Sorry
I see. Thank you for sharing, H. Let me be clear with you. Last night my newborn had trouble sleeping, and my wife had post-natal sickness. I appreciate you paying $50 for this hour and even bother coming here. I really want to say nice things to you, to soothe your hurting soul and offering you hope for the future. But I won't. Instead, I will say what you really want to hear. Sure, go ahead and do it, if you can. Oh, what if you actually do it? No, I'm not worried. First, there was no record of you coming here nor paying for this session. Second, both of us know who you are. To commit suicide, you need to have utmost cowardice, able to face this life no longer, enough to go against our species' self-preservation instinct. And if there's anything in this life you are disgusted by...
It is cowardice. Cheeky bastard. He had me.
Franz Kafka suffered through his life. His dad beat him up daily for no reason. In the 1900s, if your dad beat you up, you are supposed to love him for his tough discipline to "man you up" and emulate the same thing on your kids later. Nevermind the fact that it made you feel like something less than human, undeserving of love, questioning the love you have received, receive, or may receive. He had an unfruitful love that he pushed and pulled for years. Then he contracted tuberculosis, which destroyed his ability to eat and speak. Near the end of his life, he instructed his friend Max Brod to burn every unpublished manuscript. Think about it, the Kafka regarded that his writing was so subpar it did not even deserve to exist. Much like the writer. Without Max Brod's disobedience, "Kafkaesque" would never have been coined.
The writing of an author tells you more about the writer than the subject at hand. Metamorphosis was never about an insect. It was about a man feeling like an insect. Yes, he appeared well-loved by family and society. But so long as he could maintain his human form, so long as he could be useful to the family. Once the pupa reached maturity? Heh. The family started treating him exactly as he was, a fucking insect, a burden, then an embarrassment, then garbage. Death by betrayal of his sister, who used to love him the most and whom he used to love the most.
My teacher suggested me when I was 14 to read Franz Kafka. To be frank, I never finished any. I know better than finishing something that had me vomitting just by reading the summary. But in the dark moment I thought of him. And Nietzsche. That's how I uttered "My kind of people should have committed suicide long ago". A touch ironic given that of the people I thought of none actually committed suicide.
Good. I love that we are on the same page now. So let's me tell you what to do. First, you need to apologize to your friend. It's not a question of how close you guys are. It was the way you phrased it. Second, you will write about what it is that you truly want. Because nothing you did was meaningless, H. You want something, you definitely want something. Find out what it is, then state it plainly, directly. Worst case, you lost a friend, but you gained understanding of yourself. There're few trades as good as that.
Roger that. Received order given. Expect results.
I first came to Singapore 5 years ago. This blog post was intended as a kind of landmark for the occasion. I had been struggling for months. "Who exactly am I now?" turned out to be a very hard question. To know who you are know you need to know you were in the past. And I don't really want to discuss my past. But well...
First, let's make it clear. I was not abused in anyway. Yes, my parents did beat me, but not every day, and not for illogical reasons. It happened sparingly, for example, when I beat a kid up during summer vacation in a smartphone dispute. It stopped after primary school, mostly because I started studying so much that I did not have time to fuck around any more. I was not bullied at school either, though there were kids aggressive to me. I went to good public schools, and in Vietnam, if you have high grades at one of these schools, no one will hate you.
However, every of my attempts to seek love and things related to it such as understanding or sympathy or recognition had been denied, systematically. I hold it against no one. I was a kid, then an adolescent without the ability to actually express myself well. My peers were also kids and then adolescents, and parents were busy. Holding it against any of us will be like holding against a sheep for not being able to fly. We just don't know any better. Despite telling myself that, I still hate it when I am back in Vietnam. I have not successfully changed my memories about the place.
The point is, cutting through the intellectualism layers I wrap myself with, my core is really simple. I want to love and feel loved. I want to know that you love me. Not romantically, just as humans. And my conflict is I don't think I deserve love. That's the dance my life has been revolving until now.
I used to think that loving myself was an inside job. I still do. The mistake I made was that if there were low points, I’d love myself through them alone. It worked most of the time.
But I’ve learned that to reach out, be open and vulnerable to what I need, almost like a child, that is loving myself too. Perhaps the simplest, the most honest, the most loving thing I can do for myself.
One day I did. My mind was so intent in loss after the breakup, so unwilling to let go, that I grabbed my phone off my desk and texted a friend.
“I’m hurting.”
She texted right back. “How can I help?”
I didn’t let myself think. No second-guessing, no time for fears to erect walls.
“Tell me that you love me. Tell me that I am loved.”
It was iMessage, so I could see the empty speech bubble. Apple’s servers telling me that she was typing.
“I love you.”
I stared at the screen. Speech bubble appeared. New text.
“You are so loved.”
That’s all I needed. I had no idea. That’s all I needed.
- Kamal Ravikant
I guess, no, I know that, I want the same thing. In the darkest moment, where my mind is slipping towards the abyss. I want to be told that you love me, that I am loved.
I think it's time I tell you that there's no therapist. It has just been me. If you are close to me, you can probably guess that. I am verbose and roundabout. When it comes to vulnerable topic like this, I can't help closing myself somehow, at least at first. But if I ever hope to move forward, to break this wretched cycle haunting me for the past 2 decades, then there's no other choice.
So, here I am.
I think that each of us has our own personal evolution. I tend to figure things out by myself. So my evolution would be to involve others, grow with them.
For someone who’s wired to figure things out with others, their evolution would be to go within alone. Either way, we evolve and meet in the middle.
Comfortable in the silence within, comfortable with reaching out.
- Kamal Ravikant