When we are young, we might fantasize about living a life that has meaning of some sort, whether it be realistic or not, whether it is important or not - at least most of us, dream of being world changers of some kind. We want to have a life that matters and while we might not always have a good sense of what actually might matter in this world, it doesn't stop us wanting it. However, what does stop us for the most part, is ourselves.
Too often, we are our own worst enemies, but we don't necessarily realize it, because each decision we make feels right at the time of making it. We always think in that moment, we are doing the best we can and even if we know we are making far less than ideal decisions, under the circumstances, what else can we do?
It is interesting as I know many people who take the comfortable approach, the path of least resistance and while this is always the easiest thing to do in the moment, it leads to a degradation of conditions, which means the "easiest thing" gets harder and harder.
One of the lies of culture of over the last few decades is the "love yourself as you are" shill, as what it does is encourages us to accept ourselves, no matter how we feel or how we behave. No matter if we are feeling terrible and acting badly, the easiest way to handle it is to accept ourselves as is and when we do this in every moment, we are continually accepting a degrading form of ourselves, a body with increasing pain, mental and emotional states that are suffering - and our behaviors react and, we behave badly.
But, we can take the path of least resistance and accept our behavior, because we can always justify our position through the lens of our conditions, without acknowledging the part we played in being exactly where we are today. Even though we have actively taken the easiest routes through life and they have compounded to degrade our conditions and our ability to cope with them, we are still able to play the victim.
But that dream-filled child wasn't wrong, we did change the world, it is just that rather than direct our ship to use our potential in the positive, we have used it to limit and reduce ourselves, as well as our opportunities and the surroundings and people we affect. Every movement we make has an effect on our world and literally changes it, but it doesn't mean that it is positive.
Some of the biggest influencers on my life, were not people I look up to, yet they had an effect on me. Yet at the time, they likely believed like we all, that under the circumstances, they were doing the best they could.
The life of least resistance is literally death, as in that state, no movement is necessary at all, no decision-making, it is all one hundred percent passive. Yet, people in general don't want to take it quite that easy. However, every thing we learn is done through a spectrum of challenge and discomfort, whether we choose it for ourselves or it is thrust upon us. while every complex skill is made up of a skill cluster of some sort, when we take the least resistant road, we put our focus on the bits that we like and avoid the bits that we don't, leaving our skill level limited.
It is constantly skipping leg day and we become unbalanced, less capable and our body, mind and emotions start to fall out of alignments, creating more precarious and uncertain condition, increasing stress and forcing us to make decisions in degrading conditions, with less capable tools. But, we will make those decisions again using the easiest path, feeling victimized by the world, and loving ourselves more for it.
The amount of people I know who "love themselves" as victims of circumstance is high, but I wonder, what does it take to wake up, look in the mirror and say, "I look like shit, I feel like shit and I act like shit" and realize that it wasn't circumstances that got them there, it was a road of comfort.
We often don't think the hard road we walk is comfortable of course, because it is difficult and hurts like fuck and because we are walking it and suffering it, we feel we are putting in the hard yards. but because we keep taking the easy path, the path gets more painful and we feel even more victimized and say "I did the hard work and look where it got me".
No, walking a hard path is not the hard road. Accepting your own poor conditioning is not the hard road. Loving yourself no matter how you behave or who you hurt, is not the hard road. It is the path of least resistance, it is the comfortable decision in the moment, it is the road to the world we have today - one where not only is the environment struggling to survive, but we are too, and we caused the former because it was the easy choice at the time.
We are all changers of worlds - our own and each others.
We are all victims of our worst enemy - ourselves.