Since childhood, parents and teachers have pressured you. They have dictated to you what you should learn, what you should think and how to feel in certain situations. I assure you this happened to nearly all of us and, even if you do not remember, your first reaction was most likely confusion. Why should I feel something I don’t feel? Why should I think something I don’t think? But, like any human being throughout history, you grew up with a baseline assumption that, averaged over millennia, tends to work out well: Assume that people around you know what they’re doing. They are surviving, after all, and you were only very recently born, so what do you know? In order to survive, do what they do. They know how to repel predators, how to get rid of snakes, how to find food and shelter. But this heuristic has downsides. If too many people just do some random thing because they saw someone else do it, within just three generations we’ll get off track and do things that are not very obviously wrong, but wrong nonetheless.
Many people today are struggling. Here’s why.
A lot of people don’t in fact know how to survive. Yes, they have food and shelter, but they are just aping what they saw around them. Under pressure from their own upbringing, they have abdicated their mind long ago. They are not the one doing the surviving, they’re counting on others to arrange matters for them. When shit hits the fan, they’re baffled and inept. When asked why things are the way they are, they respond “That’s just the way things are”. They don’t know why things are the way they are and, having had their mind crippled by their own upbringing in turn, are unable to make sense of the world. They were unable to teach you how to be discerning, how to make sense of the world, because they cannot do it themselves. They are not surviving. Surviving means to be able to deal with problems and questions as they arise. Having food and shelter when times are good is not “surviving”. It’s when survival is threatened that you figure out if you’re any good at surviving. Most people just parrot what they read or heard somewhere, and parrot this same advice to you and none of us are making any headway that way.
And this is frightening. We’re feeling the effects of this today. This is, I think, why so many people are anxious and depressed. That anxiety and depression is not wrong. It’s information. Your entire being is warning you: “Trouble might arise at any moment, and neither I nor people around me will really know what to do about it.”
You’re out of your mind. No, really. Your biggest asset, your most valuable tool, your mind, you have put it down long ago. You’ve set your own thoughts aside, stepped out of your own head and you’re wandering around asking other people if they’ve got a good mind that you can borrow for a while instead. Your own mind is locked away in some toolbox, and you’re asking people around you what to do. You’re asking the internet, total strangers, what the best course of action should be. How the hell would they know? Most of them are just parrots too, you know.
It’s all on you. You will never learn how to survive if you keep on asking others what to do and how to fix yourself. You fix yourself by developing your own judgement. And you have to take the consequences, obviously. That’s scary. But it’s the only way. You have to open that toolbox, pick up your mind again and make your own judgements. Give that brain some exercise. You’ll suck at first, but it’ll get better. Get back into your own mind. Stop looking for someone else’s thoughts to tell you what to do .Stop trying to look through other people’s eyes. Switch back to the first person view.
It’s time to unlearn the habit of suspending your mind, awaiting a teacher’s, doctor’s, employer’s instructions. Stop asking the internet for answers. Stop asking strangers for answers. Stop asking friends for answers. Stop asking family for answers. There’s only one person you should ask, and that’s you.
Re-enter your own mind, inhabit your own thoughts, evict the parrot you inherited, and figure out what you think you should do.