CHANGING THE CYCLE.
Art : A Friend.
By Sakuan.
Tom shut the door behind him, and sat on his desk as he always did every time he was angry. His fingers sank into his keyboard and his thoughts started emerging on the screen in front of him…
TRYING TO CHANGE THE CYCLE…
This has been the story of my life, I’m always trying to break the cycle, whether it is a bad or a good thing I don’t know, whether I should keep pursuing it, I’m not certain. The only way to find out is by pursuing it, this is my life and I have to live as I wish or else I’ll go mad. The family cycle has to be broken by someone and I take it upon myself to do that, I know they say if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I get that, but I don’t look at my trying to change the cycle as fixing reality but rather as trying to improve on it.
The cycle has stayed the same for a long time, and to some extent, it has worked yet here I am trying to change it as best I can and I’m dedicated to the fact as well. The cycle I’m talking about is of my family, extended family included. There is this thing where everybody I know graduates from a college or a university and then they get jobs that have nothing to do with what they went to school for, in a sense, all the loans and money they spent in school goes to ‘waste’, I don’t think ‘waste’ is the right word but it doesn’t feel like the money was spent wisely, this is just a feeling of mine, it doesn’t mean I’m right or wrong. So I’m trying to change the cycle, that is not the cycle I’m scared of because that is more understandable and acceptable to me, but this next thing I’m about to talk about is the cycle I hope to end. In my family, the habit is to get a job and survive as we earn in other words, all my life all I’ve known and experienced is living from “paycheck to paycheck”, which has seemed to be the norm everywhere I look in my family, from my own parents to my extended relatives, it saddens me and I want to do something about that, I want to change that, that is why I’m dedicated to what I’ve got, my ART, at least that is one of the main reasons why I’ll keep on trying, even if I fail I will die knowing I tried my best with the cards I was dealt. That is why I’m dedicated to working hard for a better life, that is why I try my best to be different from what generations of my family has always done, it’s a huge risk I’m taking just to see where it gets me, this is my life, this is my choice and this is the road I chose to take, am I seeing the bigger picture or am I just a mere fool. Life is a series of games and it’s fair to assume that me not playing the easy game is wise, at least in my eyes it is.
Maybe the way they experienced and lived their lives is the right way to do it and maybe I’ll end up regretting not following in their footsteps, I doubt it though because this is my life and I have the luxury to choose a path of my own, I don’t want to live with the “what could have happened if I took my own path” thoughts, I chose this path and I’ll live through it and whatever happens happens but at least my choice would have mattered in the end and that is all I can wish for, I had the opportunity to choose my own path and I did. Successful or not it doesn’t matter, if I succeed good, and if I don’t then at least I did what I believed in.
*smiles*
We chase success, they say follow your passion, what does that even mean? They say hard work pays, this is not always true but hard it’s a better way to live life than not doing anything at all, that is how I look at it. Dreams, we all have them but some of us are well defined and put together in following what they love, and some of us aren’t. This dream of mine might end up being nothing but a fad, or it might be the real thing, sometimes it feels so real to a point where I get excited about what I’m currently doing with my life, but then I have to catch myself and hush down the excitement because you have to do that, you have to stop yourself from having these emotions while you are in the process of focus, don’t get me wrong it is good to have these feelings of excitement with your “passion” but the amount and frequency at which you get them should be controlled, that is the only way I don’t get hurt. Sometimes the excitement feels too good to a point where I get tempted.
“Do I give in?” Sometimes it feels like that would be the right thing to do. To be honest with you I am scared, I am scared to become what I know I must become to get where I want and need to be. This life is a mystery, my life is a mystery. Everything seems so unfair at times, why do I have to go through all these hurdles to get to the finish line, the sad part about it all is coming to the reality that, just because I’m going through these hurdles right now doesn’t mean I’ll get to the finish line, and even if I get there the other side won’t be like anything that I pictured. The fact that I’m going through these hurdles right now doesn’t mean I’ll finish the race at the desired time that I want, the fact that I’m going through these hurdles doesn’t mean I won’t fall at some point and hurt myself. All these possible outcomes and yet here I am still trying my best to jump over these hurdles, I can’t see the finish line but that doesn’t phase me, that doesn’t stop me, I’m still strong on the track and I know for a fact there is a finish line all I have to do is try my best to finish the race, the other side of the finish line might be all that I dreamt of or it might be nothing but a pat on the back for my dedication.
