Actively watching out for groundless hopes I might be having is the best way to act responsibly and lovingly towards actualizing the desires that cause them.
It has been a minute. I have been completely overtaken by life and school questions. No excuses though, I slacked.
A couple of people reached out to me regarding the pause. I was so flattered, damn.
This is not the most cheerful comeback, but let’s keep it real.
A week ago I was supposed to hang out with a guy. He didn’t confirm so adventurous as I felt that night, I ventured on a walk in the nearby park.
Sorry regarding my failed plans, I quickly got into this amazingly creative state of thinking.
A night think walk is a really effective way to consolidate the learnings, observations, and insights from the day, as well as calm you down and prepare for sleep.
I saw volleyball players and will try to join their team.
I felt inspired, poised, and confident after it.
Later that week, the hang-out happened. It was fun.
Although I knew it would not last long, my hopeful self stayed blind to reason and logic and pursued this emotionally destructive interaction.
Fast forward to the next week.
The fling had to be forcefully stopped because I was just too emotionally involved in a person who wasn’t ready to give me anything back.
Sad, sad.
When it happened, I had to do something and I went on a run..back to the same park. It slowly got darker.
And wow…
Back to square one.
I see the same volleyball players.
And I am walking/running alone.
What changed in between those two evenings at the park?
A painful, although valuable learning experience about the actual danger of our hopes regarding people, institutions, ideas, and ourselves.
This is a blatantly clear example of groundless hopes leading to emotional pain. A very easy one. Lasted a week, so I will really live.
The danger comes in with more convoluted and hidden hopes and surely we all have some.
A groundless hope starts out with a desire that maybe temporarily, cannot be fulfilled, so we transfer responsibility for it to an external agent. We hope that he/she/it will resolve our desire.
Desire to not be alone. Desire to become wealthy, educated, respected.
The hope is the inability to address that desire right now, sometimes lack of willingness to do that.
The back to square one state fully elucidated to me that until I actually take into my own hands the resolution of the actual desire= problem, I will continue to have groundless hopes.
When I see someone else as an agent towards attending to my desires in life, I take away the responsibility of myself and expose myself to the extreme unpredictability of the world.
They undermine my self-esteem, take time, and are emotionally draining.
Although these other agents = people/institutions/positions are the crucial parts of life and progress, I need to be the primary agent in most aspects of my life, especially my education, my progress, and my emotions.
I wanted to transfer the responsibility for making me feel needed and appreciated to a guy.
A very painful outcome, Mariyam.
If I transfer the responsibility for actually teaching me business skills to Vanderbilt, holy shit, I run the risk of at best ending up as some intern on some marketing team in Uzbekistan.
Lastly, although this might seem cynical, this approach of fully validating our hopes to ensure we only have actually “safe bets”, is the better, more loving approach towards yourself.
It is way better to feel the temporary disappointment at the loss of your false notions than have life, people and structures slap you in the face.
So, whatever those desires are: to become a certain kind of person, professional, have certain kind of things in life, feel a certain way, the primary agent towards acquiring them is me.
Even with myself, I still need to make sure I am staying fully objective and not hoping for the impossible.
As the last message from the guy said,
“I cannot be who you want me to be for you. ”
And I said:
“There is really no one to blame but myself.’
See you tomorrow,
**mariyam**