Trying

Wednesday 3/26/25

People don't have interests. People aren't interesting. People are most interested in themselves. People say they want to know other people, but they're not actually interested in other people who are also not interesting. Why would they be? They are only interested in themselves because they are themselves and everything in culture and technology as both are presently constituted funnel a person back to their uninteresting selves, though not for hones assessment.

But they want things, though: Sex, money, not to be alone. This means they have to pretend to be interested in other people who are also not interesting. Sometimes. Rarely. Every now and again. Pop the head out of the cave before going back in.

This faked interest takes the form of saying what the person thinks they need to say to that other person and asking questions for the sake of doing so--like there's a question quota--and not because they have any interest in the answers, which are, again, not going to be interesting anyway, because these are stock questions asked by what is now a stock person to another stock person is also not interesting. Vanilla nothingness tries to attract vanilla nothingness out of selfishness and need and desires which are often base or, at best, less than pure.

What are pure desires? A desire for love, connection, friendship, romance, shared growth. It's very simple. Very, very, very simple. And I often feel that no one else in the world understands this and why things go as they do and are what they are. But it's very obvious to me.

What are people going to do when this is all there is and they are themselves a reason for that without having a clue as to their culpability?

They're going to complain. They're going to post those complaints on social media. They are going to blame whomever or whatever they prefer to blame. But it'll never be them. As a member of a part of the whole. They won't even consider that it's them, unless to think that they're too good, the fault is with others, when they're no different than just about everyone else.

What someone wants and needs--both--more than anything in life could show up on their doorstep and knock loudly--but not rudely--and chances are very low that the person inside would even come to the door because they'd be too busy complaining and starting into their navel and palavering about what they want and need is never available to them because of X, Y, Z, as the knocking continues, until it stops because the window has closed--to mix house-based metaphors--with said knocking and who or what was doing that knocking has gone away.

We are blind now, but without a compensatory rise in the powers of our other senses.

Not trying is always worse than trying no matter the results of trying. Because one of those results--so you're guaranteed this--is that you can live better with yourself, which is what happens each time we perform an act of courage, of service, of vulnerability, of effort, of a good faith undertaking for what is the good. When we try. Without guarantee of reward or attainment. Or anything good. Or something not bad.

Thoreau advised one to feel tired and hungry--he didn't mean that you should feel like a wreck. But when we try the best we can, and we come to the end of that day's efforts in what we've tried--and we have gone all out--the tiredness isn't so much tiredness as a sense of fulfillment that hangs upon us happily. It makes us feel good about ourselves when we go for things.

If we're talking in terms of going for something with someone else, in whatever capacity that may be, and that didn't work, we can still feel better about ourselves and who we are and are becoming because we are someone who tries the best we can like we just did. People are generally loath to try with someone else because they're worried about how they'll feel if it doesn't go as they want it to. Especially now, when we are so fragile. We have made ourselves weak and cowardly. The ways in which we live--and the shackles we unwittingly impose on ourselves with technology and language and what we'll partake of/experience--have taken away all of our muscles that we need to rise up.

Everything is a muscle. Your heart is a muscle, your mind, your soul. Your writing ability, if you have any. The muscle must be developed and exercised. Use it or lose it--and, often, lose yourself. Bye bye. We can only slouch and go further down and further down when we are figuratively sedentary. Collapse. Not stand. Not walk. Not run. Not reach. Not jump and get there, then jump again to the next level.

There's always an upside to trying. In the worst case scenario, you're left with this good thing, which can help you in the building up of other good things, including your sense of self. But the problem is that people try less and less often than ever. They need things to come to them, find them, be given to them. They require what's really a form of emotional charity, but the coin won't spend--not really--if you follow me. There may be a jangle that comes from the pocket--think of those likes on social media, and the follows, and the shares, and "my people" and that nonsense--but it won't buy a real loaf of a bread and a quart of milk; that is to say, anything for sustenance.

Gotta try. Gotta go for it. You know when you honestly have and when you haven't. Listen to your bones and what's in the back of your mind--that's how it gets pulled to the front and then you can come up with a plan--and it needn't be complex; sometimes a plan is simply starting/doing the doing--that is put into action, which is better for everyone and better for that person.

This is what the problem is. What everything comes back to. You have to try to try--that's the key part; the trying within trying--the best that you can. In doing so, one gets closer and closer to trying one's best. There's a numbers game--what will work out and what won't--and the numbers game can be harsh. Dispiriting. Crushing, even.

But the person who tries isn't crushed, whereas the person who doesn't resembles some smear more than they do a three-dimensional person who can stand, walk, run, leap, and keep leaping.