This brings me back to changing the cycle, I want to change the way I’ve known life to be since I was young, I want to break the cycle of doing whatever I have to do just to survive, and I want to plan out my life, I want to have a strategic way of living, I don’t want to live paycheck to paycheck, I want to do what I love and like and make something out of it, nobody that I know is yet to do that, everybody in my life does what they do for a living because that is what they can do, I want to change that, I’m trying to change that. I have to admit It is hard since what I’m trying to accomplish is the first of its kind as far as my family goes, so there is obviously a lot of doubt because of the lack of a blueprint, but I can’t blame it because the doubt is them caring about me, in reality, I should take the practical safe option, but what is the point of that if the safe option has never taken anybody that I know out of poverty, that is why I don’t blame myself for trying something new, I don’t blame myself for trying to be me, the true me. Why can’t life just give me everything I want on a silver platter?
RAGE.
(The Beast you need, but only at times)
The rage inside me, this demon, sometimes it gets out of hand but with time I have found ways to shut it down, for the longest time this was a gripe I had with myself. When I got mad in the past I used to get full-out defensive and blurt anything that was on my mind at that moment, it didn’t matter to me if it was hurtful or not, at the moment of stress or if someone says something that irritates you, your immediate reaction is to defend yourself with words and sometimes physically if it comes to it, the physical action might be against them or against yourself. The funny thing is everything you do when you are mad feels so justified, it is later that when you look back you realize you might have done too much in that situation. I’ve learned one thing in this life, if you ever feel angry or if someone offends you, you have to think first before you do anything, I know this sounds so obvious but you’d be surprised how much it isn’t that obvious to a lot of people. The main problem with anger is the fact that everything you think of or do at the moment feels justified in your head, the side of empathy is often non-existent in such a situation, a brutal honesty but that has been my experience. For me I’ve come to learn one thing, I don’t get into non-constructive toxic arguments with people anymore, when someone close to me does or says something that makes me mad or irritated I don’t respond with malice or rudeness because I know that is not the real me responding to them but rather it’s beast inside me that always wants to defend me no matter what, I brush it off because I know at that time anything I would say to counter what they say isn’t really from a genuine place, most of the time I don’t even mean what I say to them. Even though this is true to me sometimes a response is warranted and there is a high chance that the way you craft a rebuttal sentence might offend them and make things go farther than you would ever think or imagine. I always think about a situation and try to see their point of view and also ask myself if I was in their shoes how could I convey my point without offending or escalating things farther than they already are, it’s a hard thing to get to that point of relaxation and calmness in hard confrontational situations. So far this has helped my mental state and my relationships a lot, something that I think other people should try. Think first before you act, a simple statement but an effective one.
(The polite one)
The polite sense of rage, the polite beast as I call it, you rage in order to change how others feel or think, or so it seems, a way of manipulating other people to take your side. An outrage that people go through, an outrage that people tend to get into when they try to defend what they believe in, they have the privilege of having the right to do that, they live in a place where doing that is possible, it’s not a matter of life and death for them, in some cases of course, but that in itself is close to none. You can protest for something in the hopes of change. Life can be brutal of course but who is to say you didn’t make it that way, who is to say laming other people instead of yourself isn’t the right thing, who is to say it is the right thing. On the other view of things who is to say all those that are outraged about something are wrong, for all we know they might be in the right, only time can and will tell. Public outrage about something that the higher-ups do is a common theme in most societies, why is it that most of us believe that people in power or the rich tend to be bad people, of course not all but most of us will sit down and agree that most of them are bad people, is it because we think that for them to get there they must have had done something unethical. Why is it that a lot of people expect the rich to help the poor, and when they buy a yacht when there are still homeless people on the street there is this rage that brews up inside, why do most people think it’s the rich’s obligation to help the poor. I wonder how the rich feel about this notion, do they think it’s fair for some people to think that, or is it just another burden added to their already, “complicated lives?” as some would say.
This life is full of questions, only I can find the answers in my life.
Currently reading [God is Not One by Stephen Prothero]
