Are You Living the Unlived Life?
If you didn’t have to do anything, what would you do?
If you ask yourself this question during different phases of your life, over the months and years, you’ll get a variety of answers.
At first, you might think that you’re very inconsistent.
But eventually, if you ask yourself questions like this, you might start to notice a trend.
Follow the trend, and forget everything else. This is much harder than you might think.
This is what it means to stay true to yourself.
~~~
The reason that your answers are so inconsistent is that you often can’t see what you truly want because you’re blinded by the external pressures that you feel are constricting you. Naturally, your main “want” ends up being the desire to escape the things that you feel are holding you back.
But this isn’t truly a desire: It’s an aversion. You’re running away from something. The idea that these pressures (in the form of people, commitments & responsibilities, possibly the government) are holding you back is false. It’s a mental construct of your own making. It’s as illusory as fairy dust.
Viktor Frankl has said that man is “pushed by drives but pulled by values.”
You don’t need to physically eliminate the drives in your life to see the values that are pulling you, you only need to ignore them long enough to see what’s important in your life. It’s a mental elimination, and I’ll fill you in on how you can do this down below.
This “running away” from the drivers of your life fools you into thinking that you value getting rid of these drivers (example: Escaping the need to worry about money by getting rich) above all else. But that’s not a true personal value. You’re driven into it. You can never completely rid yourself of these drivers. Nor should you want to. They are a natural part of being human, and they lead to a very meaningful life.
Those who spend their lives running from responsibility end up ignoring the values that are important to them because they use these externally driven, and, for lack of a better word, shitty values as their main sense of direction in life. But it’s a scapegoat.
~~~
I know this from first-hand experience. I’ve recently eliminated all responsibility in my life. To myself and to others, and I was left to sort out what was really important to me.
I got rid of all of them. In reality and also mentally.
You might think “How freeing! It must have been wonderful!”
But if you have experienced this yourself you will understand that this period of freedom can be the most difficult time of your life. For me, I’ve never faced anything like it. It was a struggle, and was much more difficult than being “restricted.”
I’m still picking up the pieces now as we speak.
I was forced to face the things that I had been running away from. Once you eliminate the drivers (the scapegoats to responsibility, the external pressures) all you are faced with is your personal values. And then you realize that, in the end, you were running away from your own personal values the entire time, using these drivers as an excuse as to why you weren’t doing the things you knew were important.
And so then you must do the most difficult thing of all: Admit to yourself that you had the ability to live according to your values the entire time and that it’s nobody’s fault but your own that you weren’t. It’s a tough realization to process through and understand.
And after you’re done processing, there’s only one thing left to do: Change yourself so that you can live according to your values, despite the external pressures that will thankfully find their way back into your life, and despite the natural excuses that will rise up in response to these pressures.
But you have to do it, or the cycle will repeat itself.
You owe it to yourself, and you owe it to the people you’ve hurt, and you owe it to this world and God or who/whatever your higher power happens to be.
~~~
How to see your consistent self
The way I see it, right now, you have three options in regard to the consistent self. Only two lead to this self.
Be Alone Consistently Over Time
The first is to take time out to be alone with yourself, outside of your normal environment, for as long as possible, and ask yourself questions like this:
If I didn’t have to do anything, what would I do?
What are my true values? What do I really care about, above all else?
Who do I want to be?
After you do this periodically, for weeks, months, and years, you will start to see the trend of your consistent self.
This self is the unchanging part of you that points towards true north every time, at least when you allow it to speak.
In this way, time smooths away the external pressures, personal excuses, and shitty values that mutilate this voice. While they may impact the voice that comes out while you’re alone, they don’t have as much power in these solitudinal and novel places as they do in your normal life.
This it’s why it’s important to spend time alone while taking these notes: You get to see the trending themes over time, and this allows you to admit to yourself what is really important, and understand what you need to do.
Ruin Your Life
The second option is to eliminate all external pressures as I did. In the real world and in your mind. This is the last resort and I do not recommend it. It is painful and dramatic and life-shattering.
Although I don’t recommend it. You may be forced into it. And you will know when this happens because you will not have a choice. The voice inside is too strong, and when repressed for too long it bursts out in a nasty way. Either way, this option is still better than the third.
No need to speak any longer about this. You will feel the pain and learn, or not learn, the hard way.
Live the Unlived Life
Lastly, the third option is to ignore this voice inside that yearns for personal change and the realization of the values that are important to you. This is the easiest path in the short, term, and the hardest in the long term.
You will come to hate yourself and treat the people in your life poorly because you will blame them for the inner torment of not living according to your values that, in the end, is your responsibility. This will leak out in self-destructive ways that, most likely and hopefully, only the people that are closest to you will realize because of the torment and shitty values that you pass over to them. Eventually, you will die without truly living the good life that constantly knocked on your door, but was always left unanswered out in the cold.
You will have lived the unlived life.
Thank you for not contributing to the progression of the human race.
I hope I don’t end up like this myself.
I refuse.
Do you?
~~~
So, I ask you one more time:
If you didn’t have to do anything, what would you do?
And once you figure it out, will you do it?
Thanks for reading! A related song to meditate on:
Everything You Need to Know by Rob Riccardo ( Apple Music, Spotify)
Originally published at https://mooreaustin.com on December 28, 2021.
