Outside of playing video games, most of what I did in middle school was write code and do competition math. And I was happy in this reality. But as I entered high school, I looked at the skills I had, and regretted not having many outside the technical world. I couldn’t play an instrument, and could barely name a few fun facts about myself during the first day of school introductions. So I asked myself why.
Well, I thought it was because I was never forced to do anything for most of my life, so I just stuck to those technical-esq things. And I did feel slightly bad about it, but it simultaneously felt out of my control. I took that feeling of inadequacy, a gap between the person I was and wanted to be, and attributed it to something that wasn’t me. This is the epitome of cope.
Cope, fundamentally, is the way that we keep living with ourselves, and it's not necessarily bad. But, sometimes, cope becomes a fancy way of feeling sorry for yourself. I don’t mean to demeaning or pessimistic. It’s really just a matter of fact. The more I felt bad for myself, the more I excused myself from the work required to fix the very things I felt bad for.
Cope kills action, because it justifies not acting. And that’s why it's so dangerous. Regardless of how much is actually in our control, a lot of the time we take responsibility for a lot less. Perhaps the only solution is to take responsibility for almost everything in our lives. But not in a demoralizing or hopeless way. In a way that tells us that we have control over a lot more things than we give ourselves credit for. In my case, I spent so much time regretting not starting earlier, when the second best time to start was right here in the present. And that’s what all my side questing has been about.
Comments
Post a Comment