Success Fully Evil

When failure is the norm, who is to blame?

What is success? Well, success depends from person to person. For me, is me being happy. Having the time, energy, resources to do what I want and when I want. And I am not talking here about yachts, a Rolex and billions of dollars. I am talking a big enough house so if I have kids, each person in the house can have their own room. And money so I can afford at least two vacations a year, to afford the games I want to play, and the gadgets to play those games on. I’d say that is reasonable. As long as I am loved, I can love, and there’s a safe space where I can express myself, I would call all this a success. Some, might look at that and not agree. Some might be more ambitious. Some might want more. But that is why I said that success depends on each person. Thus I have no real problem with success, I am as close to the success I wish for myself as I ever was. But if you look closely at my success, I never mention that I want that success to come at the price of someone else’s failure, suffering or by taking part in this system that rewards hyper-individualism and violence. Nor do you see me look at others that want less than me, or that have never gotten their success, and say that they are less. A reality of ours that we keep forgetting is that 99% of us are going to lose in this system. And that is by default how the system is set up. And as much as I do not know what you’d call such a system, I’d call that system evil. So, what happens when you are successful in such a system? But before that, I have another question…

What makes one evil? Well, the disregard of suffering, meaning the lack of empathy. Most evil starts there. The moment one turn towards themselves and disregards anyone and everyone else, that person becomes selfish. And there is a big difference between someone needing to heal and protecting their core values, as long as those core values do not infringe on someone else’s rights, but when someone that turns inwards in order to fit into a system that rewards selfishness and hyper-individualism. And when you do that, and you rid yourself of empathy, evil takes root. And when you are successful in such a violent and evil system, then success is a poisonous pill you are ingesting. And it is a pill that blinds you. As any criticism of the system that made you successful, or of your actions, or of who you’ve become turns in your head into a personal attack, rather than a concerned and accurate observation. And we all know when you are too huffed up on your own fumes, and you feel attacked, you turn even more inwards, build even more walls, and the finger comes out behind the wall to point and deflect from your own shame.

So, at least for me, it is rather hard to see how bragging about success and then pointing to those that failed is anything but evil. What you are showing is that instead of an empathic response, what you do, is indulge yourself with that poisonous pill. Hamming fist after fist in your mouth, drooling at the thought of your money, houses, jobs, fame, or whatever you deem your success. Pushing people away that do not feed into your now over inflated ego, calling them envious bastards for not appreciating your success when you kept mocking their failures without any hint of empathy or delicacy in your approach towards those that were vulnerable. And then you wonder, ‘Why won’t they talk to me anymore?’ Well, not that you care, you have better things to do than to have any sort of self-reflection. Now poisoned, all that matters is that you do whatever you want, and the rest are sore losers that couldn’t be fucked and we shouldn’t care about, because if they wanted to, they could have… It doesn’t matter now, that the wealth inequality is bigger than it was during the French revolution, or that we are three generations in where the younger generations are less wealthy than their predecessors. What matters is that you are doing well, and the rest are losers because they’re not as good as you. Doesn’t matter the context, the nuance, the place, poisoned blind and with an inflated ego, you tell yourself that if you managed it, everyone should have. 

It is at this point, that a good person dies. There is no more good in such a person. No matter the charity, no matter the intention, no matter what they think. A person that attacks those they deem lesser because they have less success or other types of success, lack empathy. A person that think they know better without taking into account the real situation of the person suffering and giving them “advice”, all they do is nothing but self-serving theater, because they’re selfish. They have no time, no energy, nor any empathy for you. Why? Because they’re self-serving, shallow and selfish. But these types of persons are mostly immature and have a lot of unresolved issues that they have never worked through. Thus they lie to themselves, so they expect you to do the same and accept the sweet lies they tell you in order for them to remain in a somewhat good looking light. And you can see these people now being wildly popular since forever. Whether on social media, or on tv, or in the white house, they are everywhere. And they’re all successfully evil…

In Sanity

The Greatest lie ever told was that there is a “normal”.

