“One Has Either To Take People As They Are, Or Leave Them As They Are. One Cannot Change Them, One

02/28/2021

A person’s actions may be a result of careful thinking;

they may be a wim based on precursor principles and ideas,

although they might just as well be without a meaning.

A shell.Or not?

A wall.Or not?

Ensuring the groundwork behind every action should be the first priority.

None can be commenced whenever it is missing the meaning that should be conveyed.

However fundamental I regard this notion to be,not many do so nowadays.

Therefore I am left wandering about whether the meaning I see is real or made-up by my own beliefs,thoughts and needs.

Humans can be rather imaginative when it comes to deciphering the smallest of actions.

Nothing is almost ever delivered in its integrity,

May it be for fear of giving away the true meaning and reason they formed in their minds;

Or for a specifically intended reason,which,for all intents and purposes,is intangible.

“I love you not because of who you are, but because of who I am when I am with you.”

— Roy Croft

“Change your conception of yourself and you will automatically change the world in which you live. Do not try to change people; they are only messengers telling you who you are. Revalue yourself and they will confirm the change.”

— Neville Goddard

“So the myth in our society is that people are competitive by nature and that they are individualistic and that they’re selfish. The real reality is quite the opposite. We have certain human needs. The only way that you can talk about human nature concretely is by recognising that there are certain human needs. We have a human need for companionship and for close contact, to be loved, to be attached to, to be accepted, to be seen, to be received for who we are. If those needs are met, we develop into people who are compassionate and cooperative and who have empathy for other people. So… the opposite, that we often see in our society, is in fact, a distortion of human nature precisely because so few people have their needs met.”

— Gabor Maté

Loneliness is a Dangerous Thing

‘Everyone knows there are forms of cruelty which can injure a man’s life without injuring his body. They are such as deprive him of a certain form of food necessary to the life of the soul.’                     - Simone Weil, The Need for Roots

Rootlessness and homelessness, though similar in nature, are also quite different. A person who is rootless may very well have a home, but does not have a sense of belonging, they identify themselves as ‘the other’. 

Since the end of World War II, migration has increased significantly with people opting to set up their life somewhere new, whether this be for a job, education, religion, or whatever opportunity this may provide. A person disentangles themselves from the ties and bonds that they have with one place and form this relationship somewhere new… this is now home.

But home for you may not always be home for the new family that you set up. I have mentioned this before in another post so I won’t go into it in too much detail, but when looking at those with extremist and ‘radical’ thoughts, we find that they are often children of those who have migrated. The parents have chosen to build home in a new foreign land and build a relationship with that place, but the relationship is not so straight forward. This relationship is a half way house between assimilating and holding onto one’s culture; the migrant chooses which parts of the new culture to adopt and which parts of their old culture to hold onto. This might vary from eating and drinking habits, clothing, social life, it could be anything. 

The child of the migrant however, having not chosen but instead having been brought up with this conflict between the two cultures feels lost. This is something I have thought about for a long time, but Arendt put it into the words I have been searching for for so long. 

The child feels a sense of rootlessness. 

Arendt argues that those who feel rootless or homeless will seek out a home for themselves at any cost, which can have disastrous consequences. 

She states that for an individual who feels rootless and homeless, often with this comes the feeling of having an existence that is not meaningful or fruitful. To find this sense of belonging, individuals often turn to exclusionary movements and groups, which actually only increases the feeling of alienation and rootlessness. Now they are in a group that only contains people such as themselves, perhaps from one place, class, religion, etc. all together feeling like outsiders, because of the absence of others of a different background. 

Arendt says that uprootedness has been ‘the curse of the modern masses since the beginning of the industrial revolution’.

Loneliness is a dangerous thing. When a person is lonely, when they feel their roots are not in any ground but sort of drifting from place to place, a person is not themselves. Who are we, after all, without a background against us? Just an entity, perhaps? 

‘To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognised need of the human soul.’

Like a candle

set aside in wait;

Etiolated,

no more than ornamental.

Its life comes to a stand still.

No purpose,

yet—

hopeful.

The true flames

erase time.

They engulf the deepest of feelings

one can conceive.

Defying common laws,

negativity

turns into bright flames.

Scorching hot...

...happiness?

Blinded by reason

follow the heat

slowly abating in corners of your body.

There,

lies truth.

There,

lie your answers.

Happiness is not far away.

She

I used to hate that word

Something alien would gripe at my throat.

I would choke on it, eyes burning

Now

that I think of it, I am not as bitter.

She

Is a world away from myself and

I get dizzy sometimes,

Looking at my feet.

I am at peace with her, and I feel

A familiar bond

She was me for a while, after all.

She

And I are friends

I am walking on a road

I made for myself

And she holds my hand, a comforting presence.

She

Will always be there

And now, I understand myself better.

I will never be her

Yet I feel no pain for having been mistaken,

For she is my better friend

- She, M

Feelings are feral things

Half of them want to be free

Half of them want to stay in their cage

Thing is

You can't leave the door open halfway

.

And you can't take the sound of them

Banging on the bars

Shrieking to be loosed

And you can't look them in the eye

Or you'll go insane

.

Feelings are feral things

Half of them want to be free

Half of them want to stay in their cage

Thing is

You can't open the door halfway

.

You can visit them sometimes

The pieces of you that live in a zoo

Just remember -- don't feed the animals

And never give the tiger the key.

Bonds are burdensome.

They are what makes life worth living,

albeit the feeling of burdening someone else with your own emotions or lack thereof obliges you to take a step back or running away on a 180 degree path in comparison to the one you’re on at that moment.

You begin craving that loneliness that picked at your heart every night,the one that made you cry your own blood since tears did not hurt enough.

I want to turn back in time,or keep being the myself i knew before giving out pieces of it to others.

Opening up is not much of a good decision sometimes,or easy to accomplish either.

Everything just hurts.

It’s overwhelming.

It’s flooding my well.

Oh wait—

how long has it been since my well last had a shape?

What is happening around me?

What am I?