The Paradox of Emotional Dualities: the truth (just like love) is riddled with conditional, circumstantial interpretations.
I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong [Charles Dickens].
Perhaps it is better to suffer and know the truth, than to be happy in delusion [Dostoevsky]. At the same time, I would rather keep my illusions for they are often kinder than the truth.
Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence. [John Adams]
However,
No, facts are precisely what is lacking, all that exists consists of interpretations. We cannot establish any fact in itself. Everything is subjective, you say, but that in itself is interpretation [Friedrich Nietzsche].
âThere are more things, likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality [Seneca].:
I often forget the things I want to remember and remember the things I need to forget. However, despite the knowledge of being human and that 90% of my worries never happen and the 10% that do werenât as bad as I thought they were, I still default to âthe habit of exaggerating, or imagining, or anticipating, sorrow [Seneca].â
It might just be selective ignorance and ownership of identity. Take rebellion for instance.
You should know that a rebellion is always legal in the first person, such as âour rebellion.â It is only in the third person - âtheir rebellionâ - that it is illegal.
Americaâs Founding Fathers knew it better than I did, âthat mankind is more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed [Declaration of Independence].â
In the pursuit of making my younger self proud and my older self successful, both the past and future me would understand that there are the unteachable lessons that have to be taught.
Itâs funny to think my future self would probably tell my present self:
âIâm sorry your life turned out so bad. But donât blame me you messed it up yourself. You just focused on the bad stuff when all you had to do was let go of the past and keep moving forward.â
Perhaps, I would make the counter argument to my future self that
I [have] always loved you [for you are my future], and if one loves anyone, one loves the whole person, just as they are and not as one would like them to be [Leo Tolstoy].
Expectation of reciprocity. While there is the desire to receive the love I believe I deserve, I am starting to understand (but not fully believe) that I have the love I have always needed, not necessarily the love I always wanted.
Will I truly love myself as I love others? Probably not. To love means to forgive and to forgive means to disregard, and to disregard means to inevitably forget.
To forget the memories that made me who I am would be the greatest disservice to myself and my future family, for those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
However, history does not repeat itself, it just rhymes.
I almost laugh at myself for the irony of this writing.
My mind, while having more tangents to further communicate the passions of the heart, it will never truly comprehend that my heart is like an ocean, where the depth of darkness will triumph over the light of the surface. Within that darkness is not evil but of quietude, of solitude, and most of all, of peace.