This world and its system is in such a way crafted that you are either insane or in sane, with no in between. You, your values, your personality, actions, words, either are for decency or indecency. It is rather hard to believe when you look at people, for a myriad of reasons, that there is anything more than this binary. Because anything against decency is indecent. Anything besides any of the minimum basic decency of what constitute basic human rights for all, is pro-discrimination. There is no world where you can have any sort of decency and argue against that. Yet somehow, at some point, those indecent folk managed to turn gullible, naive, ignorant people into their weapon of hate, discrimination and insanity. And yes, that is one extreme of this whole debacle, there are still plenty of insane people that consider themselves to be of sound mind and reason, that discriminate yet call themselves people of common sense. All of which wouldn’t be a problem if our systems worked. But these insane people are in power everywhere. And they’ve been in power ever since humans have gathered into what we call societies today. Which can only drive decent people insane…

Reading is not enough, nor is knowing history not enough. In all these activities in a world of insanity, knowing something or reading, does not mean much if you do not teach yourself to think. Insanity, much like any other sort of delusion or psychosis ingrains itself in people that do not use what they have. As they use a grain of truth to full you into eating a plate of hate that fills your anger. As this grain takes root into a person, they turn blind. That blindness turns their anger into fury, which turns into acts of aggression towards anyone they hear disagree with them. At that point that person is lost to their insanity, as no reason, no logic, no anything will reach them. The roots of that grain grew to envelop their hearts in darkness and evil. Their blindness infects their ears when it comes to common sense or any sort of self-criticism. They’ve become something worse than human, they’re a monster with the appearance of their old shell. As no human is evil, and anything that is evil, is not human. 

These non-humans try to fool us into thinking we are just like them. And that their world is normal, and ours is not. They try to spread self-doubt, and bring you to their side. Only a fool would look at them and see their darkness as light. Yet there are plenty of fools that have no forethought as they can survive without it that take the plunge into something easier, not thinking. As in order to think, you need to be enlightened and see even in their darkness what they actually sell you. Otherwise, you will find yourself that you have sold your soul to the devil, your body to the machine and your mind to those monsters that want you to hate and fight your brothers and sisters.

The solution? Is not hope, it’s not promises, it’s showing that there is an alternative to all that. Otherwise there is no antidote to the poison they are selling. When the algorithm feeds your addiction, and you have no self-control, you blame the algorithm, a cabal that want to control you and anyone and anything you do not like. Yet you yourself are feeding upon the slop and poison they are presenting you without any sort of self-reflection upon what it is you put in your mouth. When you waver on whatever it is you consider decent or right, you are indulging yourself into feeding the grain that poisons you. And when the whole history of humanity is full of people engrained in this ideology, blind to their own behavior, there is not much hope for those in sanity to keep fighting those insane.

So, in order for change to occur all people should first and foremost look upon themselves with the same critical eye they look upon others. As without this, there is no world where insanity can be vanquished as the wheel of violence wheel keep on turning as there will be plenty of monsters to run upon the will and keep it spinning until we die out due to our own hubris and ego that kept that grain of hate well fed and alive.

What's Lacking

Look around, what do you see?

Much like you, I could write an unending list of humanity’s failures. Corruption, greed, murder, wars, genocides, man-made famines, and the list could go on and on and on. So why?

Why write? It makes no money.

Why create art? It makes no money.

Why sing? It makes no money.

I know why. We have to. There is no pretending to be human without art, whether it’s song, sonnets, stories, photos, drawings, animation or sculpture.

And you might have heard this before, but I don’t think you have.

I don’t think you heard me at all. The title isn’t rhetorical… And we don’t just do art because we have to, it goes deeper than that.

What do you see? Around you, realistically, objectively. Wealth inequality, another genocide or two, wars, housing crisis, global warming, rising fascism, the fall of an empire or two, for whatever reasons men have a loneliness epidemic they can’t seem to figure it out. And what do all these have in common? No love.

No one that loves kills, genocides, makes others suffer for their own benefit. No one that loves, blames someone else for their own failures as a human being. Sure, you can broadly gesture to the whole system, but blaming all women for your loneliness, that’s on you, not the system.

At the core of everything what is lacking is love. We have no education about love, how to deal with it, how to create it, how to cherish it and how to give it in a healthy way. And love is in all our lives. Whether you love a movie, tv show, animation, character, book, piece of music, person, animal, tool, accessory, piece of clothing or shoe. You can not escape love. And when we do not know how to deal with love, we do not know how to deal with much of anything, really. So, we shun it.

And thus we shun art. Art is nothing but love, expressed through a myriad of ways. And when we make an enemy of art, we make an enemy of love. Whether we vilify it and call it a political stance, or woke, it is never a good idea to vilify art nor love. When you do, you shun your humanity, as there is no part of your life that must not have love for others, nature, and everything that is good in this world.

