I ain't happy, I'm feeling glad
I got sunshine in a bag
I'm useless, but not for long
The future is coming on
Depending on circumstances, we are all many people and while in one instance we can be confident, in another we can be insecure. And there are always many instances running simultaneously and pulling for our attention, much like open tabs on a browser.
There is a lot going on in my life at the moment, there are many tabs open and depending on which is in focus in a given moment is going to affect my thoughts, my feelings and how I am going to act or react. I see this process as similar to having many faces, different versions of myself that all reside hidden within me until they need to make an appearance, wanted or not.
The environment dictates how we act heavily and a lot of what we do is set by default habits or social norms, which face appears is going to depend on what we are doing at the time. I illustrate this process through the difference in the way we speak to various audiences, as we change our voice if we are speaking to a boss, a child or a lover. Which is our real voice, who is the real "me"?
We are consistently inconsistent in who we are and under one set of variables we can appear to have it all together, change the tab and we can look like we are falling apart. This is a challenge for dealing with the outside world as those we deal with have no idea which tabs we browse, nor do they care all that much. We rarely get to choose what we must deal with, especially in the negative, as most of us don't willingly choose the negatives of life - at least, not consciously.
We do choose many of them through our default habits though and how we approach the world. Some people spend a lot of time doing what they want and avoiding the difficult, without realizing it makes them weaker, makes them more likely to keep avoiding - never facing, never strengthening, never growing and never overcoming. We can build habits to support us, we can build them to tear ourselves down.
As I was saying to someone recently, in my experience working with corporations and personnel, the more often someone avoids work, the higher the frequency of avoidance becomes. It is habit building. They are also less likely to get opportunities as they rarely demonstrate getting the most out of the opportunities they get and then, they often avoid work more as they are demotivated by the lack of opportunity they will have in the future. It is a process of self-destruction.
As said, there is a lot going on in my life currently and very little of it is what I would consider enjoyable. One of the worst things in my experience is feeling useless and having nothing I can do to improve a situation. One of the tabs open on life's browser is the decline of my father's health toward the inevitable end and while I understand the natural process of this, currently my brother @galenkp and his wife are dealing with it all - and there is nothing I can do about it - no support I can give, other than being grateful for their service to our family.
I know that I am lucky in many ways as I will have the opportunity to remember my father the way I saw him last, which was 9 years ago when he visited Finland and met my wife, before she knew she would marry me - but I am also concurrently unlucky for the same reason, as I know that it is not the truth of the situation, it is not the reality. While comforting in memory, this is uncomfortable in experience and something I will live with for the rest of my life also. This is one of my faces within, one of failure as a member of a family I care about.
But, no failure is complete, as there are always more tabs that need attending to and many more that will open as some close. Letting one dictate the reactions to all is going to create a situation where processes for dealing with one aspect gets mixed with another and default reactions in one arena aren't necessarily healthy when applied to another. We all have to compartmentalize to some degree, adjust our actions to suit the environment in which we are in.
Over the years of travelling, I have walked down some shady roads and been in some less than ideal situations, but being hyper-aware to only threats will mean that a lot of opportunity and beauty of the world will be missed. When focusing too heavily on one aspect of life, much gets passed by as it is outside of the vision and even if in peripherals, won't get paid the attention it perhaps deserves. If I dwell on one tab, what will it cost the others?
For example, they say that the worst thing that can happen to a parent is losing a child - this is untrue. Worse than losing a child would be losing two children. If a parent has two children and one is lost, the other has to take precedence over the grief, as that child is going to live an affected life also and helping the living has to come before grieving the dead. A difficult and harsh reality that parents hopefully never have to consider in anything other than thought.
Being shattered in one of life's tabs, doesn't mean we have to be broken in all.
Life goes on until it doesn't and the reactions we have to the events we face are going to affect our own face and which will be brought to the surface at any given moment. We are consistently ourselves from birth to death, yet we are also evolving and changing continuously affected by the life we lead, continually reshaping and we have some influence over the directions we take by working on the default reactions we make.
Who we are today need not be how we react tomorrow, but if we leave it up to our emotions to decide our course and create our attitude toward life and the people that inhabit our environment, we are likely going to end up in a position where we are rudderless and at the mercy of the sea, tossed and turned, bitter that we have not accomplished we thought we would, even though we didn't give it our best.
We choose what content we browse on the internet, but not necessarily in life as there is always the potential for randomness to take hold and flick the tab. However, more and more we engineer our lives for consistent results be reducing random, searching for comfort, avoiding difficulty. We want to be strong, we want to be healthy, we want to be successful - but we do not seem to understand that the pathway to strength is stress, to health is diet and exercise and to success, is action toward what we consider important in our own lives.
