Perseverance vs Practicality (Part 1)

I’ve been writing about college and careers and want to continue that theme for at least one more post.

I’ve been thinking about the question of whether to continue to struggle toward a particular path that refuses to open up any gates for you, despite your years of knocking; or to instead cut your losses and transition your energy toward a more sure thing, despite it not being what you feel called to do in this life.

I think for me it was the feeling of obligation to humanity combined with a distrust in the rest of humanity to bring forth my vision to this world. “If I fail,” I thought, “the people of this planet will continue to suffer unnecessarily for who knows how long.”

Yes, I thought I was special. And I put a lot of pressure on myself to accomplish the mission I thought I was put on this Earth for. Honestly, I still feel that I’m special and that I’m here on a mission. But I’ve managed to remove much of the pressure from my shoulders. I figured that if it indeed is my destiny to bring forth certain changes to this planet, then it’ll happen regardless of the decisions I make. Destiny is destiny.

In addition, I also started to seriously question this feeling I’ve had for so long. Maybe it came from watching too many superhero shows when I was a kid. Maybe it’s the same genetically caused delusion that our many “Messiahs” experienced throughout history.

And then I’ve also personally met a number of other people (probably all of them men) who have expressed, in one way or another, their feeling of having a special understanding that would transform the world in a positive way if they could only figure out a way to spread their message.

When I hear those people speak, I think “C’mon, who do you think you are?” But then how am I any different from them? Maybe the same thing that is making them seem so arrogant and delusional is making me appear that way as well. Maybe I’m no less crazy than them!

I really wonder, where does this feeling of specialness and mission come from? I’ve expressed some of my theories, but ultimately I do not know. Am I just a product of evolution that happened to catch this certain “Messiah gene”? Did I just never fully outgrow my childhood imagination? Or maybe I really am special and on a mission. But then, if I cannot provide any evidence for my belief in this grand idea, isn’t it kind of crazy for me to keep believing it?

But these questions lead to deeper and more universal human questions:

Why doesn’t everyone feel special like I do? After all, if you think about it, each one of our consciousness is completely unique. Everything you’ve ever known has been experienced through impressions on your unique consciousness. Everything. You can’t experience life through someone else’s consciousness and they can’t experience life through yours. Everything you’ve ever experienced has been through your unique consciousness. In fact, your existence is the only thing you can be sure of. Other people may be conscious too, but there is no way for you to know that for sure. You can only got so far as assuming.

If we all indeed are conscious, then every individual life is a truly awesome thing. Each life, in a sense, is everything. Though life continues after each death, that life is gone forever. And each life that comes after it must experience everything anew. Death extinguishes everything of that living creature but the physical matter.

With that being said about each life, how can I not feel special? Surely, I am. As is every other conscious being. Now, if I feel special relative to every other conscious being on Earth, that’s a different issue completely. As is the issue of the feeling of mission.

But just the recognition of a human’s power is enormous. What grand creatures we are! Though most of us don’t live anything like it.

So is my feeling of specialness just the feeling of being human? Is it just the awesomeness of my consciousness of my consciousness?

I’ll probably never know.

But what I can do in the meantime is to try to do my best to bring the greatest life experience to each conscious being on this planet.

Which brings me back to the original question of this post . . . which I will continue to explore in my next post.