like taking a cheaper and cheaper drug - > The side effects get worse. It is no wonder we live in the age of entitlement and the desire of workless wealth though, because many people haven't had to go through the hardship to get the feedback that they are doing well. Many today have been coddled, spoiled, and wrapped in cottonwool to protect physically, mentally and emotionally - and then we wonder why we have a society of hyper sensitive people, who have low resiliency, and are pained and triggered by the slightest discomfort. > Reacting violently to feeling bad. A lot of people feel that they deserve good things and seem to carry the "don't you know who I am?" attitude like a celebrity. Even though they aren't famous, and have done nothing of note, nor hold the probable skills that could accomplish something of note. They think that just "being an individual" should afford them the privileges of those who have worked long and hard for what they have. I often wonder if I am falling into the trap of lowering my expectations in order to feel better about myself, to feed my ego. I don't consider myself a victim, but I do think I have some pretty bad luck in some aspects of my life. In the past, I considered myself lucky that I was able to work hard under all kinds of circumstances, but I feel I have lost a lot of that - or at least, I have lost being able to do it relatively willingly. Now, I have to force myself to do anything at all, which is part stroke symptom, and probably part disappointment at outcomes. I am not alone in this, which is why I share a lot of my thoughts here. I think that *just maybe* there will be others who are feeling pretty shitty about their lives, but are suffering through it alone. We all die alone, but we needn't take the journey to death alone - right? Sharing thoughts also lets me explore whether how I feel about circumstances is an accurate fit, or if my feelings have got away from my and turned too far toward disconnected fantasy. > Reflection is a fantasy. Whenever we imagine anything, it is a fantasy. And even when we remember the past, it is not an accurate account of what actually happened, but just our own perspectives, and flawed memories - but that fantasy feels real, so we think that our thoughts are close enough to what actually happened - the *truth.* But, experience is all subjective truth, not objective truth. But it is the subjective truth that guides us and we act upon - which means we take the fantasies we believe and make concrete actions in reality based on them. We create our real world from our belief system - but if we think we needn't be better, why would we improve? And if we keep lowering the bar to feel better, we don't even stay the same - we get *worse.* I *subjectively* believe that the world is getting worse. Yes, there are technologies that are improving and doing some amazing things, but as far as the wellbeing of humanity is concerned, I think that we had a few decades of rapid growth and we took it for granted, got greedy, entitled, and felt far too good about ourselves, and now we are in a retraction, a regression to the mean. > And the mean, *is mean.* The less we expect from ourselves, the meaner our mean becomes. And I think that we are on average colder, harsher, more violent, less caring, and less loving than we were before. Things weren't perfect in the past, but there was more community, more family, more individuals striving to be better versions of themselves - rather than just paying improvement lip-service on social media - virtue signalling. People used to be better for themselves, not for thumbs and hearts. and that was more real, because when the metric is the thumbs and hearts as to whether someone is successful, it is possible to game the system and get more, by doing less. When the metric is looking as objectively as possible into the mirror at the reflection, and being as honest as possible in evaluation - it is far harder to feel good, by doing as little as possible. Even in failure, trying is better than lowering the bar. But it doesn't feel good. Taraz [ Gen1: Hive ]