Very little of what is good for us feels good in the short term, much of what is bad for our long-term, feels good now. Setting defaults that favor feeling good now can cost us everything later. It is like a debt cycle where we continually borrow on the future and our obligation to pay back means that we not only have to forgo opportunity with capital, we will have less potential to borrow more. Bit by bit we get less capable to satisfy our momentary needs and we still have built nothing to stand upon.
I just realized, I have 71 tabs open in this browser instance and not one of them is for entertainment, it is all work, crypto related or a mix of both. My tabs of life are a bit different, but I spend more time doing what I consider actively generative over passively consumptive. I do not know if it is for better or worse, but I get the sense that there are going to be a lot of people twenty years from now who will wish that they started earlier, that they had built habits toward improving themselves much earlier.
My father is going to pass away an old and man with a broken mind, but the tabs of his life that he has managed, the discipline he has developed and the beauty he has generated makes my life pale in comparison. I would like to say that it is because he lived in a different time, a generation where there was more opportunity, but that is not the case - he just took opportunities as they arose and made the most of them to be successful in what he considered important. He will die financially broke, but his life generated a wealth of experience and affected many for the better - none of it was digital.
I am glad that he doesn't know the face he shows now, as he would never have shown it if he had. We all have this face within us, some just make the worst of themselves their default by habit under the lie of "this is the way I am". No, each of us is many people, each of us can affect who we are in the moment. In time, our attention toward competence becomes unconscious and then, we do what we need to do without thinking.
Think about who we are and who we want to be and work toward it. Some tabs may need to be opened, some may need to be closed - we will never have control over them all, but we can control our reactions to what life brings our way.
I'm useless, but not for long
The future is coming on
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
it is interesting how i went for the song, from just reading the title. and i never even payed attention to the lyrics, that are great.
not sure do i have anything to add to the post, some themes to think about for sure.
Same with me, lol :) I love that song and the animation clip. But I never paid attention that line said: "I got sunshine in a bag". Or if I did, I never related it to this. And It fits perfectly. Nice line.
Our mental baggage should not be underestimated and forgotten.
I like the song and it beings back good memories.
Some posts don't need engagement.
I'm typing this on my note keeper. Hive is broken to me right now and since I have your tab open I want to answer.
I'm sorry about your father and his face and your current guilt about being away. In some ways, I wish I hadn't seen my father one more time. He didn't know me or my mother. His face was completely absent.
I don't understand 71 tabs. If I have 10 open for a specific project it's a big deal. I attack life and projects the same way. I focus on what is next, do what I can, and move on. No regrets. Untrue. Very few regrets.
I was once completely rudderless, completely reactive with no noticable input from me at all. If I can make it another 2 weeks it'll be 30 years since I've put any alcohol or dope into me. Not always the best, but always better.
Once again, you've made me think. Generally speaking a good thing. Thank you.
71 tabs pretty much all surrounding the one thing - I don't visit each every day and notifications are off for all except discord.
Last time I talked to my dad he didn't really know who he was speaking to - that was a while ago. I have got and sent some videos over the last few years, but there is little that can really be done.
30 years is a long time, congrats! I have never been much of a typical vice addict, but as an ex-smoker, I do have an idea of how hard it can be.
Hey I know that song. And I empathize with you as I also have an elderly mother, though still fit. We all lose our good face as death approaches in old age, and illness takes our mind and strength, generally. It is perhaps, the hardest test that all of us will need to endure - old age and death. Currently you are receiving a taste vicariously, and that will help to prepare you for your own transition through that one way door.
By the way, have you considered Brave Browser, a crypto related browser to rival Chrome. It blocks ads, connected to BAT token.
I consider this the real "losing face" as there is no ego involved, just loss. I feel I am in borrowed time already, so I am grateful for the life I have, and will hopefully graciously let go.
I use brave, the tabs are from there. The Google tabs are from accounts as I use Google for my business.
Aha, you are a philosopher. And good to know that you have both Brave and Google going there, I presumed you would know Brave already as you are quite clued up.
Brave is great as it leverages chrome, but gives other options. :)
What a post!!!!
This was my best part of the is post. This is so factual.
Finally when the road gets tough, only the tough gets going.
The tough never stop going.
Aren't having too many tabs open shooting yourself in a foot in a way as it pulls our attention in all these many directions? There is simply not enough time in the lifetime. I see that part of the problem for younger generations, as they are unable to choose which tabs to keep, which to give up. Which ones to pick to focus on and excel at.
The choice of tabs is super important and where I think most go awry is that they heavily favor enjoyment too often.
Enjoyment is good, but too often makes it less enjoyable and then people feel they need to upgrade or spend more time on seeking it.
71 tabs open, my PC would faint lol.
2 or at a rare max 3 tabs open is all that I can manage at any one time and my life is run the same way. Yeah, at times some auto tabs pop up but I handle each on its merits.
Death is one of those tabs and acceptance is another tab. Then there's the guilt tab, a time tab and a healing tab. The best tab is the memory tab.
