I sometimes wonder if the failed promise of personal potential capitalism sells us on is what makes modern life feel so high stakes all the time.
Like all systems of organizing people, capitalism has a core founding mythology to justify why those in power are in power: they were just smarter than you. It's pretty easy to see this isn't true once you've stopped needing it to be.
Anyway, this myth of individual greatness asks so much of us. No longer can we just live our lives, content with contentment. We have to contstantly ask ourselves if we can be doing more, being better, becoming something higher.
life does not exist for it's own sake, it has to be justified as a transitional state to something 'better'. Better doesn't come, better is not a real destination.
As soon as things improve, we see a new 'better' over the horizon. Sounds nice, like growth, progress. But with people, it becomes a treadmill. There is no good enough. Existing is unjustifiable unless in a state of improvement.
Sometimes things stay the same. Sometimes they get a little worse.
Life is an increasing disappointment to individual 'improvement'. We get old, we degrade, we become worse at doing, at being.
I need a culture of patience, humility, and care.
I'm a fucking jumble of meat and electricity pushed through life by the need to not die. I am not a prodigy. I am not a mythical hero. I'm not a sword to be honed. I need those parts of myself, that softness. It hurts to lose them, it's bad to lose them.
Let's see ourselves in the world around us, in context, limited. Be a person with me