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Come as you are, as you were
As I want you to be
As a friend, as a friend
As a known enemy
Take your time, hurry up
The choice is yours, don’t be late
“come as you are”: Nirvana
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The world, and society, can make Life a bitch to live sometimes.
Be yourself … but behave like we want you to behave.
Think for yourself … but here is how we think you should think.
Be different … but remember we love consistency.
The world expects you to be an individual and even encourages uniqueness in a variety of ways and, yet, encourages a high degree of sameness, i.e., conformity. All the expectations create a shitload of personal conflict on what to do, how to act and what is right & wrong.
The lines in all of this are thin. Frightfully thin. And, yet, day in and day out we are often walking this thin line.
Life can also throw in an additional curveball.
While encouraging you to believe that the choice, and choices, are all yours to make, uhm, it also says don’t be late. In other words, take your time, but hurry up. Life suggests you make your choices wisely, but fast. Let us call this “patient urgency” or maybe even “make haste slowly“. As a consequence of this constant suggestion to hurry up, we tend to lean on past experiences.
Uh oh <part 1>. There is a gap between the actual experience and the memory of the experience. Experience, more often than not, is complex while our memory, more often than not, is simplified into some executive summary of the experience <let’s call it a memory imprint>.
Uh oh <part 2>. There may actually be a gap between the complexities in reality and our ability to realistically experience it. Let’s just say that we tend to view reality heuristically <mainly because of that ‘make your choice but hurry’ thing>, i.e., shortcut thinking. What this means is that we don’t truly see reality, but rather a simplified translation. Unfortunately, this simplified version naturally incorporates some blind spots and lots of mis-perceptions. In other words, we often see what we want to see, not what really is.
<note: there is a boatload of research on this>
Suffice it to say all of this makes Life complicated.
It makes being yourself, while trying to understand who you really are, complicated. And it gets even more complicated by the whole “don’t be late on choices” because it means relying on past experiences and judging off of past outcomes which, unfortunately, none of which are reflective of the here & now choice.
What does this all come down to? Us. In order to survive we recognize our only friend is us and our only enemy is us. We battle against … well … us … as Life looks on and chuckles.
We simplify only to find it is complex.
We seek consistency only to realize ignoring change is actually a threat.
All that said.
I loved the line “come as you are, come as you were.” Day in and day out we change little by little. We come as we are as well as come as we were basically accumulating and deleting day by day. If you think about this, I imagine a relatively intelligent person would start questioning why you would base any choice off of some past experience.
And therein lies the answer to why Life can be such a bitch to live.
Like it or not each choice is mutually exclusive. Each choice has some expiration time <of which is rarely printed on the choice>. In addition. Each choice is influenced by two people – the friend and enemy within you.
Sound fucked up? Well. All you can do is, well, come as you are and make your choice best as you can. Ponder.