And what results from this pressure and the dissonance with my life is a form of self-bullying, which includes bullying myself into working on my projects, and even into having fun! Yeah, as twisted as that sounds, I was trying to force myself to do things which were supposed to be “fun”. I'll let you figure out how that panned out.
In hindsight it's sort of obvious that there are many things that cannot be forced, and instead the resistance can only be dissolved. But the thing about desperation is that it tends to lead to more desperation, control and hardening tend to lead to more control and hardening. And I guess what helped me open up to the self-bullying, the embarrassing fact that I was trying to force myself to have fun, is that it straight up didn't work.
The world we live is all about pursuing peak experiences that are outside of oneself. But those peak experiences can never be sustained, they're just temporary highs. And the thing about highs, in the pleasure-boredom spectrum, is that they inevitably create a low sooner or later. As Darren Allen points out, the gap between the high and the corresponding low is just long enough that we can no longer track what caused it. As such, it feels like the bad mood "comes out of nowhere", when in reality it is directly caused by various binges: TV, porn, social media, video games, food, drugs, sugar, alcohol, etc.
There is another form of enjoyment, which is more like opening up yourself to what is currently unfolding, allowing yourself to rest 2 and take in the goodness of life. The quest of pleasure is needy, and tightens your attention onto things, whereas that more subtle form of enjoyment is about broadening attention, opening up to the whole experience. Like all subtle things, the distinction is meant to be a pointer to a distinction in lived experience, and it's not something that can be forced.
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2024-06-21