Reality Check

[amd1953]

If you are feeling anxious and depressed, perhaps the last thing you need to read is a book written by Emil Cioran.   He was a Romanian writer/philosopher who wrote some of the most pessimistic books on the planet, including one entitled 'The Trouble with Being Born'.   However, the book is beautifully written, and it shows what other people have to endure during their lifetime.   I am always interested in what other people have to go through although most of us wouldn't feel compelled to write about it.   I could write a hundred books about my life in the hope that it would help other people.   Unfortunately, I lack the motivation to accomplish such a task, so I come on to the BB forum to try to do it that way.   Litle snippets of experience and knowledge that might just prove useful to someone who is undergoing a similar experience.   Sometimes, when I outline something on here, I think afterwards that nobody would have done what I did anyway.   For example, as a child I was convinced that my life was preordained in some way and that all I had to do was show up and everything would work out fine.   Not so!   In reality, you have to fight for everything you want while trying to assure people that you are worth their time.  Naturally, other people have had a hand in my downfall because I was convinced that everyone had my back.   Not so!   We are in competition with every other person on the planet and they don't always have our best interests at heart.   It would be nifty if we could transfer the history of our lives to a DVD and use them as training tools for the upcoming generation.   Just an idea!

amd1953

[amd1953]

I just love that question.   What's on your mind?   Gosh!   Where do I start?   Well, I could start with being born.   Not one of us asked to be here and not one of us will get out of here alive.   Placed in perspective, that is an absurd situation.   Why can't we live forever and just regenerate every few hundred years?   Would anyone want to live forever?   That is the question I am just dying to ask.   Birth is where it all starts for all of us human beans.   For some it will work out just fine but for others, not so much.   There will be whispers of mental health issues which habitually corrode our minds.   Then there are people.   Our fellow Homo Sapiens who will prove to be either a help or a hindrance during our short stay on Planet Chaos.   I can only speak for myself and yes, I do not doubt for a minute that there are good, decent law-abiding souls out there.  I just haven't met any yet.   As for me, I am a strange concoction of the good, the bad and the ugly.   I am a saint and a sinner and everything in between.   I have done my fair share of giving and I have done what I can for others in need.   I have willingly donated to various charities and literally funded other people's chosen lifestyles.   Overall, I don't think I'm a bad person but that remains to be seen.

I have been called everything under the sun, and I am convinced that people look at me and think I am stupid.   If I had any sense, I might be tempted to agree with them.   However, it is the old sticks and stones proverb.   I continue to live my life as I see fit.   I may be surrounded by nine billion other souls, but I do not know any of them.   Would I really want to?   The few that I do encounter from time to time, I just smile and keep walking.   If I am lucky, I may receive a grunt or a vague nod of acknowledgement.   It bothers me not.   If given the chance I could survive a direct nuclear strike and tell a mighty fine story afterwards.   In the end, all of my days are numbered, and my hidden shelf-life is a matter of conjecture.

I am alone and wish to stay that way until I fall off the perch.   Let the world forge ahead without me.

amd1953

[white knight]

Well, an interesting post

What about the wonder of life? Coincidences,  earth is at the perfect position from our sun to develop life. Our moon is at the exact distance from us to give us waves and weather. Humans developed due to one in a million chances. Here we are. Intelligent and wonderful. 

Then there's reproduction of life. When that happens, a parent has more than enough reason to provide, protect, guide and nurture. 

Why are we community champions and some members  here? Because to care, to show empathy for those struggling through life gives purpose, there's nothing more rewarding than saving people from dark society or themselves.

Dark society? Yes, as a former prison officer I can admit that you cannot change the dark side of society but you can move to a place with little likelihood of crime (3-6,000 people) and on Facebook you can block 🚫 the toxic trolls, through life you can drop off the manipulators and embrace like minded people.

"If we focus on a bees sting we miss the wonder of it collecting nectar"

As for living forever? Over 60yo that changes. By then you'll accept you no longer want to. Until the life can be a blast...

[amd1953]

My adventures in this world have, sadly, amounted to very little.   If I had been worth my salt, I would have cured all cancers by now, fed every starving person in the world and halted climate change.   As it stands at the moment, I have achieved none of these things and never will do.   I have endured one of those lives which is probably better to erase from my mind than celebrate the fact that I was here.   I am now over 73 years of age and getting older by the day.   I have had my tilt at those windmills that obsessed Don Quixote and now I lie battered and bruised in a field somewhere in Flanders.   I have hung up my sword and shield for a life of peace and contentment.   In my time I have been a Grand Master of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and a Knight Templar.   A sparkling resume for someone so invisible to the modern world.   These days I tour my castle quoting huge chunks of Shakespeare to an appreciative audience of loyal courtiers and disinterested bats and spiders.   Sir Laurence Olivier would be proud of my Henry V.   It is all a slow but relentless slide into a lot of nothingness while I attempt to retain my sanity.   A task which weighs heavily on an already troubled mind.   A world awaits me outside which has not only lost its way but also the will to do anything other than fight and make life more depressing for those who never have a say in anything.   Tis a sadness born of tragic comedy!

amd1953

[Shell4]

Hello there. I don't fully understand all that you wrote. Yet it is written with an elegant type of mind. Maybe filled with a mystery of some kind.

I wonder if you are discussing purpose in life. Perhaps our own unique purpose of why we are here. I think I am bringing this up because I walked through a cemetary today and read some of the stones . And these people who I don't know once lived and now they no longer do. I thought what is the purpose in all of this. 

