Every decision we make is life altering. The questions are how great, and if life is being altered in the right way. We all hold an ideal image of who we want to be, and what circumstances of life we want to be in. It is a shame that, through our daily decisions and challenges, we rarely get closer to that image. Some might say our expectations are too high, but I believe society simply isn’t structured to make us the best we can be. It is structured so that we can survive, provided we are willing to put in the effort, and sometimes, just get lucky. But for a Son of God, simply surviving holds little meaning. Sure, it is true that one would rather exist than to not exist, but existence itself loses its flavor when there is so much out there we could be doing for ourselves, or for others.
How do we measure this pathway from our current lives to our ideals? We hardly have the time to map out every decision life throws at us. The causes of every choice made, the consequences of deciding, and the near-infinite possibilities we could create for ourselves – it is a lot to take in. But to simply live, to exist, does not make life livable. After all, the challenges of life still exist, and overcoming those challenges is a requirement for survival. Highs must follow the lows. Solving problems must bring with it rewards. Without light to shine on our darkness, we seek deliverance through nonexistence (at least temporarily).
Living truly has little to offer without a sense of progression following us in our age. This is why stagnation can be so suffocating. It is why cabin fever creeps under our skin, as we feel we must go out and explore when the opportunity suddenly disappears. The appearance of a stagnant lifestyle, or even a day where nothing noteworthy appears before us, strikes a sudden fear in our hearts. It is because at that moment, we stare into the eyes of our greater self, the self we had imagined ourselves to become. We realize that we cannot become what we imagine, and that we never really got closer to our ideal selves as life soldiered on. We just lived. We took what life gave us and ran with it, hoping that someday, things would improve. We trusted society to clear the way for us, to make our path visible, to highlight the choices needed to not just survive, but thrive in a world that has always been unforgiving. Society is a construct made up of fearful people, putting their trust in one another to ignore the darkness eating them inside. A darkness that becomes once more familiar as we have no choice but to validate past decisions.
No one can create a clear trajectory – that is obvious. No one understands the world enough that they can know where they will end up and why. We are all born with dreams, we are all given dreams, and we are all creators of dreams, but most assuredly, we are the mourners of dreams. If anything is to die, it is the dreams we lose grasp of as we live and grow. The ones we decided to ignore, as we either determined they were childish, or simply became impossible feats as we faced the reality that we became not as we wanted. So our dreams change – our ideals change – to something that is more manageable. Just being a little bit better than who we are becomes the goal, and as even that becomes unattainable, then maintaining the norm is enough. Stagnation becomes our sanctuary, and it is there and then that we find value in simply living. As it turns out, that value alone is meaningless.
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