Ah yes… life, that great river of turmoil, the current that sweeps you off your feet and pulls you downstream into the abyss of the inevitable whirlpool of social avarice, the slaughterhouse of the spineless masses, the crap-storm of social contracts: wear this, behave so, do such, say that, hate him, love her, despise them, glorify thee, worship thy, go there, stay here, bla bla bla bla…
Sometimes it gets so frustrating you don't know who is what, what is where, where is when??!! For those of you who don't know me yet, and you might've picked up from my writings, I'm an idealist, not a realist. I live my life according to what I believe is right, even if the whole world says it's wrong. This doesn't mean that I don't participate in society, or disagree with everyone, or purposely laugh at funerals; it simply means that the decisions I make for myself are based on my own home-grown moral standards, not that dictated by society. Many of us don't know this but it is a fact of real life, much of the decisions we make are dictated and forced upon us like education and family. Just like how you don't choose what to learn, or who you live with, you don't choose your destiny because society has already done that for you.
Unconditional obedience has a lot to do with personal resolve; the less you are determined to achieve an autonomous state of mind, the more dictators you will find at your doorstep, wanting to control your resources. As the saying goes, life is like the game of chess: if you don't know how to play, people are always trying to teach you; but once you learn the rules, others are always trying to beat you.
There are always people wanting to mindlessly attach themselves to some kind of a belief, an idol, an ISM: communism, capitalism, existentialism, transcendentalism, theism, atheism, and they eat whatever crap you feed them so they could feel better about themselves, so they could identify with a herd of society, so someone else does all the thinking for them. I don't buy that.
Most of the time, it's easy to stick your head in the sand and just go with the flow, jump on the bandwagon, walk the walk and talk the talk, but the trend is so overwhelming, any sane person would gladly trade-in his sanity for "what the guy next to him is having" without having to think twice about the choice he just made.
When I feel the pressures of society the most, is when I retreat to my cave. When I feel as if I've lost my grip on life, as if I'm going nowhere fast, when life is carrying me away, as if I've fallen into the current of my own delusionary state of being where I have pre-occupied myself with useless thoughts, unrealistic goals, illusionary ideals and shallow beliefs, is when I fall back on my cave. My cave is a place where I am alone with myself, a place where I shut out the noises of the world and dig deep inside and re-discover my roots, re-organize my game plan and re-boot my hard drive. It's the only way I can stay sane. Others use drugs and alcohol to subdue these feelings, but unless you don't face your monster, you will never be able to tame it. You can call me a realist in the sense that I face the reality of what I am, but an idealist in the sense that I choose integrity over hypocrisy [did I mention how much I hate ISMs?!]. I understand the social implications of all this cave-business, and I have paid the price, but I personally think it is necessary.
When I retreat to my cave, all communications are temporarily put on standby. It's not something I enjoy doing but it's something that has to be done. This kind of antisocial behavior might be seen as an attempt to escape the realities of life, but in fact, as argued above, it is exactly the opposite. You can seek help from friends, spend endless hours talking about your problems to a shrink [who's also on the same medication], but unless you don't face the reality of what you are by your self, not even Jesus himself can help you.
Here comes the scary part: not even YOU can help you. Human beings are so complex and intricately designed that even if you spend all of eternity thinking about yourself and trying to fix your problems, there will always be something missing. The inter-connectedness of the universe is so complex, that every time you try to fix something, another part goes broke. So what's the point of fixing it if it keeps on breaking? Try hanging on is one part of the solution, but the main solution to this problem is simple in practice yet complex in theory [this is not an endorsement of suicide]. The concept of an inter-universal intelligence is the key to understanding the healing process of our deepest issues.
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