Awareness is distress
“The unexamined life is not worth living”
Sure, but I say you should examine it only if you can delude yourselves that you did nothing wrong in it.
I’ve read about self-aware and rational people being more prone to holding an imposter syndrome, feeling-low in general and associated personality quirks. And a quick survey of my friends/acquaintances (including all the various people living in my mind) proved this to be true as well. A general state of happiness including better sleep, physical/mental health etc. can be achieved by simply ignoring one’s shortcomings/limitations. Being aware of them slowly chips away the happiness from you.
Personally, I’ve noticed that I feel low only when I do a review of my past (at whatever period — day, week, year, decade, life), find out a few things that could’ve been different, think about how I was complicit in causing those, what else I could’ve done, how differently I could’ve navigated it and start regretting them. If I simply ignore the past, or assign blame to others (including planetary positions & other people) even if the past stares at me, I feel high.
Repeatedly, whenever I have started this “daily review / journal” practice, there has been a noticeable dip in my self-esteem. And the “weekly review” is something I hate doing (though I still do in a short form for more admin-ish items than the “examine life” level). I keep postponing the “monthly review” task for this very reason and end up doing only once in a few months. And do the “year in review” in only a superficial way. Now, don’t assume that I have some deep-rooted desire/fear/blah in my mind that causes this fear in doing these reviews. The objects of fear are as trivial as “not having completed all ToDos of the day”, “not having made progress towards a career goal”, “not having attended to a finance portfolio for several months” etc.
As much as I try to include this “Gratitude” thingie in my reviews, the core being doesn’t acknowledge the good things as much as the bad ones. Call it “fear of complacency” / “fear of falling to a fixed mindset” etc. But it is real.
So, what is the solution? Well, if you are already deep into these, I guess it is as good as a “red pill”. You cannot successfully delude yourself back like others. The only way might be to go meta. “Be aware” of this “issue with awareness”, acknowledge it, and go deeper. When you deeper, you’ll (may?) find a solution there. In the trivial examples above, when you repeatedly do these reviews and acknowledge that your secret hobby project of writing a book isn’t moving, at some stage you will realize that it will never happen. And that by itself could be liberating. If it is not liberating, you need to cut-off other things from your priority and make time for this. At some stage, you will be ultra-aware of the possibilities (which might include the fact that you are not as good as you thought so the book idea itself was a delusion). Will this work all the time? I guess not. But my friend, it was you who took the red pill and jumped into this awareness bunny hole. Now live with it.
As a solace, one might say that people who delude themselves have it all good in the short term but will suffer in the long term because they cannot hide away from life for long. It will come back and bite them. Right? Sorry, it doesn’t work like that. Delusion is a powerful trick and whatever happens in life, such people will pass on blame and still find a way to be happy. So, like you are aware of other things, be “aware” that in the long-term we are all dead. So, they will continue to be delusional and die the same way as you do.
If we say “ignorance is bliss”, the natural corollary is “awareness is distress”, right?
Update: Here is the great Calvin opining on this:
