Losing the fire. And life stuff.

[Chuplayer]

I'm 22 years old. I've got a good job that's going to pay for the college expenses. I can get the anime and manga that I want. I get the occasional video game. I do a good job of budgeting myself, so I don't spend too much a month. I still live at home, but it's rather good to live at home. My mom freaks out sometimes, but it's mostly good. I don't have much of a social life outside of work, but work takes up enough of my time on the weekdays that I don't mind it then. I only get lonely on weekends, but only sometimes, and they go by fast enough that it doesn't matter to me. I'm actually a mellow sort of guy, believe it or not.

I used to have the proverbial righteous anger. Even back when I was in elementary school, I would get very upset when I saw an injustice. I got to a point that I actually lived off of this anger. It was my driving force. It allowed me to feel in ways I couldn't otherwise. Listening to music was a more encompassing experience. I could empathize more fully. I still consider Battle Royale 2 to be the greatest movie of all time, but the last time I watched it, I couldn't feel what I felt the first two times I watched it. I'm apprehensive about watching it again. It fueled my creative vision. It helped me construct in my mind the blueprints of what was going to be my three-novel epic of mystery, action, and righteous anger.

Now I can't tell if I miss that feeling. I don't know if this is a part of growing up. It's like this one part in the Ultimate Spider Man comics that Peter Parker gets upset about his teacher accepting the Kingpin because he does some good things despite being a murderer and a gangster. Peter asked his teacher when the change happens that allows her to live with what the Kingpin does. When you turn 30? When you finish college? I feel like I'm somewhere inbetween where Peter is and his teacher is. I would acknowledge that the Kingpin is totally bad, but I wouldn't get as upset about it, and I wouldn't have the drive to change it.

Why is it that all the good kids growing up with feelings like these lose them? They lose a part of themselves in the process of becoming an adult. It's happening to me right now, but I couldn't tell you exactly when it started or why.

The world would be so much better if the cycle went in reverse.

I'm also concerned about the finality in life. Perhaps the first big finality is the end of high school, followed by the end of college. Then there is paying off your car. Then your house. Getting married. Having sex. Your first drink. Personal finality like waiting for a video game to come out. My biggest finalities were Zelda 64 and Metal Gear Solid 4. I was living and breathing MGS4 from the time it was announced to the time it released a few weeks ago. Now, I'm more mellow than ever. I have taken some time to reflect on my state of living, and it's remarkable how fast I'm moving towards the finality of paying off college loans. Then what? Car payment, of course. Then what? I don't know exactly, but it's always going to be finality after finality until the greatest finality of all: death. Perhaps living the way I'm living right now is okay for right now, but I'm not sure I can accept living this way for the rest of my life. I blow through weekdays. Weekends never last long enough. Then it's back to the work week, and the cycle continues. Time seems to go by faster every passing day. I can't help but think I'm going to be dissatisfied in a few years.

There are only a handful of types of people in life: People who work nearly every day of their lives, millionaires who can live off of their fortunes for the rest of their lives, criminals who live their lives at the expense of others, homeless and poor people who barely live, and people with medical conditions that have varying degrees of living. Out of these categories come the revolutionaries. They work hard, but they work for some goal. What goal? I don't have a goal to speak of right now. I feel like I'll need to become a revolutionary someday, but that would mean forsaking a lot of things. That's what revolutionaries do. They have to discard their comfort, but this brings me back to my first point because they also have to have a fire under their asses. I have played a smaller revolutionary role before, but I even then, I was unable to discard my comfort. I had to make a number of conscious decisions to light a fire under my ass. That upset a number of people, but it upset me the most because I wasn't strong enough to make progress without first sabotaging myself, as ridiculous as that sounds. Then I crawled back into my comfort hole shortly afterwards. If I had the fire, I wouldn't have to worry about whether I'm going to end up fulfilling my prophecy or not because I wouldn't have made it through this many cycles already.

Wow, I think this is the most I've written about myself and what I've been thinking since last year.

[Happy Camper]

My, you’re articulate. I’m always impressed when people can express themselves clearly. I tend to throw in a bunch of unnecessary babble. I do get my point across but I don’t care to be neat about it.

I wonder what you do for a living? I know some people can separate their work life from their life-life, but I can’t imagine not doing something I feel passionate about. I know myself well enough to know that I need to be in a creative environment with only so much responsibility. Without theatre in my life, I turn into a blob. I need to feel productive in order to feel good. And yeah, there’s my college classes but that doesn’t result in a final product that I can be proud of. Theatre/volunteer work does.

I don’t know about living off anger but I do know about living off of adrenaline. It sounds like you need a driving force. Maybe it doesn’t need to be revolutionary. But it does need to be something effective.

Oh…and Battle Royale 2? The original was so much better.

[liq3]

Finality? There are many ways to reach a goal. I personally pick the way that makes me grow the most. A good example is getting a job. I'm not going to learn much by taking the easy route of HS, then college.

