I'm Lonely and the World is Big

So now I know what I want to be, and I am on my way to becoming it. The trouble being I don't know how to make myself happy, nor am I sure that I should be trying to.

The common problem being - if I do things for the short term I feel bad that I'm not thinking long term and if I do things for the long term I feel bad that I'm not thinking of the short term. That and sleep is ever telling me to sleep more and sleep less.

But those are mediocre problems and I think they will pass with time. I retain hope in any case, that they will take care of themselves.

What has been most interesting is what I have been learning with that time. Everywhere I look, the people that I admire are fighting the same demons I am. The people who love to create and learn and love are all faced with this. I never saw it before, but now I think it really is a universal problem.

Cakebread is afraid he is doing the same things over and over, thinks his works are menial, and is trying to learn how to do the things he wants to do - against his natural lifestyle tendency.

Nightmare Mode author talks about a world that demands creativity be limited to pre-approved creativity, and how people are told they are nobody unless they conform. A world where everyone is a great artist, author, intellect, and creator, but almost no one realizes it.

Another author from Nightmare Mode talks about how we experience beauty all in different ways and that wonder at sharing it. Yet somehow this is an unusual thing.

And an Ontological Geek writer who is struggling with how he looks at himself and his activities and how much he wants to define himself and how much he wants to be defined.

Redditors, a faceless mob of earnest individuals, seem to be wrestling with who they are and talk with some bitterness about who they wish they were. Other in their mix are pulling themselves above what they thought they could be and reach back to the rest.

Movies, poetry, and music of people all over the world standing against the tide in their own ways. Celebrating what we have done and know, yearning for what we will someday achieve.

I see philosophers dealing with these intrinsic problems and how we can possibly keep trying to go on in a world that is either empty or filled with meaning.

I see my friends struggling to figure out just what they should do to live their lives, trying to figure out what they really care about and what they should do about it and how much they should follow or renounce their lives.

I see my family who sees that there are things they could improve on, but don't seem to see the gaping philosophical maelstrom that is causing it.

I see Rin, trying desperately to know herself and her world when she can't even begin to describe them, and how she is drowning against the impossible odds.

I see my stories and writings and cries against this impasse, I see my progress and my understanding, and I see how I may find a path for myself, but how impossible it seems to make any real difference such a monstrous enigma that faces every intelligence on every scale.

So then this problem will always haunt me, and yet it doesn't.

There are times I forget it and am happy, not just in that easy temporary sense, but in a real sense. That I have found answers and am surmounting it, against all possibility.

What does that make love? A shelter against all the worlds unknowns and obstacles and troubles?

Yes.
It is exactly that.

In how I know I can survive without, but am so much in debt to how much it has helped me [under]stand.
In how much it can consume others, who stop, give in to it, and never look forward again.
In how I am guilty of using it and setting it aside and using it again.
In how it is a world apart, and yet draws its meaning from all the world itself.
In how I find myself asking for it again and again and again, without any real cause for it... still I hold myself and long for it. [and long for it]
How when there are reasons I can or should deny it, that I know the reasons come from someone that has given up instead of someone who wants to live.
And yet, how when I turn to it for help, I feel like I am turning away from the world.
How it can be that I escape away from my vexes and yet solve them at the same time.



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So what of the things I listed and spoke of? Is that it? Just that I noticed them?
Well.
Yes and no. It is itself a surprise that I am still working on, to see and notice it so often. But more than that, all I can seem to make of it, is that while I am not actually alone, the problem is so damn insurmountable.
Hence... "I'm Lonely and the World is Big."