Purpose (23rd birthday post)

Sometimes I wonder what the use for a sense of purpose is, whether our primitive brains have way too much time on their metaphorical and literal hands after our ancestors helped us escape the woes of a feral life and tribal wars, and now we're left wondering about things that are partially comprehensible and entirely optional to our survival.

I wonder because I'm perpetually dissatisfied with my life, nothing comes naturally to me like fidgeting for ways to have more of what I crave; purpose, love, and achievement. I'm always anxious about not being enough, about not striving enough to have more security that will ideally put my mind at ease. The people around me are true champions for putting up with that!

 This got me thinking and theorizing, the less a mind is preoccupied by the basic aspects of survival, the more it has time to wallow in questions of purpose and identity. The fewer distractions it entertains, the longer and harder its days pass. The more a mind questions its purpose, the less clear it becomes. It's not a groundbreaking revelation to many, but it's a relevant one to me at this point in time.

 Perhaps the only good-enough distraction to me is falling and being in love. It's the closest thing to magic spells for all the chemistry that goes into making it materialize. I remember the dark days I went through as a teenager deeply and hopelessly in love, but also how I pushed through milestone after milestone with ease when I had a full heart. I achieved so much, felt like I had a reason to wake up every morning and be someone, felt like my existence was justified because it was so entrenched in someone else's...this is something I can't say I have right now.

 Stepping into my 24th year of life, I can't help but wonder for how long I can run on an empty heart and an over-worked mind.

The Chosen and The Damned

I'd be lying if I said I never wondered on what basis God judges a person as good or bad. I've had these thoughts since I was a kid when I was told that being certain things was good, while doing things or associating with certain people was bad. I tried to maintain those guidelines while growing up, looking at things purely from black and white vision goggles. It was easy, relatively. I just had to hold to some criteria that I thought were objective and fair, but that was as far as my child brain could take me.

But growing up, to me, was discovering that life has a wide array of grey-scale shades. And these shades often get tinted by a certain color representing where you stand on the spectrum. I learned that my idea of right and wrong is different from my sister's, and we grew up in the same house raised by the same parents! I'd be lying to say that it was easy, because I remember at a point in my life I was being constantly shocked by what other people viewed as true, right, good and fair. Let's just say it was a bumpy road...

Part of the teachings children receive, especially in religious backgrounds, is knowing which people belong where when it comes to the afterlife. We're taught that certain people who do a,b and c belong to heaven, while some others who don't, and maybe have 1,2 and 3 as their set values, they belong to hell. The first pile, The Chosen, often include people like ourselves and our parents. They're the familiar, the similar, the congruent to our codes of morality. While the "other," they're The Damned. Those classifications are often termed "moral tribes."

Setting apart moral tribes starts to take place by associating with only the people who fit our definitions of good. But like any other tribal behaviors, it ends by eliminating and alienating those who don't. A bit further down the road, the tribe starts having a more specific list of "admission prerequisites,"  which means that its circle shrinks and starts to exclude more people. And to ensure the survival and propagation of its values and morals, it starts to fight other tribes.

This means that fighting only happens when a tribe feels threatened by the presence of another option, or by the lack of enough followers. It happens when the "other" is viewed as the enemy who could possibly destroy our own tribal values, or at least when vanquishing the "other" is seen as a sign of strength that could attract a bigger number to join the victor tribe.

It's obviously primal thinking, using primal strategies. To fail at belonging to a community, having certain values and beliefs, while simultaneously being able to view the "other" as a human being with as much value on their life, as many rights as you possess, and as big of a possibility to be a good human being. This is all childish clinging to the black and white vision goggles.

But you know, sometimes those goggles don't work.

When we stop saying "No"...

This isn't about peer pressure as you might have guessed from the title. I'm writing about what happens when we stop saying no to our own selves.
So, we're creatures who seek comfort and convenience wherever those may be. I'd like to think that my laziness is a shared misery with everyone else out there, and I guess it is. We seek the shortest/easiest way to our destinations, we choose flats over high heels (unless it's more rewarding to wear heels ;)), and we like to avoid confusing situations where we feel uncomfortable. It's all normal to be for this and against that; it makes sense.

However, sometimes the most natural and normal way out of a situation is contradictory to a principle one is in full conviction with. Sometimes lying to a teacher or professor or boss is the only way that's won't get you into trouble in a sticky situation, or giving into the temptation to eat that last slice of pizza although you're already full and on a diet. Sometimes checking out that girl in an extra tight, low cut top seems like the only possible option, or hurting a person whether emotionally or physically in retaliation of something they did to you just feels right.

The examples I've cited are related to different forms of conviction, they're either beliefs, morals, or just plain old situations where self-control is needed. The only thing in common is that if you react "normally" you'd realize that it was not correct, but that doesn't stop you.

Okay, so it happened once. Now what?

People vary in reacting to their failure to keep up with the standards they put (or believe were put) for themselves. Some people realize they failed to keep up with the standard and feel a pinch of guilt that prevents them from repeating the shortcoming. Other people experience what is called Cognitive dissonance, defined as:

1. the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change.

which, in simpler words, means that they start to have second thoughts about their "already there" beliefs and attitudes. They start questioning whether their worldview was right, and how -if so- it failed to keep them in line with their own expectations of themselves.

So what happens when a person doesn't stop and say "No" to their own head when it starts having this kind of thoughts? What happens when a person almost trips into failing to keep their standards, but doesn't say "No" to themselves?

It doesn't feel overly weird at first. It feels quite normal to just go through life like that without holding yourself accountable for every thought and action that comes out of you. But little by little you start noticing your own behavioral changes; a slight increase in selfishness, more disregard of other people's opinion -even the ones you see as close, even more questioning of those beliefs with a slight partiality to what you see as most compatible to your actions. You start surrounding yourself with people who are stuck in the same loop. And ultimately, you start forming new beliefs to replace the old, obsolete ones.

It feels quite different to pull yourself out from the first step than from the last. Some people realize there's no hope at all in regaining their lost standards and decide to stick to their new ones out of comfort and/or convenience.

A repetition of this cycle produces an unstable person, someone who doesn't know exactly where they stand, and more often a person with a shifting moral code and ergo, shifting personality.