Anyway a big hello to you

[amd1953]

Hello Shell4,

I do tend to waffle when I am in full flight and if I lose anyone along the way I can only offer my apologies.   It's just my way of expressing myself or at least trying to I suppose.   I can't stand the idea of leaving this place without having had some kind of presence.   Although sometimes I wonder if this is the right place to offer what I do.   I like to make people think and to question what I say.   I feel as though I have been misunderstood all of my life.  This is my way of attempting to make amends.   Perhaps that is the mystery.   

Regards

amd1953

[amd1953]

According to the experts, we should all be getting our essential eight hours of sleep per day, we should walk everywhere rather than drive our cars, we should all eat extremely healthy diets, and, above all, we should be happy and not worry.   Love it.   Of course, I follow that list every day to the letter.   On average, I get about two or three hours of sleep per day.   I've just purchased a new car, so why should I walk?   My diet is woeful, but I don't really care all that much about it.   I'll live as long as the good Lord decides I should and not second longer.   Yes, I would much rather trudge through this world as a grumpy old man than face the alternative.   I experience new aches and pains every day, but I don't give them a second thought.   I am happier now than I have been over the last seven decades because I care less about needless things and I mind my own business.   I stopped caring about the expectations of other people and their opinions of me.   I gave up worrying whether there is a nuclear war coming my way and what the latest health warnings are on the food I eat.   I stopped thinking about a lot of the things that made me feel ill and I consider myself to be in a much better frame of mind today because of it.   I gave up buying things that I didn't really need to ensure the economy stays afloat.   I expect to pay exorbitant prices for most things I want or need such as water and electricity.  It isn't what things cost; it is the profit margins that people demand to maintain their chosen lifestyle way above the rest of us.   What a nonsense world we live in!   If only we could wake up from our slumber and smell the roses instead of the horse manure.

amd1953

[amd1953]

We put so much faith into our relationships in the hope that they will work out and happiness will prevail.   We trust without question that the other half of the relationship will work as hard as we do to make it all work.   It's not a game to see who emerges the winner.   We don't use people like that if we value our own sanity.   At least, we shouldn't.   I made the mistake of trusting a lot of people in my time, only to discover that it was just a game to be played out and the winner takes all.   I made the mistake of thinking that a marriage/relationship was based on mutual trust and making decisions together so that the relationship was always on a solid foundation and moved forward.   Silly me!   These are lessons that inform and punish at the same time.   Kowing what I know now how fickle and insincere some people are, I would never have put myself through the experience that I did a few decades ago.   I would have stayed on my own and made the best of what I had and what I could do for myself.   Love and romance?   I don't even know what they mean any more.   They are just words in the dictionary without meaning.   When I was younger, I hated the thought of going through life without someone to love and be loved in return.   All empty dreams now as the memories fade into dust.   Every day pushes those memories further away from me, as if they never really happened.   Perhaps better to acknowledge that I was never intended to find love.   Probably not the kind of sentiments from a rapidly ageing old man.   However, I am human.   That is one thing at least that I have going for me.

amd1953

[Croix]

Dear Amd1953~

Ive read your other post Disenchanted where you decided to live with the things that please you but express unhappiness that so much costs too much, not for good reason, but just so a segment of society can profiteer.

Frankly as one gets older the warning attached to just about everything, while mainly correct, mean less and less. I hope you enjoy these choices and live well.

Here you have talked about the fact that not all partnerships have worked out, and you have suffered greatly as a result. It's been so bad you have lost faith in people - quite understandable.

While I'm not advocating you take any particular action I would like to disagree with you - at least in part. My idea of a partnership is pretty much the same as I imagine yours to be. Wanting  life long association, with love and caring, looking after the other person first and being there for them in good and hard times - someone you can trust and share fun and intimacy.

Some might say my expectations are not realistic. All I can say is that in my early 20's I found my soulmate and we lived a loving relationship until she prematurely passed away with multiple health issues. She was all the things I've described above.

At 50 I remarried and have one again been incredibly fortunate having had nearly 30 years of love, we are still together and I expect will remain so.

The only rule we have is that we never say anything, no matter how angry, that cannot be taken back. For example we never threaten divorce. We also do not in anger try to hurt the other, so if my partner was overweight (she is not in fact) I'd never say she was fat.

The world is a mix, you have been unlucky, however you may meet others whom you can respect and admire, neither of us has a crystal ball

Croix

[Croix]

Dear Amd1963~

I've replied in your other thread The Loss of Faith

as I think they may be related

Croix

[amd1953]

After a night of sleepless dreams, I am not motivated to do anything productive today.   I got dressed to go out but now I dislike the idea immensely.   Hearing the traffic roaring past outside has reduced my desire to absolute zero.   Why did I want to go out anyway?   This is what I ask myself every time I feel I need to escape my reality.   Much better to remain behind the stout walls of my castle keep.   Here is a place that I can be whatever I choose to be whether anyone else likes it or not.   Far from the madding crowds of hostility and possible confrontation.   Out there where it is cold and grey with never a smiling face to be seen or a kind word spoken.   I hear the world turning, day after day, with no purpose in sight.   My blue friend opposite me is nodding in agreement.   Only he truly knows me and understands exactly what I go through each and every day.   He just dropped by for a chat and now he doesn't seem to want to leave.  This is not life, but an existence based on the will to survive.   How wonderful it would be to awake one morning and discover that I am the only person left alive on the planet.   What manner of madness is this?  What logic or reason seeps through the cracks of civilisation?   We should all go back to the trees and start over again.   Outside, the world sinks into silence after the passing of each horseless carriage only to be replaced by something more deadly, the sound of nothingness.

amd1953