Question
Let me introduce myself: I am me, 22, a burden to my family and friends, someone who has experienced so little there is nothing to summarize, yet is terrified by everything he knows or thinks he knows. I am afraid of others even though I know there is no reason for this fear. I have spent my life running away from it into friends, games, books, movies, music, drugs, the whole dream culture of today.
Everything that distracts us and that this world loves so much. Yet I have never managed to forget. The same ideas keep turning in my head, impossible thoughts about the world. How could I, who have experienced nothing, conceive of any truth about this world? I am too small to
contain anything true. So I hide from my family, my friends, myself. What I think is too ugly to confess.
Let me introduce myself: I am me, 23, a burden to my family, my friends, and myself. For over a year, I have truly done nothing, unemployed. I abandoned my friends, whom I could no longer look in the face. Living like a hermit in the midst of my own family. Abandoning all effort because I have no goal. Lounging in my depression, an explorer of myself and others whom nothing will ever touch.
Greg
Master Kosen’s answer
You identify with whatever you choose. An identity like “a burden to my family” exists only if you believe it is real.
You have had the good fortune to live this way, like a helpless victim giving in to the easy way out. That is also an experience not everyone can afford, and it will serve you later; all experiences are useful. It is entirely up to you to live something completely different now if you want to.
I can give you a three-point recipe for changing your life right now.
First: when you wake up, morning is a very important time to speak to yourself and from yourself. Before getting up, sit on your bed and decide what kind of day you want, saying for example: it is from the depths of my being that I create this day… and therefore what I wish to experience will come to pass because it already exists within me… today I will have new adventures, meet extraordinary new people, and be a terrific person myself, etc., etc…
Second: get a taste for effort. Each day choose a time to do something that takes effort. You will soon see that it becomes a stimulant, even a pleasure essential to your life. Remember that getting started is a pain and you have to force yourself; that is normal.
Third: throw out drugs if you use them. They make you weak and paranoid and feed your dependence on weakness. You must choose, and you are the one who decides.
Kosen