I Can’t Convince You, but I Can Try.
It’s very often that I come here without a direction in mind or without a burning question plaguing me and thankfully, today is not one of those days.
I picked my laptop up not out of a burning desire to write but because I didn’t want to miss another day of writing, I didn’t have any topic to write about, but now I realize that is frankly impossible.
I have a mind that is constantly chattering about everything, constantly running through timelines, and always has a topic of introspection. So I guess that’s why it’s impossible to have a topic, because I have a mind and it never rests.
This afternoon, I was watching an Anime series, which in my opinion has to be the most ridiculous romance com I’ve ever come across. It even bordered on appalling on some occasions but still I watched on… I couldn’t think of anything better to do.
Anyways there was a scene that hit me, where the main character had a conversation with some sort of mentor figure and it went something like this:
Main Character (on looking for reason to fight for his truth): “I’ve been thinking but I just can’t convince myself, it feels like I’ve been trying hard for nothing”
Mentor/Sage: “It’s hard for anything in this world to be convincing, but if you give up trying because of that it’ll become harder to accept.
I won’t be overly optimistic and say you’ll be rewarded for your efforts every time, but if you don’t try when you can, you won’t be able to forgive yourself in future or you’ll degrade into a piece of shit who doesn’t care at all”
On the surface, I appear to people as a very unmotivated and indifferent person. There’s some truth to this, I have very frequent bouts of laziness, I have periods when I really do not give a shit about anything and generally I think excessive pornography, fapping and marijuana usage have a part to play in my levels of motivation.
But most of the time, the actual situation is that, I’ve just become very good at rationalizing and self-justifying my way out of going for the things I care about, for reasons like fear of being seeing as stupid, fear of looking stupid, fear of not having the support of others, self-denial because most times I believed that the things I wanted were beyond me, trusting the decisions and insights of others because I didn’t believe my opinion counted for shit and so many other symptoms of not accepting yourself and owning your shit.
All these things combined with my natural phlegmatic and melancholic disposition worked their magic in me over the years and have left me feeling constantly lethargic, filled with regret for opportunities I didn’t take in the past, and with some potentially destructive habits.
So when I read those lines I typed above, I couldn’t help but feel like the piece of shit, our mentor was referring to.
Still, it doesn’t mean I’ve given up on myself, or that I do not have any hope for the future, change is possible, growth is possible, but the real question I should ask myself is, am I seriously content with a lackluster existence where all I do is watch others progress and complain that I was born in the wrong country or fantasize that I’m the exact opposite of everything I feel I currently am i.e. ambitious, successful, confident, good at making money, etc.?
Or will I do what every human being who has made anything of his or herself do; suck it up and push forward; irrespective of what the voices in your head say is happening?
Well it’s a daily choice, today I faltered in that choice, I violated my no fapping for 30 days rule, just after 3 days.
If you’re like me, then you know how hard it is to convince yourself that giving up the short lived rewards of your current self-destructive habits is worth it, but if you don’t try, you won’t be able to forgive yourself in the future, or you’ll eventually just stop caring.
And then life becomes hell.
I can’t promise that our efforts will always be rewarded, I can’t promise that success will come easy, heck I can’t promise shit, but I know that owning ourselves sounds like a far better deal than being subject to circumstance and conditions. Peace.
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