There is no other way to look at it. To look at those that are doing everything that is morally apprehensible and not to see their lack of love. For their neighbor, for their families, for those less fortunate, for those that need some help, for those having a bad day, or for anyone that is not them themselves enjoying the wrath of their villainy. And what is villainy if not the lack of the compassion love brings in a person?

I tell you… Look closely… Who hates? Who creates all this chaos, badness and evil fuckery in this world? Look closely at what they enjoy. Look at their relationships, what fruits they bare, what love they bring, how they communicate with their close other. What their topics of discussion are, if those discussions leave you refreshed or drained. Look at their actions when they’re not with you, or around you. Look at everything they are telling you. And I can bet you, that they lack a healthy relationship with love. Whether it’s loving themselves, accepting other's love, their learned toxic relationship with love from their parents or from somewhere else. Most obviously, the easiest way to see where they stand is their relationship with art. What they consume, what their relationship is with that art? Is it a healthy one? Or is it a getekeep-y/toxic one? 

That is the easiest way to find what’s lacking… What is your relationship with art?

Not All That - Story 2 - End of M

It’s not about that…

SOMEWHERE ON EARTH

But why not give us another day? asks the Brave Arachnid. Why would we? You had twelve thousand years to do the right thing and figure it out. In the past one hundred and fifty years you have had a marvelous revolution upon revolution that has brought so much wealth, so much information, so much good… Yet all was used for war, in the name of misery. In the name of subjugation of other people. You have been preaching the words of a god of peace, love and kindness, and used it for violence, for genocide, for hate against the other which was just as you were. Whose fault is that? How can you preach for love and fight against your neighbor? How can you go to a place of worship and beat your wife and children? How can you pretend to love anything yet despise anything that isn’t just as you are? And then the age of heroes arose. Wish after wish for these people to be saved by someone, by some heroes. Their prayers answered, they’re third chance at a normal life realized. And with all that power, what have you done? With all that intellect what have any of you done to save these people that were suffering? Some of you have wealth beyond comprehension, yet you use it for your own personal gains without a care in the world for those suffering. Most your so called villains are but victims of the status quo you are defending with your lives. Some of them are the direct consequences of you, heroes. And what have you done? You have jailed them, you have punished them for fighting back against that was turned them into who they are in the first place.  

The Brave Arachnid looks down in shame. We are not here to preach upon your failures as heroes or as human. But the wildlife, the fauna, the atmosphere, this planet is innocent compared to the crimes humanity and its heroes committed against itself, the aliens explain. But we can be better, the Brave Arachnid interjects. It is not about what you could be, it is about what you are right now. And it seems none of you really understand what we have been trying to tell you. Each of you have your share of responsibility. Whether it’s what happens to your own selves, to those around you or to the environment around you. There is no such thing as pure innocence in this day and age. Whether ignorant, a fool, evil, if you defend, stand by, and do nothing about the injustices that are committed against yourself, you are as much to blame for what happens as those villains that have put you in this situation. And that is especially true of those that have awoken with power or knowledge, as in those that know better should use their powers. And not to just protect themselves, but those closest to them, at least. And if you look around, most people can’t even take care of their own selves, caring about anyone else isn’t even a possibility. And you heroes, should have helped with that. Yet most people suffer. Most people are having a hard time existing, living, using this excessive wealth that has been created and hoarded by a few. And of those few, some call themselves heroes. 

I… You’re right, says The Brave Arachnid. It is not about being right. It is about the minimum of decency. And then there’s the following question. If we give you one more day, will you do the right things because it must be done out of your own free will? Or will you do it just because you are under the threat of annihilation? To us, our intervention was never about negotiating, it was about taking a decision. As the moment we intervened it was clear to us that it was too late for heroes, and humanity as a whole to have any chance at survival, the aliens explain. But what about the children? The babies? What about them? They haven’t been tainted. They don’t know any better, says the Brave Arachnid. You are not wrong, babies are pure, some children are already a lost cause. As we will not force them into the cruelty of reeducation camps, they will follow. You can blame the parents, you can blame us, we do not care. But if humanity is to survive, a reset is non-negotiable, the aliens explain. But they are still children, they can still learn, the Brave Arachnid interjects. Most humans could learn something all their life. Yet we do not see humanity as kind enough to live with a sudden change brought on upon them by an outside force. As such, we bid you farewell, as this age of so called heroes and old humans will draw to its end. And no other human will have to survive to feed themselves, to house themselves, to work themselves to death, without fear of exploitation, hate crimes, or wars. 