Really, the goal is often less important then the journey, since often the goal is part of the journey to bigger goal. Such as say, getting an A so you'll pass. Getting that A is a goal that is part of the journey to passing, which is another goal.

You know what. My path isn't really very hard at all. I recently made little to no effort and I believe I shall have a job soon. Seriously, it takes me more effort to take out the trash then it did to gain this job opportunity. Most of my life has been this way, things falling into place just as I need them, in the most perfect way possible. I must admit nothing happens unless I take the initiative, but everything I can't control seems to fall into place for me. Quite amazing.

And that fire? I got one of those. I think school likes to put it out. Drown out the fire with TV, step on it detentions, smother it with peep pressure. You get the idea. I guess it takes one strong fire to push through. Some fire that knows what it's aiming for, what it wants, and won't let anything get in it's way...

[thewake]

Why not have a fire?
I'll show you something to get you into a fire. I want you to look at the world today, look at the past, look at the future. It is all, ultimately, the same! That just can't be right. History can't keep on repeating itself. There has to be a new big change! There has to be a stop to the injustice, the sorrow, the misery of being human.
All while keeping our humanity, the very thing that makes us human.

Woah. I think, maybe, the best way to get a fire would be to hang out with people who have one. Also, don't keep going on the road you are going if you want your fire back.
Middle class men, people with the "American Dream", aren't very renowned for having a revolutionary passion. They are more renowned for monotonous labor, television watching, and dieing without anyone remembering them.

In fact: My fire is doing something people will remember me for until the end of humanity, or even longer if that can exist. I want to be important, as prominent in the text books as George Washington or Napoleon. I want children to read about me in school. I don't care how I get there.
Blow up the USA with a nuke? Maybe.
But I've formed a moral compass too, which kind of rules out wanton destruction. That just makes the job a lot harder though. So I'm going to strive for socio-political revolution. Global too.

A perfectly impossible dream, but I'll get there. I know it. And even if I don't, maybe someone else will.
And then I'll still be a father of an idea. Maybe I'll at least be a footnote in the textbooks.

[Chuplayer]

Happy Camper Wrote:My, you’re articulate. I’m always impressed when people can express themselves clearly.

Thanks a bunch. Just looking over it a bit, though, I can already see places I can improve. Still, it's not bad for a quick effort.

Quote:I wonder what you do for a living?

I'm an electronics technician, fresh out of college.

Quote:I don’t know about living off anger but I do know about living off of adrenaline. It sounds like you need a driving force. Maybe it doesn’t need to be revolutionary. But it does need to be something effective.

I think it's hard for me to find another driving force because I've grown accustomed to my anger. I guess you could say that my finalities are my driving force right now, but they're not as exciting as the anger, you know?

Quote:Oh…and Battle Royale 2? The original was so much better.

Maybe it's because I read the novel before watching the movies, but I found the first movie to be lacking. It's not the movie's fault because the novel is massive, but it still feels very unfaithful. I like BR2 (which wasn't even explored in the novel) because it played off of so many things that were relevant to me at the time. The righteous anger of youth, terrorism in a post-9/11 world, and fighting for what you believe in. That, and the action scenes were what they should have been in the first movie. Let's just say that the final battle in the game was severely neutered in the movie. It was all kinds of epic in the novel.

Quote:Finality? There are many ways to reach a goal. I personally pick the way that makes me grow the most. A good example is getting a job. I'm not going to learn much by taking the easy route of HS, then college.

But that's my point. There are only goals. It's goal after goal after goal. I heard that Bruce Lee said to never set goals for yourself because that means you're only setting limits for yourself, but I can't help but have goals because that's exactly how the world works!

Quote:And that fire? I got one of those. I think school likes to put it out. Drown out the fire with TV, step on it detentions, smother it with peep pressure. You get the idea. I guess it takes one strong fire to push through. Some fire that knows what it's aiming for, what it wants, and won't let anything get in it's way...

School was one of my main sources of fanning the fire. Unfortunately, living comfortably and not getting in trouble kind of took over. I was always thinking about discarding my comfort, but I never actually did it. I was like those clouds on that one episode of Family Guy where Peter talked about buying cloud insurance. And if you've never seen Family Guy or just plain don't remember that scene, please disregard the last two sentences.

Quote:Why not have a fire?
I'll show you something to get you into a fire. I want you to look at the world today, look at the past, look at the future. It is all, ultimately, the same! That just can't be right. History can't keep on repeating itself. There has to be a new big change! There has to be a stop to the injustice, the sorrow, the misery of being human.
All while keeping our humanity, the very thing that makes us human.

The world itself also gave me some fire material. Unfortunately, the whole comfort thing won out again. It was really quite pathetic.

Quote:In fact: My fire is doing something people will remember me for until the end of humanity, or even longer if that can exist. I want to be important, as prominent in the text books as George Washington or Napoleon. I want children to read about me in school. I don't care how I get there.
Blow up the USA with a nuke? Maybe.

