| |
|
Glad you’re doing okay. I just hope that, in the rush of new ideas to your brain, you don’t lose sight of some important things—like empathy, and perspective, and compassion.
You’re viewing things from a different angle now, but never forget that you are still, and always will be, a work in progress—just like everybody else. Where you are right now, you can’t even imagine what enlightenment looks like, as Tyler Durden famously didn’t say.
And in your younger days, before this noticeable shift—you weren’t asleep, you weren’t a sheep, you weren’t wandering mindlessly through your life. You were thinking deeply about things; you were examining your life and the way the world works. You were coming to different conclusions, that’s all.
Six years from now, you may find yourself coming to different conclusions still. I wouldn’t doubt it. In fact, I hope so—we’re all works in progress, after all. And you may find the opinions you hold today to be, in retrospect, kind of embarrassing.
When that time comes, just remember that you were always doing the best you could with what you had, where you were at the time. And so is everybody else; they’re all awake and asking, doing their best.
And from where you are right now, you can’t even imagine what the big picture looks like, as Chuck Palahniuk famously didn’t write. You can’t know who’s further ahead, who’s higher up the ladder. You can make some best guesses, but don’t cling too tightly to your conclusions—especially as regards your own position on the enlightenment-scale vs. anybody else’s. In the end, that doesn’t matter.
Because we’re all in this together. And what matters—what really matters—is not being smarter than everybody else, but that we as an aggregate, as a species, grow smarter, grow up, grow out of our bad habits and foolishness. And looking down on the species is a damned poor substitute for pulling it up.
Stay engaged. Take courage, and give courage to those around you. Talk when you need to, but listen all the time. Love everyone—everyone—because they deserve it. Everybody’s trying. Everybody’s doing their best. Everybody’s fucking up to various degrees, but they’re trying.
You’re still fucking up, of course—we all are—but you’re doing your best. That’s good. Keep it up for fifty or sixty years, and you—like everybody else—may eventually make something of yourself. We all might. We'd damn well better. |
|
|
