Why you Should Never Take Life Advice on The Internet — My Manifesto for Life in a World of Instant Gratification
Instant Gratification
Non-existent attention spans
This is the age of ‘I want it yesterday’ and ‘i’m bored of you already’.
The age of expectation while having zero appreciation
My time is valuable so you better treat it wisely but I need all of yours
We are quick to Judge but slow to reflect
We see other people’s mistakes without witnessing our own. We ignore the bad we have done in ourselves and the good in the people around us.
The grass is always greener until green isn’t the colour we want
We let the manicured pictures people flaunt on social media influence our own happiness, instead of understanding the game. We experience debilitating unhappiness by comparing what we don’t have to what other people do.
But we don’t compare what we do have to what other people don’t
And time stands still
If something isn’t happening we manufacture drama to create interest. We pick faults in things that have already happened in a hope of making life more interesting.
We sacrifice contentment and security in the search of excitement
Then we find it and realise we aren’t any happier
We want something to be happening yet we feel alone when those games grow tiresome and people walk the other way.
Excitement is preferable to happiness
Until we realise excitment is unsustainable and the only thing you can ever hope for in life is a little bit of happiness in each day.
So we feel more loneliness than ever before
We all want to be loved for our faults but fail to be as willing to return that feeling to someone else. We forgive the unforgivable by in ourselves but hold grudges and resent those around us for doing things that we don’t agree with.
We expect people to live to our principals
But struggle to live to them ourselves
And we can’t ever truly put ourselves in someone else’s shoes
No matter how much we try, we can never fully appreciate the circumstances, the feelings or psychological state of mind the person was going through during the time in which they made their decisions.
We view other people actions through our own perception of how we believe we would act
While lying to ourselves in a hope to make us feel better
The truth is that we would have probably made the same decisions if not worse. For the most part we haven't had it as tough as the people we judge. They have survived which ever ordeal you are judging for negatively. They didn’t turn to easy means escape.
They were brave. They made it without us. The fought through the storm and emerged
We think we could but we don’t really know
And not knowing is crippling. Thinking you are a good person but lacking the evidence leaves us searching for ways to prove ourselves. It leaves us questing our why, how and what our point is.
Do we matter?
Do we have purpose?
And that is paralysing as well. Not knowing our meaning in a word full of people who look like they do.
The truth is everyone has problems
People let you see what they think you want to know. They show you the face of the person that they believe they are while saving the other for themselves.
We lack the courage of our own convictions and believe in our own inadequacy and fate
We tell other people that what other people are doing isn’t that impressive while lacking the bravery, skills and grit to take any risk ourselves.
But risk is what we are taking by doing nothing
By not acting we forfeit our right to become one of the winners. We forget our right to judge others. We forfeit our right to become better people.
The reality is nobody knows what we are doing
We are a single example of a single species on a rock in an otherwise unremarkable solar system.
Nobody else can tell you how to live
Nobody else can tell you how to be happy
There are no books that can tell you what it means to be human. What is required to be human. What a human has to do.
We allow historical precedent to decide what we must do in our lives Instead of pursuing the path that will let us be happy
We let other people opinions mean more to us than our own and live our lives to the rules set by other people
We are confused and we can’t find meaning in anything we do
And it’s only getting worse
We want to be loves but we refuse to be vulnerable.
