I think a person can pull into themselves and become selfish when they're trying to maintain their own boundaries. It's like that little kid who huddles under the blankets trying to squeeze himself into the tightest ball possible to give the monsters outside little to take. Sometimes you can get so afraid that whatever you put out there, someone will take from you so that you have very little left to save for yourself.
As the heart of Fall approaches, I'm dying to get creative. Fall is always the most creative time of year for me, the season where I sit in candelit rooms with the door open to the storms outside, listening to music, writing poetry or playing guitar. These are the times when I truly feel alive, where the world inside of me is as rich and complex as the world outside.
But here we are, with 90 degree heat outside, no rain clouds in sight, lots of crap on the radio and I can never seem to get a moment to myself to feel out what's going on in my own headspace. I don't know if other people are feeling the same way, and this is just a phase all of us are going through--what with all the natural disasters, the planes crashing, the terrorist bombings, etc., it just seems like the world is going through a rough patch. I hope it's just a phase. I haven't felt this desperate and lonely in a while, just praying for some equilibrium and that calm, steady feeling of overall well-being.
People can have trust issues when they find out that the people who were supposed to be their advisors or mentors growing up were mostly using them to serve ulterior motives. Now these people and their motives could have had harmless intentions, like parents who want to live vicariously through their kids with sports, music, academics, etc (I excluded the stage mom category as stage moms are basically insane). But as these kids grow up and realize that not everything they were told was necessarily in their best interest, they lose faith in the counsel of others and have no confidence in their ability to determine whose advice they can trust as having no personal or idealistic agenda.
My family is always giving me advice. I know for a fact that their advice is often tainted by ulterior motives and stained with manipulation, from how they use "advice" to manipulate my brother. While some of the advice is in his best interest, it is often in his "best interests" that are his best interests as subjectively viewed by someone else, not necessarily what will make him ultimately happy. Do we put our happiness in the hands of others when we ask them to advise us on what they believe will make us happy? Are we basically signing our happiness over to someone else out of fear of responsibility? What if that advice is tinged with ominous warnings that the decisions you make on your own will take you down a tragically unhappy path? Doesn't this tactic automatically weaken a person's confidence in making decisions for themselves?
Perhaps my problem is not that I don't see things clearly, but that I don't trust myself. I recognize the importance of other perspectives to help a person see their life journey clearly, and if I can't figure out which voices to heed and which to discard, then basically, aren't I just an idiot swimming in circles until I inevitably drown? I often feel like an aimless idiot.
What I would do for one long thunderstorm to quiet this place for just a second so I can retreat into my world and think.
