Sunday, 28 July 2024
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Hello. All is well. God is love.

For me, the goal is actual doing. I don't see myself writing endlessly in a bubble. In the past few months, I've been working on myself in solitude to improve agency. I have found that working on one's perception is foundational.

I am forever grateful to Ajahn Sona from Birken Forest Buddhist Monastery. It was while listening to him in 2021 that something about love clicked in me. I experienced it briefly, perhaps for a few days, but my mind quickly reverted to its old ways. I was busy with other things, but I always had it in my mind that I wanted to return to love. Hence, I talk a lot about love in my writing.

Another thing is that to act from love requires a lot of competence. That's at least what I've experienced. I still have a long way to go, but I experience myself becoming more competent. Acting from love as a person who is sensitive and struggles to participate in normal life has been a challenge. This is also why I have to be careful.

It's a bit ironic. I'm not a social person, but I've always had a desire to help people in some capacity. It's not that I'm good at understanding people. It's that I care about people, but for some reason, I'm afraid to care about people. I think my main worry has been that people misinterpret my intentions. It requires competence.

It's odd. I somehow became ashamed of caring. A feeling of awkwardness. I guess somewhere in this confusion, I turned off my care as best I could and just focused on making money. I sort of turned my care of people into a money-making scheme, in some ways that perhaps eased people. My intention was clear. I could justify myself. I was simply in it for the money, and I guess my obsession with money just grew from there, becoming the end goal. Also, I didn't trust anyone and had a strong need to gain independence. People intuitively don't like me or misunderstand me.

It's a bit scary how malleable your way of thinking and valuing is. I could only start changing because I have been in solitude. When I look back to early childhood, I was more of a person who cared about people. It's always been in me. I've just been afraid to show it, pushing it away.

I think society shapes you to become self-centred and selfish. You know, you try to fit in and try to be what is awarded socially. I feel I was always at conflict with this. It's weird when you're rewarded for such behavior. Going back to the money thing. People praise you for making a lot of money, so you focus on that. This is an intricate game. To capture the most praise, you have to frame it as creating value, but you'll only be given credit if it makes you money. It's the quantitative metric it'll boil down to, even so much that some still praise you regardless of how it was made. The same thing happens to charitable actions. It becomes a number game. The qualitatively human spirit is forgotten, which holds the true resilience of humanity. At least, I think so. Also, a reminder not to take all this I say as something I hold as being true or as not highly simplified. I'm simply sharing how my general perception of society has been, which obviously can't capture all of its complexity and nuances.

On a personal level, I think one should try to embrace qualitative values over quantitative values as best one can while still being realistic about practical life. I think love and kindness are where you'll find them.

I went off a tangent. I've been thinking about how I can competently care for and help people since that seems to be what I find naturally fulfilling. I find it a tricky thing to figure out at the moment. I'm not in a rush though. I think it's valuable to think things through when things are complex and confusing. But regardless, enjoying life in peace is a joy. Locality has started to mean a lot more to me.