THE EPIDEMIC OF LONELINESS, EMOTIONAL BARTERING, AND THE REMEDY - Part 2
SO HOW DID WE BECOME SO NEUROTIC AND NEEDY?
Loneliness has become an epidemic in our society and it’s been programmed into us since childhood. Lonely people find all kinds of ways to cope and many develop addictive behaviors to fill the void ranging from alcohol, to drug, to eating, sex, gambling, and shopping which is great for the economy, not great for the individual. For most of us, everything we know as adults is the product of a process of indoctrination into a system, designed to create a task-oriented workforce of relatively docile, passive, and obedient worker bees. This is why our indoctrination begins at such a young age, before we can apply any cognitive rationale to it. Initiated by well-intentioned parents and other adults, simply teaching us, not only the way they were taught, but what they were taught, which is, how to be competitive and how to become “essential,” our initiation into a system of pathological thinking begins.
Outside of parents that home school and typically question the rather orthodox, structured, and authoritarian approach to imbuing our children with knowledge, most parents generally believe they are empowering their children by sending them off to school. They are completely unaware of how much the schooling process is arresting their child’s development and their child’s attempts to develop confidence in their own sense of autonomy. With the exception of Montessori schools, school is where most children’s confidence begins to erode.
As children we’re taught how things are, or at least “should be,” how to “properly” do things, and how to prepare for our entry into the workplace environment. We’re spoon-fed a religion, a nationality, a racial and political identification, and gender roles.
We as parents build our child’s entire mental construct of life for them instead of letting them explore LIFE for themselves, come to their own conclusions, and allow them to be whatever they want to be, think whatever they want, and express themselves however they want to. I see this imposed brainwashing every time I see parents dragging their children into churches, a particular social event, or see parents telling a little boy not to wear little girls clothes to fit into a prefabricated gender identification, and cringe at the thought of how the child’s essence is soon going to be strip from them.
Since there’s safety in numbers, children (and even adults) mistake consensus for wisdom and tend to believe what the majority of people around them believe. Slowly, the light of their beautiful uniqueness fades and is lost as peer pressure and the urge to be accepted leads to conformity. In adopting the beliefs of the majority we no longer have the confidence to “go against the grain” of conventional thinking or “think outside of the box.” Afraid to be ostracized, children lose confidence and fear expressing themselves, their thoughts, and feelings, especially if it’s incongruent with what the majority of people around them think. They become afraid to try new things, or do things in their own unique way, feeling everything has to be done a certain pre-ordained and accepted way. As a result, they become risk adverse and lose confidence in themselves, their instincts, and their own creative potential. Seeking the path of least resistance; we conform. I cannot tell you how many individuals I have counseled in their 30s and 40s, who have shared with me that they got married in their 20s because that’s what all their friends were doing and it just seemed like the next logical step in life. Again, this is compulsory behavior and role playing that only leads to our eventual sense of entanglement with another person.
LIFE AND LOVE IS JUST A STORY WE TELL OURSELVES
Surviving childhood and adolescence and coming out on the other side with a self-image that’s intact, and the ability to truly love and honor ourselves is a daunting endeavor to say the least and one of life’s greatest challenges. Unfortunately, most of us don’t fair too well. This is why we develop the mask of our ego to conceal our pain, fear, and insecurity from others.
As our ego begins to emerge in our teen-age years our self-image begins to erode further because of constantly comparing ourselves to others. This societal neurosis and pathological thinking is largely bolstered by marketing, which is designed to do one thing – sell products.
Living in a society driven by consumerism and endless consumption, the marketplace has but one goal . . . to make us want things. “Wanting” is always based in comparison, by comparing what we have with what we want and could have. It’s predicated on the idea that we lack something, therefore happiness is always going to be connected to something external.
The very nature of wanting is to externalize our happiness, joy, well-being, and sense of self, as defined by social media, magazine covers, and Hollywood celebrities. We compulsively shop to define our self-worth through the acquisition of material possessions. But wanting always creates suffering, and there is nothing we want more than to feel loved and accepted by others.
Being accepted by others means we feel adequate. But where this becomes detrimental to our well-being is when we tether ourselves to and develop a dependency on things external to us – like people and products – to bolster our sense of self-worth and self-acceptance. Without constant validation from others we cannot seem to hold back the self-deprecating thoughts that taunt us, the insecurities that plague us, and the incessant feelings of being inadequate.
Compounded by advertising that purposely brings attention to and magnifies our insecurities by making us believe we are lacking something, we enter adulthood with few of us believing we are likable, lovable, or “good enough.”
So, developed as a coping mechanism to protect our impressionable and vulnerable inner child, our clever ego takes shape. The more our ego develops, layers upon layers of karma (our conditioning) is accumulating in us. Slaves to a persona we’ve created to blend in, this persona develops as an extension of our ego. As it develops, the love and self-acceptance we once had for ourselves dwindles. We become further and further removed from the essence of who we are and knowing ourselves. We wear this mask so often that we barely recognize or remember the essence of the person hiding behind it.
El Astuto Ermitaño – Cuadernos del Yogui
Living in the world that has been reduced down to a marketplace, survival involves more than simply making money. Spiritually, emotionally, and psychological we are challenged by this rigorous journey we call LIFE, and navigating through it and managing to keep our head above water is challenging.
Our entire perception of the world that surrounds us is the product of what has been marketed to us, and in my previous article I mentioned that society programs the individual out of the individual, only to create “isotypes.” This is because the way we see ourselves and the world is nothing more than a product of exposure. Who we associate with, what we watch, what we listen to, and what we read, leaves impressions upon us that create the lens we see ourselves and the world through. This is Karma!!!
With the advent of social media, everyone, with the exception of those who have largely disconnected from it, are living in their own “virtually reality,” completely fabricated by the beliefs they hold.
Our entire perceptual experience of the world around us is nothing more than an amalgamation of beliefs and assumptions that we project onto the canvass of our mind as we try to make sense of the world, others, and our feelings about all of it. What we see in the world depends largely upon what we look for. We don’t objectively see things as “THEY” ARE; we only see them as “WE” ARE, meaning, a reality that is filtered through the lens of our beliefs, assumptions, opinions, and perspectives that are largely the product of marketing and propaganda, and observing the behaviors of others. Our perception of the world has been prescribed to us.
I would love to hear from you and hear your own personal thoughts on relationships in the comment section below. Let me know if the content of this article resonates with you, provides perspective, or helps you see things in a different way that empowers you to make different choices or see life and relationships through a different lens. I value your thoughts and feedback and look forward to hearing from you.
Love & Light to You in your continued Journey of Self-Discovery!
David
