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Domino Effect
A growing medical bill I can’t afford, expensive college courses I’m trying to pass, no job to support myself with-just side gigs, weight gain from self-neglect, resentment, grief and most of all fear. Times like these are so rare but they make me feel so alive. If I’m going to fall I’d rather fall on my face than on my back. Sometimes the hardest thing to do in life is trying to identify where we took the wrong turn that lead us down the path we’re currently on. There’s not always an easy or clearly identifiable answer. Perhaps we are catastrophizing a future that hasn’t occured yet, leading us to believe that nothing but devastation and turmoil awaits us around every corner. Why should we enjoy the hard times? Because they teach us about who we are and what we’re made of. It never seems to make sense at the time but it’s true more often than we care to recognize.
Even when the answer is obvious sometimes the motive behind the choices we have made at one time, made sense. Hence the old saying “You did the best you could with the information that you had at the time”. Hardly anyone deliberately paints themselves into a corner or a tight spot just for the Hell of it. I remember something someone said about Donald J. Trump that I thought was pretty interesting. He said “Regardless of what you think about the man, he went through multiple bankruptcies and still came out on top as a billionaire, got shot at and still stood up. You can say he’s evil but there’s no denying the fact that there’s an unusal will to survive in that man!”. I’m not here to offer my opinions on Trump, nor do I rememeber the full lists of his failures that were brought up, but something about what this streamer said really caught my attention and peaked my interest.
There are certain people in this world who refuse to go away no matter what hits them, long past the point that most others would throw in the towel. It’s hard to imagine what it takes for a person like that to become what they are. Regardless of their temperament I imagine they are a rare breed. I find myself wondering “Do I have it in me to be that kind of a person or have I become too used to the privileges I’ve been afforded to develop that kind of inner resilience?”. Life is like a gym, the only way we can become stronger is if we get tested and pushed past our comfort zone. It is by getting tested that we know exactly what we can do. I find it fascinating to consider that we work hard to have a future that’s easy, but what if an easy life makes us too soft to tolerate even the most minor of setbacks? I guess the biggest question to really sum up what is going though my mind right now is “Would you rather be tough or would you rather be happy?”. Maybe it’s possible to have both. Maybe not.
Defining Toughness
When I think of “tough” I think of a cold, emotionless and psychopathic boldness that neither acknowledges reality nor chooses to live by it. It laughs in the face of common sense often to its own detriment. What if “tough” actually meant acceptance of reality without the need for resistence of circumstances or assigning any specific meaning to them? I guess in that way one could theoretically be detached without being unstable or dangerous. Maybe you could even label that a form of intelligence somehow. Some might say refusing to jump out of a plane without a parachute makes you a coward whereas I would say it makes me smart. You probably would think the same way I do. But maybe that just reveals the black and white and binary thinking of my own mind. The tendency to make such a grand generalization to the point where I miss the possibility of some nuance by thinking in terms of extremes only.
Some of the toughest and most courageous people I’ve known have been very intelligent and had a heart to match. The evidence that contradicted my own assumptions were always there, but I was too busy assuming to be able to actually know. I guess it’s only been through writing this blog that I have started to realize the limits of my awareness of other people and maybe life itself, sometimes. Maybe it’s not the strength itself that matters, but knowing how and when to use it and when to be tender and caring. Otherwise it would be like a gun that never stops firing off rounds; that doesn’t make any sense. A powerful weapon is only good when it’s used at the right time for the right reason. Otherwise it shoots itself in the foot (or its handler at least). Hesitation is self-doubt, toughness is confidence combined with purposeful execution of skill and strength.
The Gun That Shot Itself
I suppose I’ve always wanted to feel tough because I never felt strong enough to handle the difficulties of this world and the people in it. Sometimes I even stumble over myself and there’s alot of confusion in that. I never knew how to use what I had, I only knew that I couldn’t survive without it. So from very early on in life, I always took on the assumption that “The Best Defense Is An Overwhelming Offense”, but the results were always the same; I was always left more tired and bruised up than when I started. I alienated people that might’ve been my friends and burned bridges that could have saved my sanity, had I been less impulsive and quick to anger. What good is a weapon that destroys itself? To get past the knowing of this to reach the intuitive understanding is what I always needed, but I never realized the importance of having that. It can’t just be logically understood, it has to be felt and believed. I think that’s always been the biggest threat to my own growth and ability to mature.
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