Tearing down a fallacy about how things "are ok"/"become good"
Jul 6, 2023
A generally useful truth that tears down a lot of unhelpful ideas about “what makes things ok”/”how things get better” is:
It is never the case that things will only be ok if a certain thing happens
(and alternate phrasings of this eg “…that things won’t be ok unless a certain thing happens at a certain time”)
A couple interesting angles of analysis are “how are we thinking about the current state of things” and “holding the breath”
Usually people will buy into an idea like “this thing needs to happen (at this time) or else things won’t be ok” from a place of desperation
Consider the state of feeling a fair amount of enjoyment. It tends to start to look stupid/not be something that you even worry about to be like “uh-oh this certain thing needs to happen”. Like no obviously things are already ok so that’s ridiculous stop tripping
But if you’re not in a place of feeling a fair amount of enjoyment you may feel like your best option is to “throw your energy into” an idea like “this certain thing needs to happen and then things will be ok”
Like no you’re an idiot. That’s “acting like you know”. Blindly pouring energy into anything is a terrible idea
Why is that a “blind pouring of energy?”
Because it’s being done not because something actually feels good right now, it’s being done on the supposed promise of some future state of feeling good
That is a broken idea
I guarantee that you are not “sufficiently lazy” if you talk yourself into doing things that don’t actually feel good now
The way it seems to actually work is that you want to stop “acting like you know”, “recognize illness as illness” here specifically recognizing that your current state is one of being too much “up in your head” (classic “white person” to think that you’re being awesome/”smart” by being up in your head when in fact from an outside perspective you look like a f***ing tool/tweaker), and correspondingly let your energy start sinking/dripping down into your body
Then what will happen is that as your energy settles “far” down into your body, it just naturally feels good (ie you feel literal enjoyment just from it being in that state). That totally changes the idea of the “current state” because now we are feeling some actual enjoyment and so feel less desperate like “something needs to happen or else things aren’t ok”. Ya no maybe things kind of at least in some sense are already ok and that was me freaking out (and thinking I was “smart”) about thinking that “I knew how to make them better”
No that’s a bigger mistake. That’s you acting like you understand the mechanics of how things change/”get better”. Spoiler alert you don’t. So what should you do?
Admit that you don’t know. That in and of itself starts your energy sinking/dripping down into your body. Picture a stoner-y “Uhhhhhhhh”. It’s like your energy can literally drip down from in your head down into your body
We’re taught that the body is “low” (in a bad sense)/”base” but without getting into conspiracy sh** that is not accurate. Literal enjoyment is what you want. The body is designed to provide you with tons of that