"Spacing Out"
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Essay
I’ve dealt with a lot in my life. I have social anxiety, food anxiety, and general panic problems. I’m recovering from depression. I have a lot of pent up anxieties about who I am, what I’ll do, who I’ll be. I have a large amounts of regrets, most of which aren’t super profound or anything, but they’re constantly buzzing in my brain and make me crazy. The time I said something strange, the time I made someone upset, the times I made dumb mistakes that really just don’t really matter. But yet, they matter to me, too much even.
Through all of our lives, we each have our own set of hardships. But in the grand scheme of things my problems are petty, in comparison to bigger things like, say, world hunger, or terrorism, or war. Yet, they affect me and my loved ones so much. There’s a sense of duality between the insignificance of us all as individuals and the grand scale of entire cities, countries, and the world. As I think about the world as a whole and my tiny place in it, I feel smaller and smaller. I think about how dumb it must look to outsiders to be so worried about petty things, when they have their own problems that could be worse than mine. But I know that to myself I am important, even in this small scale. My family and my friends care about me and I care about them, and everything that happens around us.
But you know what? Sometimes it’s worth just stopping. It’ worth it to stop thinking, stop worrying, stop moving. Just stop, and look around. It’s something I’m not very good at. I just have to do it and relax, because whether I do or don’t the world will keep spinning and things will just keep piling up. But if I don’t, there’s no release from the crazy. If I do, it’ll seem a little less tiring for once, or I can just acknowledge how tired I am. And those moments, of just taking a second to be tired, are what remind me that life is worth living for whatever reason. Whether it be the way the light comes in the window, or colors of room, or the natural expressions of the people nearby, and the general impermanence of everything and moment we live in, it’s all beautiful in its own way. It’s relaxing, cathartic even, and it keeps me going even in the most difficult times.
Through all of our lives, we each have our own set of hardships. But in the grand scheme of things my problems are petty, in comparison to bigger things like, say, world hunger, or terrorism, or war. Yet, they affect me and my loved ones so much. There’s a sense of duality between the insignificance of us all as individuals and the grand scale of entire cities, countries, and the world. As I think about the world as a whole and my tiny place in it, I feel smaller and smaller. I think about how dumb it must look to outsiders to be so worried about petty things, when they have their own problems that could be worse than mine. But I know that to myself I am important, even in this small scale. My family and my friends care about me and I care about them, and everything that happens around us.
But you know what? Sometimes it’s worth just stopping. It’ worth it to stop thinking, stop worrying, stop moving. Just stop, and look around. It’s something I’m not very good at. I just have to do it and relax, because whether I do or don’t the world will keep spinning and things will just keep piling up. But if I don’t, there’s no release from the crazy. If I do, it’ll seem a little less tiring for once, or I can just acknowledge how tired I am. And those moments, of just taking a second to be tired, are what remind me that life is worth living for whatever reason. Whether it be the way the light comes in the window, or colors of room, or the natural expressions of the people nearby, and the general impermanence of everything and moment we live in, it’s all beautiful in its own way. It’s relaxing, cathartic even, and it keeps me going even in the most difficult times.