Monday, 27th of October 2008
Well, it's Monday now and all weekend long i procrastinated away every work on the essaym i need to do till Thursday.I actually started a new book, just to not busy myself with that damn essay. It was a good book, though.^^ I think this time i won't finish the assignment in the last minutes, like i always do. I will just wrap up my pride and go to the professor and just tell her i wouldn't have the time to finish it. Perhaps i'll ask if i could do it later, or do another essay on different topic (matching the sessions topic then). the little presentation this Thursday about my orginal topic i may still hold, it's just 10 minutes...
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[Here follows a passage on the above mentioned book. It is Lucifer's Hammer from Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven. It is a book more or less about survivalism: A comet hits Earth and destroys most of northern hemisphere states infrastructures and civilization. Just the people on higher ground survived and for example in California, in which much of the book plays, there is massive destruction. A gigantic tsunami destroys larger Los Angeles, Frisco, the Central valley is completely under water...There is months long rain after the impact, weather get's considerably cooler, since the cloud layer holds much of the sunlight out of the atmosphere. After the description i wrote about why i find the scenario interesting: Behaviour in catastrophes, what stays from society etc.]
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I just found out, or it just became clear to me, that i dislike it strongly when other people show dedication, commitment and such in things i am involved in. Like for example if a professor shows this. It is not, that i dislike dedication and commitment per se, on the contrary. but when i sit in a course of such a lecturer, and i am not terribly interested in this course, i find such a lecturer quite annoying. Because his (hers) dedication puts a lot of pressure on me. There seem to be expectations building up and it feels like i should dedicate myself in the same way to the subject as he does. It doesn't have to be real, the lecturer doesn't really have to expect this from me, but that is the feeling, the perception which comes up. I will get somewhat of a bad conscience, if i don't answer with the same dedication, if i don't react to the dedication of the lecturer. Although i consciously don't think i would have to dedicate, my subconsciousness, my conscience, seems to think differently.
The point is, i just don't like to be put under pressure and to be expected to do something. Perhaps this is just a little whiny, but that's how i feel about it. For me it is a fundamental thing. It destroys my general happiness, my cheerfulness. Even if i mostly met the expectations put upon me and did what was expected of me, for example the my 15-page paper in summer. I worked for it perhaps a week, the last week of course, but for two months i nagged at the back of my mind and it bugged me always when doing something fun, something i wanted to do, something i enjoyed. Actually, the things i live for. And it is always this way, when somebody put expectations upon me. Sometimes it succeeds in annoying me so much, that i can't enjoy the good things i want to do anymore. And if somethin i normally like now becomes an expectation, a task to do, i can't like it anymore. For example a seminary, which i really enjoy, can become an encumbrance, something i'd rather not do, which i can't enjoy. That is really annying.
And these expectations and tasks, things to do because someone wants me to do it, really seem to get in the way i want to live. How could i enjoy a life, in which i constantly have to do something, in which i constantly be expected to do something, or to behave someway, in which i seem to decay to be a task-completion-machine? What would remain of me, if i only had the capacity to do these jobs, to meet the expectations put upon me, a life in which i would only be a role, a function? What value would such a life have to me? And to answer this rhetorical question: little to none.
But these are no suicidal thoughts. I enjoy the good things in life too much for me to have suicidal thoughts, i think it would be a waste. Good things being for example learning, understanding, fun, philosophy and more.
Considering and writing down these things trigger my super-ego, the place where my societal norms and indoktrinations (Rules, behavioural patterns, expectations of society) sit. Indoktrination may sound harsh, but somehow it fits. Although i didn't get much 'indoctrination' from my parents side, i think especially to become independent and find my way in life, society brings anough of this. Society, aquaintances, friends, wider family, all these exert so much pressure on one to adhere to conformity, to be 'normal', perhaps even without them noticing doing it. Fellow students, roommates, lecturer/professors, aquaintances, friends, wider relatives, all of them expect things of me. some more, some less, but everyone has these. Fellow students expect me to experience their study time together with them, expecting my study to be like theirs, that we may share the same experiences. Professors expect me to behave like a 'normal' student, to show a certain diligence, ambition and a certain dedication and planning/design of my future. Wider aquaintances and relatives expect me to have a similar path in life than they did or do, meaning perhaps myself to get a job, settle down, start a family, rant about government and bureaucracy etc. Nearer friends and relatives expect the same, jut with a little more interest, intimacy if you may say that. It is absolutely possible that these people just search for other people like them, or with similar experiences, in an attempt to 'make' them a 'normal' person. that this puts a lot of pressure and expectations on me, they may easily miss.
I think there are probably more people perceiving this pressure, every nonconformist, every 'real' individual, perhpas most introverts, probably a lot of my fellow intps on the forum. Admittedly everybody will go to react and behave towards it differently. Some may openly show their dissent with conformity, like punks. Others may enter a subculture, or dropout-communities, or even cults and sects. Some perhaps press themselves into conformity with society, and may shred their sense of self and identity to pieces in the act of it. There are probably just as many ways to deal with the pressure as there are people perceiving it. The art in this is for sure to find ones own path, way of life.
And this is the place i find myself today. I imagine myself to be a relative beginning of my path in life. For example at the (air)port, ti use this metaphor. There are so many ways open, ships to enter, but for now i am just drift along with the mass of the people, simply go along whereever they are going. At the edges, apart from this standard path of the masses i see all the other ways, the other beginnings of lifepaths; i see people, who head for a certain path, knowing exactly where to go; i see people who seem to know where to go, but then shortly before entering it they change course and take another ship/plane; i see many intersting, alluring path-beginnings, but my dilemma is to chose the right one. There are so many, and there yet come more and more at the horizons. And i can't choose, because i am not sure which one would be the right, or would be the right first part of my path of life. And waiting i see yet more beginnings to appear. And the longer i wait, the more there are. but the longer i wait, the more i get pulled along on the path of the masses, the standard path and the less able i will be to divert and take my path. And the more i get shoved along by the masses on this path, the more likely it becomes that i might stumble and get trampled upon, be broken by this path. That i get dragged along and pulverized by it.
So i really should sheer out of line, to enter my own path, to take my plane/ship. Or, if i wuold like that, to stay on the standard path but to now proceed out of own force on it, not get shoved along it, to overtake the shoved masses, to make this path my very own. But i don't see this to happen, for me. It would rather be that someday i will stumble on this path and that i will break to pieces on it.
Besides the expectations there are yet the obligations. For example: While studying at university i am getting into debt. Expectations can be broken, not that hard to do it, but obligations, like debt, are a harder matter. To break free from the slavery of debt i would have to either become criminal (by not paying it back, let myself vanish) or i would have to pay it back quickly.
Much rather i would like to find my path of life, or at least my entry point, my first chapter of it, quite soon, and hope that it is at least somehow compatible with society, that it will be able to sustain myself.
But what would this path be? Where do i start, what is my first part, my first ship/plane, how do i begin my path in life (of course i already am 21 years, but i think at the beginning of adulthood and where others start their 'careers' there is ths hub of possibilities, so i call it entry point).
Where do i find my path in life?
But the original recording of Nightingale, which is inside in two or three chunks, is much more sober. Without wanting to force you, thise are the minutes in which Nightingale and not that worshipping commentator speaks:
