13 Jul “Why to follow?”.Building followers offline
Hmm, well I can’t even come up with an example when ‘following’ something or somebody fully is good or ending well. Not on my watch. In my experiences this mean of devoting your time, obeying the rules, and trustfully follow something that was given to you as a “life meaning”, a “life saviour”, without questioning it – never ends well. It usually gets to an extreme abusive form of the ‘following’; sooner or latter would face great deal of sadder, anxiety , incompleteness, restlessness.
The meaning of the ‘following’ and the ‘blind devotion’ has a very much in common. No matter what I say here, the “following” – in its destructive form – will always be here and there around the world, as we use to pick an object or a subject to follow willingly or not. This also may stress on a simple clue of us as people, who constantly want to feel like we’re on the right path, therefore, yearn for an example at every stage – from childhood to senior years – of our lifespan: Rely on the role model (respectful or popular) to ensure our life is going smoothly as it’s suppose to – chiefly relying on our parents when we are kids. Later on, we pick up little guides for our own sake from things that surround us, including religion, modern culture, social beliefs, norms, traditions,… – things that invoke more sense of devotion and solidly build ideas on life, some are for our best and some are, surely, not. Ahem, especially those from the modern culture, just saying…
Quick remark : there are not many men or women, who are impervious to pleas, not to be talked into something or allowing for anything over, and rather proceed upon the principle that two and two are four, and nothing over, – the most stubborn but insufficient (in number) category of people. Do you fit in that special category? Well, to be a hard-cookie type is to impede the persuasion from other people while keeping in mind own beliefs, control own emotions, incentives; and, on the other hand, some may say “those folks have never been curious enough, and also limited in various ways”.
herd instinct or follow like the rest
At first, the ‘following’ would start with a little need towards something, most likely, materially attractive image, – that we are so keen to draw – which then would sink into our heads, revolve a certain living habit, ideology, gluing to the whole new idea how to live and what really matters. But, – scratching our heads, raising questions – what would happen then? Would this bring – seemingly demanded by many – a life success? Or would you be happy, along the way, achieving something that was thrown to you from the society as a life goal? 50 /50: you might be happy, and you might not be – all depends largely on your personal values.
And that’s how we come to this tricky point – sadly, our values change with time and linked to many circumstances that we come across. Basically, on the meantime, we just left to rely on the standard or ‘approved’ values by majorities, before we – if ever – would realise what’s really important to us…
What drives us to follow something fully-fully, and how it can go wrong? If it’s even possible to explain much of this largely scoped topic shorty, but, at least to toss an idea at one discharge.
Social Success
Hight society. Are they really remarkable paragons?
To be more specific – enter the high society (rich, county’s authorities, respectful class, celebrities). However, sooner or later a simple realisation would dawn on you: These people are not the remarkable role models (paragons) you imagined; their conversations are rather dull and crust, falsely engaging; most of those people are not well mannered, and often just cruel and narcissistic.
Overall, its like once you there – in high society – you finally could shed the light on what was and still is under a perfect photoshopped image that’s on the cover page of glamor, wealth, visually flawless image that society calls ‘success’. Therefore, questions do arise, and one of them is – how the virtues and vices are scattered throughout the population without regard to income or renown?. Most of us think the wealthier person (financially) the wiser, well-mannered, and more engaging as a man/woman would be. This society’s coined guess has been greatly deceptive. After all, to grow free to devote yourself to a wider rage of people, to notice the value of simplicity, would likely carry more meaning and success in life on your terms.
Sure, it’s inevitable, especially in young age, to hold on to this ‘natural’ and ‘infant’ error to suspect that somewhere might be a class of superior people, and that our lives would be dull largely because we don’t have the ‘right’ contacts. Those contacts with cooler looks, fancy cars, bigger houses… Not having a friend with a cool car, seems like you wasted your life. But, once you mature – mentally(often doest happen) – the ultimate reassurance cross your thoughts: there is not such things as perfect people, perfect party, ideal family/career, and life is not going on elsewhere.
Success in Love
Don’t we quest for a love of our life, or ok, at least for some time as this casually fulfils our basic needs, curiosity, and ultimately brings a new sparkle into our busy monotonous life.