As most humans and superheroes are pulverized in an instant, silence falls upon earth. All machines stop, the lights come on, the streets now empty, the cries of pets and babies echo. Why are we alive? a few hundred thousand people ask themselves. We need someone to take care of the babies. We need someone with the same values of equity, equality, love, compassion, empathy to shape the new world. To help heal humanity, as the cancer was cut out. Now the planet will breathe again, you will be able to breathe again freely without the knee of the oppressors pressed upon your necks. And you few, are those that do not just believe in these values, but apply them to every part of your lives. Now go, take care of all these babies, pets, and this world. All the doors are open. The end of maltreatment has been enacted, you now have your second chance. We have but one request. Please, do not ever mention us, or what happened here today. 

This is the second and last part of the Not All That mini-series. Hope you liked it. And you can read below the second part of the exclusive mini series about horoscope signs in The Horrorscope - Sign - Series on the Nobody The Extra Blog.

My Shoes

Hurt comes in all shapes and sizes.

A cry is heard, every single time a baby is born. We come in life through hurt, experiencing hurt, and our most formative years are spent hurting. When we learn to walk, we often fall. We get hurt. We get back up. We get hurt, again when we try to walk again, but haven’t yet figured it out exactly how. Then, later in life, we hurt when we learn more, experience more. The first time you ride a bike, you get hurt. The first time you play a sport, you got hurt. The first time you played a game, you lost and got hurt. Your first love, has left you hurt. Your first relationship has left you hurt. Your first fight with your mother, father or family, it is hurting still, maybe. You and your best friend when you had your first fight, it hurt. All the things we live through bring hurt. Life is nothing short of hurt. Whether it’s verbal, physical, mental, hurt is there from the moment you are born, to the moment you die of hurting too much. But, we learn to cope with those things. some, do better. Some, worse, through alcohol, drugs, gambling, food or any other similar addictive process or thing that can help fill the void, at least temporary. But, most of us do not learn how to cope. There is no such book about coping that can apply to everyone everywhere. Yet one thing we seem to keep forgetting is that we all hurt all the time.

Oh, I am not exaggerating, did you know that when your stomach is digesting food, it actually hurt your body physically? The reason you do not know that, or feel that, is because our body has a somewhat healthy way of dealing with that and not transmitting that hurt to your brain. So, hurt can be ignored, hurt can be bottled up, hurt can be dealt with appropriately. But that is, if we learn how to deal with it. But no one teaches you that, and those that try, most are putting you on a path of hurting even more. If you do not know how to process the hurt, if you do not know to vocalize your hurt, if you do not know how to cope with your hurt, that will bring you more hurt. And in this world of violence, hurt is literally everywhere at every corner, as hurt is part of our communal experience and culture. Our most prized art is about hurting, is making you feel hurt, rarely do we appreciate those that try to create art that heals. So, if we all hurt. If we all are born through hurt from labor, why do we break so easily and never get ourselves back together? Because the world is created by those hurt to hurt others. So when everyone is hurt, the world itself is one of hurt, the system we deal in is one that is hurting us.

So, then, why do I expect someone that is hurt to understand me? Why do I expect someone that can’t piece themselves together to look at my hurt and understand it? When clearly, they can’t understand their own hurting and how can their perspective even engage with my hurting? If their can’t fit into my shoes, nor are they even will to walk in them, why do I keep expecting them to do as I do? Why do I keep expecting them to understand what they did to hurt me? And why do I expect them to put in the effort to understand how I am hurting? When they can’t seem to get out of their own shoes, and even attempt to put on my shoes on. Life is full of hurt, but in this hyper-individualized world created by this violent system made by these hurt people to hurt people, we need more people that understand. You can understand whatever subject, system, thing, as much as you’d like, but if you never try to understand it from the human perspective, for the side that is hurting, you are not just missing the point, you will contribute towards creating a better tomorrow. Because then, you are acting to protect your privilege instead of creating equity and helping the world rid of much of the hurt its creating.

So, when you refuse to walk in someone’s shoes, and you simply react based on what presumptive image you have of them in your head, rather than listen and assess the things being related to you, there is no hope in my opinion, for you to understand the hurt of many. Hurt has many shapes and sizes, much like our shoes, but saying that all shoes are the same, is silly. My shoes, are different than your shoes. My hurt has been going on longer than you have seen or known. My shoes are more worn than yours for a multitude of reasons. Just because I use my shoes different than you do, does not mean that my shoes are less valuable than yours or anyone’s. They’re shoes, they’re made for walking. Much like the hurt that’s made to hurt you, one does not negate the other. But one did come before the other, so, if you refuse to walk in my shoes, but you’ll gladly walk in my enemy’s shoes, then how can I take what you tell me in good faith? Have you walked in my shoes before you spoke? Have you even imagined yourself where I am standing? How I am feeling before you wrote? I do not expect anyone to fully understand what I am going through, we all hurt in our own unique way. But, if you care about my hurt, I expect you to do the bare minimum and put yourself in my shoes first.

