08-26-2023, 11:41 AM
(08-26-2023, 10:49 AM)Ampersnd Wrote: I'm seriously questioning the "grain of sand" parable I've heard many years ago.
Here's ChatGPT's description of it:
"The grain of sand analogy explains how pearls form in oysters. When a tiny grain of sand or something bothersome gets inside an oyster's shell, it covers the irritation with layers of shiny material called nacre. This makes a pearl. This is like how we can turn tough times in our lives into something good. Just as oysters make pearls out of sand, we can grow and learn from challenges, making us stronger and wiser."
Sure, challenges make us resilient. But is the end product of this adaptation from something traumatic truly functional in the world? As you're building a callus around that inner hurt, a lot of time is passing and world is moving on. Will your 'pearl' be of any use 10 years after the hurt has occurred? Have you wasting resources in building this pearl that could have been dedicated to something more useful? After all, you are much more than a simple oyster; you can move and navigate the world instead of building a pretty stone.
A red-pill solace given to lonely men in their early twenties is that "male life begins at 30". It's a promise that you might toll and suffer now, but there is an escape with enough time and investment. It was something that I was exposed to in my early twenties; I had seen the Sexual Marketplace Value graph comparing men and women's desirability over time/age, and it heartened me that my heart-driving attitudes would pay off.
There is a flip-side; not only does it risks making you passive - as you might not give yourself permission, nor set yourself up, to succeed at 27 or 26 or sooner, - but you risk viewing your success as a way to "get one over" on those who (maybe inadvertently) kicked some grains of sand into your shell, and have since moved on with their lives. You risk building up an entire narrative that has nothing to do with reality.
Miguel de Cervantes' book Don Quixote (which I haven't read) has the expression "tilting at windmills", given that the main character mistakes windmills for giants and charges at them, believing he's engaging in a noble battle. In reality, these enemies are made of wood. Inert matter. It does not care about Quixote, and Quixote cares too much.
Even if Quixote ripped down every last windmill down to the last splinter, he would have actually harmed society, as those structures served a legitimate purpose to produce food for the community (windmills were typically used to grind down flour).
I'm torn between the two poles of A) Get the fuck over yourself and see the good of society and B) You are learning to forego society for its faults.
I am enjoying society's benefits; I enjoy its water supply, its power grid, sleep in a dwelling built of wood and brick, all of which were carried for hundreds of miles by logistics companies. Any one of these things are interrupted, and someone comes to fix it. And yet I want to transcend this dynamic somehow?
As a parallel, I'm caught up between the two attitudes of "trusting the process" and "forcing the outcome" when it comes to success.
Trust: Do what is manageable to you on a daily basis, and have confidence that success will find you.
Force: Put a manic amount of focus and effort into your mission, and accept nothing less than forward progress.
The first involves working at society's pace, the second involves picking up the pace and ignoring what is "normal" or expected.
Could it be the purpose to learn how to oscillate between the two poles and seeing the truth in both, rather than finding one as true and the other as not?
Came to think about a quote by Carl Jung i read the other day.
Quote:“If the unconscious can be recognized as a co-determining factor along with consciousness, and if we can live in such a way that conscious and unconscious demands are taken into account as far as possible, then the centre of gravity of the total personality shifts its position. It is then no longer in the ego, which is merely the centre of consciousness, but in the hypothetical point between conscious and unconscious. This new centre might be called the self.”
