4 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
This has been a big development of mine over the last year. It's very easy to just react to things, but I find it much easier lately to stop and consider why I feel a certain way, why I want to take an action, and if any of this is useful. Taking stock of myself and the world.
This isn't to say I've mastered emotions or whatever, but it has helped with, as you said, the why.
My only issue is this leaves me feeling, perhaps paradoxically, like less of an active participant in my own life. There's a wall of separation between the instinctual me and the conscious me, with the latter influencing but not fully controlling the former.
Tying this back to the OP, it does sort of fall into living as the narrator or author of my own life. Yes, there are numerous boundaries and influences I have little to no control of, but I can still "write" myself around them as it were.
Comment by Waste-Mulberry7934 at 29/01/2025 at 05:31 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
It’s awesome that you find benefit in asking why, I like it too. And honestly it makes sense that you feel less like an active participant. You realize you already have some “default settings” so to speak that influence your emotions and actions rather than completely freely choosing how to act. If you’d like an outside perspective in the spirit of “why” I can offer you another question to think about. Why do you feel the need to control your life to feel you have agency? This isn’t in a negative way, I’m only asking to shed light on this perspective. My understanding of living with these “default settings” is more that you’re exploring and living by who you truly are instead of who you’ve been taught to be. Instead of following the narrative that’s been written for you, you find the narrative that fits you best. Though honestly I’d say we’re not quite authors in our own lives, since authors create entirely new characters and make up stories for them not themselves. It’s probably more accurate that we’re already written characters that become aware of themselves and choose our own paths.