People Don't Understand Violence: Part 2 - It's Not Just Physical

Freedom isn’t violent, violence is violent…

It’s not just war, bombs, hate crimes, murders, fist fights, assassinations, violence is so much more. I don’t think there’s a need for me to explain how beating your wife or war is bad. So, we will pass these things. As violence is every present everywhere you look. But people will not seem to face that fact because it feels like they like to relish in that type of violence. Be it because they take part in it, or they enjoy it as it is targeted towards people they do not like for any arbitrary reason that makes no real sense. But we need to unlearn this, violence is not just one that is seen.

A. Verbal Violence

Violence comes in so many forms. Verbal, is another popular form of violence. Whether it’s verbal abuse of a significant other, racist, xenophobic, hateful stuff, slurs and their use. There are so many ways of being violent through words. But, luckily, lately we being to understand that and fight back against such behavior or at least label it correctly, such that we can say “this is bad”. Which means we can do something about it. And if we can understand this, we might understand others as well. For example, it seems that a great subsection of abuse, which is political or systematical abuse is still a mystery for many.

B. Political Violence

Policy makes system, system makes policy, it’s a vicious corrupt circle. But we need to understand that these two things are tied together. One can not be without the other. If violence is present in one, then it is present in the other as well. Same goes for corruption and everything that is bad, not just violence. But let us start with strictly policy…

1. Strictly Policy

Contrary to popular belief these days, assassination attempts are not the only type of political violence. Policy and law can be violent as well. For example, the UK and France restricting the right to protest. That is a violent precedent that steps on the rights of these people. I don’t think I have to explain to you how apartheid is bad, how the Holocaust and genocide is bad, how the Jim Crow era was bad, how war is bad and that all this usually starts with policy and law. The Holocaust was legal, and you’ve probably read that multiple times. We’ve talked about this in the previous post about Historical Consequences. So, hopefully you understand how all that is violent. Because otherwise we’d be stuck here for eternity. But, if you understand those things, you understand the base level of political violence and how it can have many forms. 

So, now that we get that out of the way, there are plenty of other ways policy and law can be violent. Basically anything that restricts your freedom and makes your life harder is violent. For example, if you have rights, and a certain group of people do not have the same rights you have, that is political and systematical violence. Why? Because they do not have access to certain rights. And anyone against that, is violent against said group of people. Red lining, a thing that happened in the US where if you were of a certain color, you were not able to buy a house there. That is also political violence. Here’s another example, let’s say you were born in a city. You went to school, you got your degree, you work hard, but by the time you started school to now, the price of housing has gone through the roof. That is political violence, as it is tied to directly to policy of your government and it affects you directly. The government could do something about it. Plenty have done so, there are studies on this which could bring a solution. But the people in charge have an inherent interest in not doing something, because they are systematically using the excuse of a free market to plump their pockets and those around them in order to profit. And it’s really difficult to think they are just incompetent when we have too many examples, studies, exposes of them doing these things on purpose. And not with just housing, food, water, and pretty much everything else that could make our lives better, which got harder and harder to attain. Just like creating a family, pollution, global warming, these are things policy could change and make our lives easier and better. But the violent system will not accept such a change for the loss of profits.

2. Strictly Systematical

So when everything is for profit, and profit comes at the expense of workers, what is this system if not violent against the cogs it uses to function? A corporation can bribe officials, to get a license to dry out a lake, put a fence around it and sell the water to the locals. Something Nestle is really good at. That is violence. And it is brought on by this system. A system in search of maximizing profits for the shareholders. It doesn’t matter if an African village is left to die or walk 1.5 km to the nearest water source, if Nestle can sell you that water for 1 dollar when the salary there is 2 dollars per hour, that’s all that matters. Now, I don’t think I have to explain to you that worker exploitation is bad. But while this is a real extreme example. Just like the children making your iPhones, picking your cocoa and coffee beans, you are also exploited. If a corporation makes 4 billion a year, pays out its CEO with 3 million dollars, yet you make 600 bucks a month, you are being exploited. And the governments allowing this, makes it legal. Thus this is a violent systematic problem, affecting us all. So every single thing an employee can do to profit and not pay you, is inherently violent. And when this is at the very core of the philosophy of everything we do, then everything is violent by its nature as this is its system. And you can’t change your jobs out of it, or bootstrap yourself out of it. You can only join in the violence and start your own business, if the entrance level is low and exploit others.

