Hello Everybody. Today I want to give a simple yet very important reminder to you all on being like our peers. Now they say there are roughly eight billion people on the planet, whether that is true or not is beside the point. You and I know that at least from experience and being in large cities there are more than enough people here in this reality. With a large population a wide selection of diverse cultures, peers, and groups are formed. Naturally, in our instincts we feel an urge to ‘fit in’ or embrace the common saying of “birds of the same feather flock together”, or however it goes. It is true, at least for the majority of society, that like attracts like and we tend to get along and are more comfortable being around people who present a similar type of being that is related to ours.
Now, when I say do not try hard to be like the others I do not mean it in a way of.. “Oh, I’m so different and better than everybody.” Or I do not intend to come off as all knowing, or “I know myself and these others do not.” For this is simply ignorant due to the truth of the ever-changing universe we live in. One cannot simply say “I know who I am one hundred percent!” Even the Buddha (enlightened one) cannot state this. Just as the universe is eternally evolving the same goes for our being. We are adaptive creatures by nature and to change with the seasons, sunsets, and sunrises is a sure way to diminish suffering.
From a young age (around grade third or fourth) I started to take notice on how I no longer felt a sense of belonging like I had in first and second grade. (Which is due to the personality being molded as kids grow older and older, before this starts to occur I believe kids get along and are more receptacle on making and meeting new friends. Kids at a young age intuitively embrace an all-accepting being towards other kids.) I went from having friends to not being able to connect to the kids the same way they connected with the other kids. In my later elementary grade school years I had one friend who was known as the kid who didn’t have any friends. I even remember not wanting to be seen with him or having other people know we were friends because of my idea-form of caring too much about what other people thought about me. This continued until my Junior year of high school. Even through middle school I still felt a sense of being disconnected from the others like me because the only two friends I had were actually a grade below me. And when you bring it to your attention now, no one in middle school embraces the fact of having friends that are in a lower grade level than them. It goes without being said, it is just “uncool”. (When brought to our attention, grade school has a way of making oneself feel superior to others due to their grade level. For the most part, this is unconsciously going through the mind of a grade school student.) This idea-form of trying to ‘fit in’ continues on through high school and even thereafter. Unconsciously grown adults still have the mentality of ‘Trying to Keep Up With The Johnsons’. For those of you who relate, we spend this whole time of our lives trying to ‘fit in’, wondering why we do not ‘fit in.’ In effect, we feel and experience separation and loneliness. This can lead one to search for an external healer, that for the most part is detrimental to our being. Fortunately for me I choose video games as my outlet and addiction. Through online gaming I was able to feel less alone. I also used gaming to get away from the world and others, I was addicted. I am grateful for not choosing hard-drugs, suicide, or other more harmful external remedies to sooth my suffering. Others may involve themselves in these experiences and to compare traumas is futile because it is the similar emotions and modes of being one experiences that matters.
While there are indeed many people who have felt and experienced this mode of separation from a young age, there are numerous amounts of people who have not. For all of you who can relate to me, when we look back at our suffering we can now see that it had to be so. For through our suffering we have gained an insight, a very powerful insight of individuality. This individuality is not to be confused with a boastful or narcissistic attitude. But rather being conscious of the fact that while we are all the same, we still have the ability to choose and embrace the multiplicity of our individualities. (This is complementary and not a contradiction) But when one only follows others and goes through the cyclical societal phases as everyone else does, life remains confusing and painful. People grow old and remain almost the same person their whole lives. People unconsciously adapt to society and the half-truth reality of existence. They will spend a lot of their time focusing on how others perceive them. It is also possible to be at the other end of the spectrum which involves one who goes around trying to be likeable by everyone. Many are tuned in socially through social media yet disconnected from their selves and their physical reality. And countless others will be okay with remaining the same. This is not surprising though, look at how we have been conditioned to believe that “People never change”. Or take notice on how society is too comfortable with keeping the same group of friends because of the false belief that to make new friends or change your peer group is ‘unreal’. This idea is subliminal and unconsciously embraced by the majority of society. Music is proof of this, observe the lyrics and song titles of Drake, one of the most popular artists in the world. Songs like ‘No New Friends’, and lyrics relating to that message are precisely expressed in his work. (That is just one example for one group of people out of many others) The majority of Society unconsciously look to the external world for guidance and Joy. If one unconsciously moves throughout their entire lives they may end up with the ‘wrong’ crowd, or they may later in life end up experiencing an existential crisis, aka mid-life crises.
What is to be done? As society becomes more conscious of their being, they will question their reality, their friends, their peers, their history, the universe, and most importantly their selves. We will come to find that this half-truth existence we now live in is truly infinite and illimitable. We cannot simply say ‘It is this” or “It is that”. For it is this and it is that and so much more all at the same time. We must not embrace our limited thought-ideas and choose to console with the part as the whole of things. We must begin by going within and establishing an intrarelationship. One will have to engage in a self-work to develop a self-vision. And through this self-vision a self-knowledge will manifest and consequently form, from which we may draw our individuality and connect to others more in line with our true-existence.