Value

   As usual, tons of shit happened, and all of those jiggled my perspective a little. Only a few weeks have passed but it feels like everything had happened in a span of years. There are some specific details I won't get into, but I hope the idea gets through anyways.

   It's one of those lessons that you need to feel, even if you already see it everyday. I'm pretty sure we perceive it as love or responsibility, but even those things are subjective depending on who you are and what you do. So I guess the word "value" is the one that fits the term for whatever it is I've seen. So let's start with the obvious: we value things or people. Things, if we're being specific, would be in a wide range of things from the basic necessities to abstractions that exist in life, such as food, home, a job, an education, etc. Then there's people, and though there are few that enter this category, they comprise of the many decisions we make in our lives. The obvious people in this category would be your family and friends, and maybe even your special someone. Though they mostly are, or at least hopefully are, good influences in your life, overvaluing them could destroy you. I guess I could've just said "too much love will kill you", but the feeling isn't love at all times. It could go to obsession, liking, yearning, and all of the strata in which "wanting" is the theme. So in order for anything to be in that strata, you have to somewhat value it.

   There comes a time where you value something so much it kills you. You become more than obsessed with it, and it dominates your mind and it kills your heart. But is it always a bad thing? I wish it weren't, but I think we do need it. The opposite of valuing something is becoming apathetic to it. I think it's important to know that even hatred, dislike or whatever form of negative emotion gives a thing its value, and I think the perfect opposite of value, would be feeling nothing for a thing at all. And maybe that's how we gauge love, or like. You love someone by counting how many things that person can possibly make you feel. Just feeling happiness towards a person would not be enough proof that you love that person. You should also feel sad about the person. Anger. Jealousy. A healthy dose of angry. Sometimes disgust. Disappointment. Guilt. Joy. The more factors that you can attribute to something, the more value it has.

   Though being bombarded with all of those feelings is just the first test. The second test would be how you confront how you value things, or how you keep valuing them, and keeping those emotions from burning out. We're probably more comfortable with all the positive things we feel for everything that we value, but when shit hits the fan, we're outta there. Overvaluing things destroys you by simply overloading you with emotions, and trust me, the one that comes out the battle royale of feelings is usually fear. But don't let that scare you (pun), because opting for ignoring everything is always available as a choice, but that's worse than feeling all the sorrow and hate you'd feel when you're overvaluing things, because that's how you make others feel sorrow and hate, which makes overvaluing things look more like a bad habit than an ugly choice. Though I think persevering through the things we don't want to feel towards those things are important. No one wants to feel sad on purpose, but if it's for something important, we'd probably do it. Because it would be easier to bite the bullet when the going gets tough when we have absolutely nothing to lose. It's easier to jeopardize things while everything we do doesn't count. Like how it's okay to fail a test when you know you'll pass because you've done everything to get a passing score. I think that's boring, and it creates a shitty habit of taking things too easy, eventually taking things for granted. It's tempting to fall for the easy route of things. Going auto-pilot, day in, day out, to make things easier and more tolerable. Until we get bored. Until we feel nothing about it. Hating the things you do means there's a desire to change how you live, and loving the things you do helps you discover more about yourself, and maybe even the people around you. But the moment you feel nothing. The moment you feel like nothing matters anymore, that's how you get stuck in the crevasses of circumstance. You eventually work to live, and not live to work. You become a machine. The things you value stay, but the emotions you've once attributed to them are gone. There's only purpose, and no passion. There is drive, but no direction.

   TL;DR: If you're planning a journey with no map whatsoever, that's okay. But don't you dare stop walking. And never forget why you're doing it in the first place. It's one of those things that takes a lifetime to master. Hell, I just learned it yesterday. Good luck.

Nobody Reads The Instructions/ Me 1

   If I were to guess the curse I've been living with for the past 19 or so years, then it would be "learning things the hard way". It's never been easy, or maybe I just make things too hard for myself. Digress.

   I've plugged, and fortunately or unfortunately, I'm back with something new. With a little bit of the old, but hopefully it's something new. Because this something new is pretty weird.

   I've learned something about myself, and I know it's something true because when I told it to myself, I didn't feel any rejection (from myself, what?), like there's no resistance in acknowledging the fact, or facts, even if it's a sad one. There was even a feel of relief, or at least something close to that, when I thought of these things.

   For one, I truly am hopeless. Romantically, at least. I know in myself  that I can't ever muster the courage to start a meaningful, serious, I-am-in-love-with-you conversation with the person I like. I can never make the first move and I don't think I ever will. I place my hopes too high on a person, and I let those expectations drop me, like being kicked off from a skyscraper. I can only hope that the conversations and side comments and texts and chats may someday, somehow, tell you that you're a person that I value greatly, and I never want to lose you, but, lamentable as it is, I know that it will be lost in the form of common banter, and I spiral down into a depression from obsession and infatuation. It eventually ends in never being able to convey my feelings until it's A) Too late, or B) Not the right time, or maybe C) Deciding to bottle them in forever. The good news is I've accepted the fact that I'll probably never have children of my own, or even share my life with someone significant and that thought felt... surprisingly okay. I still have some doubts about all this. This whole conclusion felt alright, but I think it's one of those things that you hope you can change someday, but know in yourself that it's going to stay like this for a while.

   Secondly, I was wrong about knowing the answer, or the question, or whatever to my life. I'm not even walking in circles. I just AM. I think I have all these roads before me, and I'm choosing not to move. I'm just hoping a storm eventually pushes me forcefully towards a destination with a very confusing and chaotic journey. Which is pretty accurate. I'm not even sure what I'm doing is exactly what I want. I'm just being pushed by a greater force and I'm trying to survive. But when you get sucked up by a tornado, there's really nothing you can do to guarantee you'll even survive when you get to where it throws you. You just... contemplate your whole tornado-journey, and when you finally either get thrown into a boulder or land safely in the middle of nowhere, you won't even know where to go next, because you don't even know where you are. My whole life journey is in a tornado.

   The good in all of this? These things are true. That might sound dumb, but it's pretty reassuring when you know your place in things. It actually gives you direction as to what to do in life. It's that instructions booklet you'd check before playing a video game. It kinda sucks that I'm reading mine just now, this far into the game, but at least I know what I'm in for now.

P.S.: Planning to make self-evaluations, hence the title addition. GOOD LUCK TO MEEEeeeee~