Overwhelming crush on a beautiful/handsome people – the life, surely, thought to be in the line loving those certain people who will end our customary sadness and give us a new breeze to all our societal needs. But, more than likely, after some time – days, months, or years – disappointment comes; We become annoyed by a person, who was once, our meant-to-be soul mate. In reality, marriage turned to be nothing at all like the lovely summer walking on the beach time, or carefree student dating life when you don’t need to think of sorting some family issues, financial matters, and so forth. Who didn’t had their sweetheart in school or in uni? When you passionately in love, hormones just fills your brain and you think nothing can keep you apart… Most of us been there done it – sweet time that avoids all the real life challenges, and thus, mistakenly, become venerated. Strikingly, not many end up with their sweethearts afterwards. I didnt , even though, I really had a thought I would.
Daily routine would bring the exhaustion, paying bills could take all of your energy, the sense of confinement would tape into fundamental picture of Romanticism as we know it: comfort, wordless communications, deep security, mutual at-one-blink understanding. The sheer idea of a happy couple hood would no longer seem so simple. And then we on the run for some advise to catch: ‘Why did it happen?’,’ How to handle this?’,’What to do now?’…The advise we think we could get from the books, fancy magazines, movies, and other media channels that we can’t jettison easily after seeing/reading it.
Yes, its more convenient when you know that the whole population follow a one pattern – the most popular and known way learned from Romantic books and movies: You would know what to do at certain case, know what to expect, know how to handle the problems, and so forth. This is, almost, a way to play safe; To bypass the unexpected outcomes, not risking creating a mess, bizarre consequences that leave a trail of troubles. You may also assume that your lover also learned how to love by the same books or movies. It disciplines us, which is good. However, the ideal, a perfect love story, which tells us only about an engagement between two objects, neglecting important outside factors – work issues, families demands, economic, and government situation/change, financial loss, weather conditions…,- should also count as a trap.
Career success
So far this one of the life goals that helps to succeed in both (society and love) that we have outlined above. Career matters are priority for many folks out there, especially, in highly technological and economically developed countries; constant rivalry among people, stressful environment that builds on the money making quest – “work more, earn more”, or ” act fast and win over rivals”.
The environment that posses a constant chase of the career goals can be very engrossing, affecting other things in life: By deploying your ideas and skills to secure more future rewards, we are often lowing our enthusiasm for other important deeds – with family, friends, and just simple fun. So be prepared to handle the risk of being left out with scornful thinking – “How many hours did I spent on maintaining my work set, climbing the career ladder: What was sacrificed and abolished on the way there?”
Bragging about our success, escalating ourselves as human beings when we are doing well, and fall into abyss of misery when we fail – everything is taken extremely personally – and this is the main issue.
Jump to conclude
The success in the society, love, and career is very subjective, depends on many circumstances, and thus, should not be fixed in the minds. We get muddled by questions like ‘what’s success in life’ , ‘what’s love’ , or “what’s the meaning of life’? Most of us wander through the movies/books/galleries privately unsure what they really mean, and why we should care about it. When we do break these big inquiries down we’re not careful enough.
Meanwhile, the big industries keeping up with our ‘life meaning’ questions; distracting us, leaving us confused, and a bit frighten to take steps on our own to reach what really matters for us . The need for understanding, insight, community, family, calmness – are carefully shielded by the capitalist industry that least interested in our real welfare.
Truly life meaningful things are in upsettingly short supply and utterly disconnected from the present economy, except being actively used on ‘pretentious’ terms in the commercial ads to push us to buy things.
Unhelpfully grand ideas of what it means to be successful, how to live happily, what is the meaning of life are inherited in culture, and thus, holding us back …We think of success in everything on such a large scale neglecting what is actually in our powers to achieve right now. Ironically, we suffer from an upside down view of what’s important, and thus, many folks start trusting somebody who has been valued dimly by strangers (some even dont exist like the those votes collected from the grave yard) – that’s only reduce our ability to hear ourself for our own sake.
We should be able to say ‘enough’ to material and superficial demands, to romantic entanglements, to status meaning, to social needs, and learn about other sides of life, turning our mind inwards and upwards into more self-focused…and, at least, cast aside the expected things for a while. Achievements of others should not be taken as a personal offence, which is been proven to be as a fast route to depression and inner numbness, but rather learn what interest people out there and how you benefit from it. We are assembled out of a small things, emotionally driven by beliefs, and social responsibilities – and there always will be an alternative way to live by their presence or absence.
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