We are in dark economic and political times. Unlikely to own a home in any major international cities. Conversative politics sweeping the world. People being driven apart on a global scale to the greatest extent since the end of WWII. Sometimes, life appears rather desperate.
You’re young. This isn’t your fault. You did not cause the inequalities. We’ve all been bent over the metaphoric desk by the previous generation and the 0.00001%.
This all makes it simple for us to forgot who we are, and less likely to appreciate others. To say to oneself – audibly, consciously or subconsciously – I haven’t got time to consider them, I’ve got to take care of me.
This is the root of poor thinking like Brexit and Build A Wall To Keep Out The Mexicans. Especially when the politicians are multi-millionaires who make it clear they don’t care about you or your community when it comes down to the bottom line. The Grenfell Tower block fire is another example, where hundreds died for ‘the bottom line’.
But, no, forget that! It is in time like these that we need to show true grit. As Dave Grohl sang to Florence Welsh at the start of the Foo Fighters headlining Glastonbury over the weekend…
I, I’m a one way motorway
I’m the one that drives away
Then follows you back home
I, I’m a street light shining
I’m a wild light blinding bright
Burning off aloneIt’s times like these you learn to live again
It’s times like these you give and give again
It’s times like these you learn to love again
It’s times like these time and time againI, I’m a new day rising
I’m a brand new sky
To hang the stars upon tonight
I am a little divided
Do I stay or run away
And leave it all behind?It’s times like these you learn to live again
It’s times like these you give and give again
It’s times like these you learn to love again
It’s times like these time and time again
And from one rocker to another…
In the middle of the Global Economic Crisis, Henry Rollins summed it up perfectly:
People are getting a little desperate. People might not show their best elements to you. You must never lower yourself to being a person you don’t like. There is no better time than now to have a moral and civic backbone. To have a moral and civic north. This is a tremendous opportunity for you, a young person, to be heroic.
This does not mean throwing yourself on the pyre. It means giving to others. This we have seen in the volunteers who came out to help after such catastrophes as Grenfell Tower Fire.
When we turn our attention to others, lifting up others or simply ensuring we are a role models to others, our own anxieties will decrease. If you do not fuel your fears and heartaches, they diminish. Collaboration causes solidification.
When others are affected by your actions, you are less likely to abandon your work ethic, so as to not to be or appear selfish. When it comes to roadblocks and the reactions they elicit in you – rage, apathy, frustration, bewilderment – when working together you get to see how others react.
On occasions that you are personally in a rut or facing some insurmountable hurdle, a great way to get out of that rut and create new paths is to say to yourself, “If I can not get myself out of this situation, how can I at least make elide easier for those around me”. Momentarily, assume that there’s little to be gained personally. How can you leverage these events to help others? How can you find the silver lining? If not for you, then for your colleague, peers, family.
What is not productive is to remain self-centred, egotistical and self absorbed, 24/7. Why always me? What am I going to do about this?
Hopelessness will start to leave alarmingly quickly when you decide to do this. Because now you are productive and not powerless. You now have a purpose. Like Froda who was bored in The Shire and them chosen by Gandalf to destroy the scourge of humanity, The Precious, you now have a mission; an adventure.
And like Frodo, you can not feel sorry for yourself by thinking about I. I. I. Stop putting I in front of every experience. I did this. I was so intelligent. I gotthat. I should have this. It’s no surprise you take set backs personally, no surprise you have a sense of loneliness. You have blown up your own part and significance.
Begin saying yo yourself, “Unity over self. We’re in this together.”
Even if we can not bare the burden to the end, we’re gonna try to take as much of the load as possible. We are gonna help others. Help ourselves by being a service to them. Every day work, create and share. Never stop giving and helping. Dr Adam Grant wrote an excellent book based on his PhD work called ‘Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success‘ that reasons those that are Givers eventually outperform those that are Takers and Matchers.
No matter what is going on in your life, no matter what is shackling you, no matter what mountain you have to climb, it can be leveraged to build strength – by considering others instead of yourself. You will be distracted from your own troubles because you will be caring for others and concentrating on them.
Pride can be broken. Toughness has its limits. But a desire to help? No harshness, no deprivation, no toil should interfere with our empathy towards others. Compassion is always an option. Camaraderie as well. That’s a power of the will that can never be taken away, only relinquished.
Ryan Holiday The Obstacle Is The Way, p. 165
What you are going through is not unique or unjustified. You need to cease pretending. Whatever difficulties you are enduring – no matter how dire – is not some special cure selected specifically for you.
This short sightedness is what schools us, to our own downfall, that the world revolves around us. In truth, there is a universe outside our own individual perception chock full of persons who have endured worse. We are not different from others simply by virtue of our existence. At different times in our lives, we are inflicted with random and invariably bewildering events. Remembering this is one way of reducing our own egos.
Remind yourself that ten years ago, one hundred years ago, last millennium, a person similar to you occupied the same space and had the same emotions, combating the same thought demons. They couldn’t predict your existence but you know of theirs. And next millennium, another person will be going through the same things, again.
Embrace this power, this sense of being part of a larger whole. It is an exhilarating thought. Let it envelop you. We’re all just humans, doing the best we can. We’re all just trying to survive, and in the process, inch the world forward a little bit.
Lift up the persons around you. Give your little bit to the cosmos before it swallows you up. Be content with it. Lend a hand to others. Pretend, if you must, to be the rock they need and you will find it fortifies you.
Good luck,
Scott