You can mask it as incompetence, corruption, the free market, freedom of expression, political freedom, religious freedom, whatever you want to call it, this system is one with violence at its core. Remove the violence, the system is suddenly called something else. Because this system needs profit, profit needs exploitation of workers, exploitation of any kind if violent. So if we want to change this system, we need to change. We need to stop making excuses for what is. In no fair world, no matter how responsible one is, one should have access to everything and have all their rights, if they do not impede the rights and freedoms of others. And no, there is no right to be a bigot.

I promise we will talk what you can actually do and solutions some other time. But this two parter was about violence and most its forms. 

You can read post early on Nobody The Extra Blog with the tagline “I actually do love people very much, but…”

When I Look at Me

Existing is complicated.

If you live you are going to create stuff. You create actions which creates a reaction, this in turn creates memories. Now,, with those memories you do as you please. You think as you please and as you can. But, something you can’t do, is undo those things. You can apologize, take responsibility for those actions. Get forgiven and forgive yourself, but you can not undo what’s been done. Which is fine. And if you’re thinking that you can undo because you can repair stuff, we’re going to enter a long discussion about a certain ship and I do not wish that upon you. So, as you exist you do things, things are being done to you, and thus existence is a constant flux of things happening all the time and all the time happening constantly to you. And, as a writer, I can not help but look back at myself. The first time I did that, it broke me. Now, a second time, I do not have the same self-esteem problem when it comes to my own ego. Which sounds fake coming from me patting myself on the back, but I have a point with this. I wanted to see if I can reinterpret some of my old posts from the original blog from 2008 for you here, with a new perspective. As I have done at the beginning of this blog when we moved over to this website. But looking back, some of the stuff I posted did not age well. Not because it was anything bad, morally speaking, but because I do not feel the same frustration as I did back then. And I have a better way of putting things into at least a certain perspective, which would make more sense even for my old self.

And that is a complicated feeling to face, while happy that I can do that, which is what we should all try to strive for… Have an answer to the questions our old past selves had. A dream, for sure, as many questions have no answer, and some answers can never become a solution in our live times. Depending on the scale of the question and the answer. But, I can’t help it, when I look at me, who I was, at that the frustration I had, that even if I had the answer, there was never something I could do about any of that back then. Nor do I think it would’ve satisfied me. But rather put more flames beneath my wings to try more, do more stuff, no matter if I knew something or not. And I wish I had the same drive I did back then. But I do not, and that is the one thing I can only admire about my old self, the stubborn, dumb, self determination to do something, anything, everything. Yet I think this is more of a universal feeling we all have after a certain age. Whether you remember how much you could work, how much you could do, how brave you were, how fun you were, these things are what drive the mid-life crisis, are they not? Finding these things in us are always fine, in my opinion, as long as we apply the wisdom we got through living and we don’t just throw ourselves without thought to do the things we used to.

So, I can’t help but look at myself and ask if the way I am is okay. If there’s something else I should have done to be better, become someone that’s more than I am right now. I’ve been ruminating on a book that I could’ve finished in two weeks for 6 years. I could’ve done so much more if I had the courage I had when I was younger, at least that’s what I am inclined to think, yet at the same time I would’ve been in so much trouble, if I had that courage and impulse. So, when I look at me, I can’t help but think of how lucky I am to be who I am now, riddled with anxiety, yet with stuff I always wished to have. Not as sure of myself as before, but doing things I love. Yet, despite all of that, if you’re an overthinker, there’s always some if, some maybe, some something that someone could have done better, should have done better. So when I look back at me, I there are mixed feelings, yet there’s not much regret or hate. So, when I look at myself know, I can’t help but be excited for what I will think of this moment right now in ten years from now. What I’ll think of myself and these words then? What new wisdom will I have? What new answer will I have to the frustrations I have now. to the questions I have now… What do you think? What do you feel? What critique do you have? I ask now to my future self. 

For more exclusive content and early access to posts like these visit: https://www.raulfo.com/nobodys-extra-blog-landing-page

Here is the cover photo for an exclusive post on Nobody’s Extra Blog with the tag “If you ask people, love is… Complicated.” To read it visit the link above.