Have you ever had a strong belief in a personal manifest destiny? I don't mean something like that I will specifically do A, upon which B will happen, which will trigger C. But I also don't mean something vague like "do you believe in fate/destiny?". No, I mean, do you have a feeling that there are certain roughly determined things that are going to happen to you? That a certain fate is being carved out by you, and you can't escape it, even if you want to? But that you are definitely the one controlling it and bringing it into being?
I no longer think about the possibilities of my success doing what I wish to be doing - I have a certainty of it that I never had a desire to possess. I feel like I want that uncertainty back, but the very concept of it not already being written into future stone just doesn't exist anymore. And this frightens me greatly. I feel as if I'm right on target to meet my manifest destiny, and I've no idea if I can even tap on the brakes occasionally, just to make me feel better.
What's much worse, though, is that I just had a dream last night in which everything that I thought I wanted four years ago came to pass, and I got to live it out. And it was great. Until I woke up and realized that I had just lived my dream life that didn't exist. But then I didn't have the certainty that I have now - and it's not arrogance, I swear, it's like an unshakeable feeling in the bones that this is what I was built for and this is where I'm going now, like it or not. The reason why that's so scary is because the dream essentially, I think, is going to be my life. I will get everything I dream for, but every individual thing is going to go away just as quickly as it came. And this will repeat itself again and again and again. But I can not oppose it.
Desire is now my enemy, for desire will grant me all my wishes, and then snatch them back away from me a few moments after I've fulfilled them. Even worse, there will be no bitter ending when these things go away, for they will simply vanish as they are supposed to, and there will be no legitimate recourse.
Several hours after waking, I started thinking more about my dream plans and realized that, to a certain extent, while I had given up any hope of the old four-years-old plans and realized I didn't need them, but I still want it, see? And I might just be able to execute them in another few years. Which terrifies the shit out of me, since I thought this had all gone in the recycling bin a long time ago. I'm stronger than this. ... right?
And then, IT happened. The feeling, the physical feeling in which I can actually feel the depression in me, reoccurred. After years of non-stop personal depression, I finally was able to put the lid on it by myself back in August of 2001. And now it's returned, haunting me and slowly rotting away at my innards. And it's only been a few hours. I can feel my chest in a strange lock that I haven't experienced in forever. I'd cry if I could, but it's literally been at least a decade since I last did - I can't if I even want to.
I'm not the suicidal type - I could never do it to myself, but I feel as if this manifest destiny is now being pervaded by this depression, which cannot stop the destiny even. But it can corrode it, debase it, and turn it into a darker fate. I feel like I'm infected, becoming worse by the moment, and now put in this position wherein I am only going to follow through on my destiny, but in a way that is going to hurt and destroy many others along the way. Something needs to be done.
But I have no idea how to stop this.
― Lost, Tuesday, 16 December 2003 21:53 (twenty-one years ago)
I think i understand most of what you're saying. I know that i've felt my life to be controlled by something/someone else and i've been helpless to affect it. Perhaps we all have, or perhaps some will scoff at this notion. I'm afraid i do believe that we are affected by 'unseen' things, but i damn well wish i didn't. It is my experience, and profound reflection on it that convinces me of this, but i wish it were not so. I think that if you have a propensity to depression then you may be more vulnerable to external effects, you are more sensitive to these forces. Certainly this is what i find. This is not practical help i'm giving here, i'm aware of that, but i know that one can go beyond that, and then what matters most is an understanding of the metaphysical space one finds oneself in. It can turn you int a 4-dimensional human being, and that can only come about through suffering, and awareness of the pathos in your life.
Life begins to feel dreamlike, and that can be unpleasant, but actually that can help in interactions with others, not hinder.
Awareness, encouraged but not studied, can find the most useful things if will is there.
I certainly agree that desire is the enemy. We think we can use it, but it always ends up using us, and then we forget what our motivation was to start with. I think that you need to look at things differently, because there are different parts to you which want different things, ie we are all schizoid beings, but you can't satisfy them all at once. Be aware of the split inside you. It is the truth about being alive, which is ultimately what all the problems we encounter, in or out us, are trying to tell us.
― pete s, Tuesday, 16 December 2003 23:49 (twenty-one years ago)