Giving Up:

There are a lot of things that I care about that don't make sense to care about. I care about the level to which my life is enhancing the lives around me. If those around me are not being entertained, at all times that I am there, I feel horrible to the core. I care what others think. It matters to me if I think somebody disapproves of something I'm doing. If I do think they disapprove, I take great measures to make sure they don't find out what I've done in order to save them the mental trauma.

In other words, I am dishonest. This dishonesty is derived from an intense desire to please people. At least, this is how it has gone in the past.

However, as I get older, secrets I learn start seeming sillier and sillier, to the point where now I can learn anything about anyone and I will not experience any significant amount of "mental trauma." I will not be put into shock. Really, I guess I just don't care enough about other people's lives for their dishonesty to serve any purpose. Naturally, I must assume the opposite is true-- that other people, too, don't care enough about my life for my own dishonesty to be of any value to them.

Actually, I don't think it's a matter of "caring about other people's lives," it's more just there's nothing anybody can think or do that warrants that act to be censored from me.

I was thinking about all this at boyscout camp last weekend, on a serenely windy Saturday night, sitting cross-legged against a wooden fence-post next to swaying trees on the high banks of Long Lake. I love being solitary with only the company of natural forces, like the wind, or a waterfall, or a thunderstorm. Forces of nature tend to remind me in an extremely clear and direct way what is important. They remind me that I will die, as will all animals, as will the wind, as will the trees surrounding me. The wind will pick up again, new animals will be born, and new seeds will be planted. It will all continue; it will all be recycled, and will continue to cycle, for a very, very long time. But I will die, and the cycle of the seasons and the years- the Earth around the Sun, the Sun around the Black Hole in the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, the universe expanding and contracting- it will all continue. Sitting there, with wind blowing all around me, helps me internalize, all at once, an almighty understanding of what I am here to do; what is important.

And so I was thinking about all I do that is unimportant, of which being dishonest for the sake of people-pleasing was among, and so I decided to stop doing that, and, in my rejuvination, walked back to my room.

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