Life is like a PC,as when you turn it on in the morning you never know what to expect.
Good news or bad news, angry stuff, disappointing stuff, or happy stuff, we never know what the morrow holds, but we don't have to accept all that life throws at us.
That's why I leave most of the tabs off. Yes, I might lose some opportunities, but serenity is more important and peace is the optimum.
My laptop would too, but this an old but decent desktop.
Acceptance is a tab people should bookmark and autoload at the start of every situation. I think that learning to accept what something is allows it to be approached from a position of peace, which allows a more sensitive change.
Well, I couldn't have said it any better, but yes, it is a fact that can help so many.
Acceptance leads to rationality!
They talk about the stages of grief, acceptance should come first.
A thing that I learned early in my life my friend.
My biggest hurt was when my gran died when I was 13 yeas old.
I had accepted the fact that I didn't have a father and was forced to accept many things in my early life, but her death was my biggest test. She was the only one that ever showed me real caring love and it was a great loss.
But afterwards and even now I see how it helped me to overcome.
I am the one that was selected every time that anyone died, to go and own the bodies in the mortuary. Not an easy task, but acceptance of the finality helped me to cope.
Perhaps losing ones that we love and love us the most is not only the greatest test, but also what helps us to become loving with others. A lesson in lead by example perhaps.
I can't even imagine.
Life has a way to work out if only we would learn to let it be.
But we tinker too much and only burn our fingers my friend.
My gran has thankfully settled the foundation for my kindness.
Even in the most hopeless situation, we have the opportunity to wait. Expectations will help to survive any troubles that cannot kill us. The only thing our expectations cannot cope with is our death.
It seems if to me that your emotions have changed your realism towards pessimism?
I don't think I am pessimistic, but I do observe many people and watch and discuss reaction to events. Everyone thinks they are objective in how they approach life, none are. Most however these days, are highly reactive based on emotional response, with very little patience or skill for evaluation and strategy - erratic.
Well noticed, we are controlled as puppets using our inability to control emotions.
There is a sort of utter sadness mixed with a feeling of hopelesness when as a child you have to watch your parent being a shadow of what once was. Financially broke but leaving a fortune in experience must be the greatest gift which will be left after him.The memories, the lessons of discipline and perseverance.
We will not know if many years from now, when old age will be near us, if we will not have the same dreadful challenge:to be powerless in front of diseases. I am sure neither one of us, including your father, would not consciously choose to show this side to anyone. But what to do when you no longer have the power to decide?
71....that is a high number. The tabs from our life are constantly changing. We add what we should not, keep the ones that should be long gone. This joggling with life's challenges can be overwhelming and stressful. We need an interior fountain of strenght and resilience. From there we can extract the precious liquid of moving on even in the driest emotional times. I am continuosly working to keep that fountain at a good level. It is not easy. I feel life is a sort of a battlefield from the get go. And while busy to avoid emotional grenades and death, we ought to find that spark of hope to admire a sunset and resort to a drop of water from our fountain. It is indeed never easy. I think it was not meant to be easy from the start.
I think the scary thing about watching people age and wither, is knowing that is the awaiting future.
71 is a lot. But they nearly all compound against one another, they are related. I see life this way, while some focus tightly, I look to see what is connected and can support each other to grow and strengthen. No skill is in a vacuum, no success is singular.
Growing old.... We can't escape from this
Death is the only way out :D
Apparently yes. Too bad we don't know what happens after because nobody ever returned to tell us lol. I wonder if it is so simple... Or maybe it is far beyond our understanding. Either way, we will all die, someday.
I take the "fade to black" approach and assume there is nothing after. If my eyes open in some way again past that, I will know I was wrong - but will also know I lived this life to the fullest.
To live life at the best of your abilities is the best thing that can be done
#PoSh
Congratulations @tarazkp! You have completed the following achievement on the Hive blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :
You can view your badges on your board And compare to others on the Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPTo support your work, I also upvoted your post!
Do not miss the last post from @hivebuzz:
In these types of things, I try to improve someone else's, even if it's just with a comment, because there's literally nothing else that can be done except wait it out/for something to come up that can help, and there's only so much time I want to spend moping XD
I also draw a lot more
Yes this.
I also can't get over your 71 freaking tabs, some of mine are getting closed before I get anywhere near that XD but in my case I'm usually looking for things and if I haven't found it yet in that many tabs I'm not going to and those tabs are just wasting ram that will be better used by Blender or Krita (which can get pretty resource grabby as the projects get bigger).
I find it hard at times to read these posts about @galenkp's & Your father. It is a not too distant future on my horizon with my father also. And I am the one far away. Will it be next year or 10 years from now? That is the only unknown. The rest will play out with eerily similar results I fear.
You both (brothers) are showing your best faces here and now. At least from what I see and read on your postings of it, that is my opinion.