0192 – The demons that grow with you

To me, all humans have an innate demonic ring to our lives. We all are born to fight the demon – the hatred, anger, jealousy, lust, selfishness and the hunger for money and power.Whether we overcome or succumb to them is another story.

One of the main problems I’ve noticed is that the demons grow along with you. I aim for success and work extra hard. I don’t want anybody else to beat me. I want to be the best and get selfish. I get jealous of people better, smarter and more capable than me.

How do you stop that?

Success is, to me, to be one of the best, not simply my personal best. I want to change this world. I want to do something great. But with the expectations, the demons follow. They tend to hang around for a longass time too!

So my life’s always been an internal struggle between the my goodness, which stems primarily from Buddhism, and the demons. Sadly to say, the demons win often. It takes a lot of patience and practice to ignore the ever-so-tempting voices of the demons. They just always sound logical don’t they? They want you to think of yourself. Who cares about others.

That’s tough as hell to deal with.

I’m always the type of person who judge people. (Please don’t judge me.) Well I’m entitled to my opinion right?  According to Buddhism, not so much. It’s the ego – the demon – that’s making you judge. People segregate. People fight. People bitch behind each other’s back. What is this world going to?

It’s easy to let loose. It’s easy to let the demons take control. We all get tired of fighting them. I succumb to them most of the time.

You know what? Cliche, but where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Overcoming the demons that grow with you would be a tremendous achievement of a lifetime.

0191 – Defying normalities

I’ve been wanting to blog for a couple of days. I know I might put off doing this until later, so I had to write down ‘BLOG (please?)’ on my planner to get me to do this.

It’s been a very tumultuous past two weeks. Life’s been, in general, stressful. Lots of work to catch up to. People procrastinate doing homework to study for an exam. I procrastinate an exam to do my homework…

People think I’m weird sometimes. lol. Anyway, I’m gonna get my train started.

Simplicity is too complicated.

Simplicity would be nice to have in my life. At this point in my life, I am sleepythere are too many questions left unanswered, too many thoughts to process, too many things to control, too many dreams to chase, too many stories left untold.

The fewer questions you ask, the simpler your life is. True?

I’ll go with false.

To me, there is a difference between leading an ordinary life and leading a simple life. Being able to probe the very nature of our life should be a gift. We all struggle with our lives, and that is good, because that means we have surpassed the ordinary. I believe life goes like this: Ordinary –> Complicated –> Simple. Why are we here? What do we live for? Who do we work for? What’s the motivation behind our lives? Is this worth my effort? What am I going to do next with my life? Will I continue to let the society dictate my lifestyle?

My distaste of ordinariness is ingrained in me. I’ll keep asking questions, no matter what. Can’t stop won’t stop yo! I’d like to think of myself as somebody who defies the stereotype people place on human nature. One of the society’s many ordinary puppets – that’s what life can turn out to be. I don’t want that. But I don’t know where to go? Right now, I’m a complicated helpless soul, hoping for some spark of genius or a somebody to help me answer my questions and lead me to a simple life.

I like to share my life stories because I do feel they can be interesting sometimes, and that hopefully some of you will agree with me one day. Help me find my purpose in life, maybe?

What about you? Why are you here? Are you really doing what you want to do in life? Figure yourself out. Get simple.

P.S. My train does not run smoothly with 50 hours of sleep in the past 10 days. Sorry.

0190 – Where to go from here? Part 1

Well, I have something I want you to read. Should you choose to do so, you will see a whole another side of me that only a few people actually know. This post is going to be a very long, and perhaps incongruent, one because I am still seeking the answer while writing this. Yet, this might be my best take on what’s (my) life’s all about yet. If you choose to read this, you probably find out more about me than I will ever reveal in real life.

Most of you think of me as the guy who’s happy all the time. That’s not the case at all. You see, I’m a thinker – a proud one at that too. Some of you who’re thinkers might know that depression and anxiety come with overthinking. I might be suffering from existential depression, but who cares. I’m a thinker. I value my life for my thoughts. I think about everything possible. I think about why I am here. Why I am doing this. Why am I feeling this way. What can I do in the future. What’s the point of life?

So last week I had about 30 hours of sleep the whole week trying to cram for my exam. It was the worst week of my entire life, now filled with stress – and coffee. I wanted to give up.

I don’t believe in our education system. We come here, spend countless sleep-deprived nights studying for exams, bear the pain and boredom for four years, get out to work, then what? That’s life. People’ve been telling me that they only use about ten percent of what they studied when they work. It’s downright absurd. In my 4 years of lectures, we can only use ten percent. Just great. I’m not learning anything in the class either. I’m going to forget all I learn two semesters later.

You might argue that we all need to get a degree to succeed in the professional world and make good money. Very true. Our society equates an academic degree with success. That’s life. Go to school, get a good degree, then work. Now, what do you really get out of these 4 years of labor? Most certainly you forget what you learn, most of which you won’t need in the real world. So why bother?

The societal pressure is the only thing that keeps me going. I wanna be good. No, I wanna great. I wanna be recognized. I wanna do well and be the best. I choose my grades over my health. I choose writing a paper over chilling out. With great reluctance I have to say that I am a conformist. I follow the society’s prescribed path of life. I do not have the courage to take the road less taken. I don’t know where it leads to. Instead, I follow the norm. As much as I want to be a non-conformist, I can’t; there’s too much pressure.

So where am I going from here?

I ask questions. I keep asking them. There are no answers. Merely questions. I don’t know where I’m heading. I don’t know who I wanna be. I don’t know what I wanna do.

I laugh because it’s better to laugh than to be pissed. I smile because it’s better to smile than to pout. I joke because it’s better to joke than be depressed. Yet, deep inside, I think all the time. I get sad. I get pissed. I get depressed. My life is full of misery. BUT. Do not pity me. Do not feel sad for me. I’d hate that. I am who I am, and I will be who I turn out to be. If you wanna talk to me about life, the purpose of life and the wrongs of our world, do it, because I love it.

I am lost in life. I have no answers, but I’ll keep asking questions. We need more questions. We need more people to start questioning to fix this corrupt world.

I’m going to keep doing what I’ve been doing. and I’m going to keep asking questions.

Not gonna stop.

P.S. This is my take on education. So much more to say, if you’re willing to hear.