If you’ve been watching this website for any length of time, you’re probably already starting to see some of the themes listed above. I feel like the most important thing we can do is to start making a conscious effort to shift our consciousness away from the things that are stressing us out and towards the things that provide meaning.
That is a good thing. It means we are getting a better idea of what we need to do to regain our sanity. Without that knowledge, it’s easy to fall into a trap of “I don’t need to know that, I’ll just do it anyway”. The point is that we need to stop being so preoccupied by what’s wrong with us.
The problem with stress, is that it can make us feel “stressed” in a way that is counterproductive. For example, if you feel stressed out, you’re probably going to end up doing something that makes you feel even worse. One way to fix this is to take a few minutes and just sit down and find a deep meaning to your life. Meaning is not something that you can just find by looking around or by going to the mall.
Meaning is more like a song that plays in your head. When you think about it, we all have different songs in our heads that play in our head. Maybe there’s something very meaningful that you want to do, but you don’t know how to get to it. You need a song that you can sing to yourself that makes you feel better and says it’s okay to just do it. We all have different songs in our heads that we can sing to ourselves for a purpose.
A song that is important to you is important to me.
Meaning is important to us because we all have our individual sense of meaning. We may not be able to relate to each other, but we do have certain things in common. Meaning is important to us because we all do the same things. Most of us do the identical thing in the same way, even if it is different for each of us.
It’s like a sort of shared mental model of what we do. For example, I can relate to you because I like to play guitar. You may like to play guitar, but you don’t play guitar the same way I do. I can look at you and see you having a good time and I can see you enjoying music just as much as me. I can see you dancing to music because I like to dance.
So I like how you’re taking a walk, I like to talk with you, and I like to read your blog. These are all things that I can do because I’m not doing them exactly the same way you are. I don’t know that you are doing the same things because I don’t know that you are like me. We are all different in our own way.
The problem is when we get so caught up in our own lives that we stop paying attention to the people around us. We feel that we have time for ourselves, but in reality, we dont. We need to make sure we’re not living for ourselves, we need to make sure that we’re just living for others, for our families, for our friends, for our selves. We need to live in the presence of others and let ourselves be touched by them.
Yes, we could try to get away from ourselves, but life is too short to have a life of our own. The problem is when we get so caught up in our own lives that we stop taking the time to stop and think about the people around us. People who are like us, who are just like us and have the same needs, the same goals, the same troubles.