Funny you should mention the nuke. I thought about building a nuclear bomb and nuking my school. Seriously. Then I came to my senses.

[undergroundrevolutionary]

I like your idea of becoming a revolutionary. The only thing that keeps me going is that i know that i can maybe do something to make others lives better. You dont have to care about your self but if you care about others and work to make there lives better in any way you can you know that your life meant something to someone.

[SoulRiser]

Comfort is very tempting. If I wanted to, I could just sit on my ass and play with my sites all day and probably never work a day in my life. But I don't wanna stay in one place all the time, I've got people I wanna see (in other countries)... and that lights a fire under my ass that gets me to do the required stuff to get there. So, I guess you need to want something badly enough to get a fire lit under your ass. And I don't think you can just pick something to "want" out of some catalog... these things tend to be rather random.

Actually, this just reminded me of something someone else said:
(and after a lot of searching, I eventually found it, and it isn't as epic as I remembered it to be)

Quote:What happens to a man who has an assured income? Surely, he deteriorates. Have you not noticed it? Watch a man who has an assured income and you will soon see how rapidly his mind is withering away. He may have a big position, a reputation for cunning, but the full joy of life is gone out of him.

But I noticed something similar in myself. When I worked every day, I didn't do much at all in my spare time and I was bored a lot. Now that I'm on holiday, I have SOOOO MUCH to do that I don't ever even want to sleep. It's like you fall into this pattern and you get used to it and then everything that doesn't fit in the pattern seems alien and you don't feel like doing it... but when there's no pattern, anything goes. I can do whatever I want and I want to do everything... not sure this is totally related, but it seemed relevant

But yeah, I have to give up that patternlessness at least temporarily if I want to get to go overseas and stuff.

Anyways, do you have some kind of journal? Maybe you should keep one, just to write down what's going on in your head every now and then. Maybe you'll find some fire somewhere in there.

Quote:But that's my point. There are only goals. It's goal after goal after goal. I heard that Bruce Lee said to never set goals for yourself because that means you're only setting limits for yourself, but I can't help but have goals because that's exactly how the world works!

Goals are fine, as long as they're worth something to you... like, something that is actually important to you. Say for example I set a goal that I want to become a good friend... when do I accomplish this goal? Never, really... because there's always something to improve upon, and even if you do sort of "get there", you still have to stay there, or else you lose it again. The journey is usually more important, like liq3 said... and at the very least it's almost always more interesting.

[James Comey]

Wow. I think I read this post a few times back in 2013 but I didn't really "get it", and looking at it, it makes sense. It's hard for me to "get" the adult life only being 16 years old at the time. Wherever this dude is, I hope he's doing well.

I mean, wow. This kind of shit doesn't hit you until you get the fuck out of school and realize what liberty truly is like.

I really relate to the whole "losing the fire" stuff. I remember back in 2013 I was this cynical edgelord with a bit of nice guy inside him who didn't give a shit about what society or school had to say and wanted to destroy the system. Honestly, I don't really know if I miss that part of me. It's kinda weird, actually. In retrospect I lost a lot of time back then because I didn't know what the hell I was really doing, but damn, did I have anger.

There's the other part though that strikes a chord with me; the childhood. I swear to fucking god I feel that entire part of me was completely fucking ripped out of me when I was young. I feel everyone goes through it but my experience had to include the separation of my parents and having to deal with special education, where I literally was told I was less than whole. In the end, you feel so damn dehumanized you forget about the person you were once, at 5 years old, just living in your imagination.

And I'm finding that passion in me again, even with all the school work, the actual work, the people, the opportunities, the shitstorms, I'm finding that moxie that once lived. I still remember vividly the night when it all fucking died. And I'll remember the day it came back.

I'm so happy I found my "childishness" again, like it was a soul birthing itself again. I draw and I read books again, it feels really great to be in touch with it again. I want to keep writing about this, and hope people understand.

The best approach I've come to the whole time thing is simple: just live in the present moment. Eckert Tolle's The Power of Now (I keep bringing this book up but it's fucking powerful) gives you the best approach: let go of the past, forget the future, and just enjoy every fucking moment around you. Muhammad Ali had a great quote too: "don't count the days, make the days count", as in make sure every day feels great.

That's all I've had to say.

[sswbm]

(04-14-2017 06:20 AM)Hansgrohe Wrote:  The best approach I've come to the whole time thing is simple: just live in the present moment. Eckert Tolle's The Power of Now (I keep bringing this book up but it's fucking powerful) gives you the best approach: let go of the past, forget the future, and just enjoy every fucking moment around you. Muhammad Ali had a great quote too: "don't count the days, make the days count", as in make sure every day feels great.

Have you considered that children never ever care about that sort of book?

Because these are stupid.

[James Comey]

...or you know, children haven't developed a strong sense of vocabulary, so they can't understand books like that as well?