self-actualizing
In the past two weeks, I've written quite a handful of emails to friends in faraway lands. The usual well-wishing kinds of emails. Once upon a time, these well-wishing emails were well-wishing cards and well-wishing letters that didn't just appear at Christmas. We used to document our lives and our feelings in ten handwritten single-spaced pages of stream-of-consciousness writing. With the inevitable explosive popularity of the Internet, the letters and cards trickled into rare emails and for certain friends, into nothing at all.
I blame the Internet and its convenience and cheapness for making people lazy and less caring than they probably would have been if paper mail had continued to be the trend. I blame growing up for making people less aware of their surroundings and having them be controlled by the automaticity of their lives. Maybe I say this because I think too little of people. I think about the emails people write to me. They're short, perhaps to be construed collectively as a broken-up paragraph than a letter. They seem superficial, telling me they're doing this and that and the other. There's little mention of their feelings. I think about the emails I write to them. They're wordy and often, I think I say more about myself than I ought to and perhaps, that they care for too. Verbose, that's what I am. But at the same time, I censor myself, based on what they write. They set the precedent and it's etiquette to follow it. I wonder if my friends do as much thinking as I do, because it's not evident in what they say or what they write. They're shells and every shell seems alike. I wonder what truly goes on in their heads. Maybe if I knew all of them better, I wouldn't say something like this. Like I said, maybe I think too little of people.
The way I see it, most people run on automatic, doing things for the sake of doing them, having little to no awareness of what's around them. Growing up and having to have real responsibilities does that to you, I suppose. I hate myself when I fall into routines like that, when I stop wondering about people, about things, about life, when I'm being rigidly controlled by a schedule and responsibilities. That moment of realization slaps me awake. (I think that was me this past semester. In November, I had that horrifying burned-out feeling and I felt guilty for feeling that way because this is what I chose to do. And it's only now that I realized that I probably felt that way because I was so tied to what I had to do, not what I wanted to do. With this in mind, I'm clueless as to how I'll make next semester work.) I wonder how many people out there are able to escape this grind altogether and are able to be fully aware of themselves and their surroundings. Maslow would call them self-actualizing individuals. It seems overrated and complicated but I really don't think it is. Capitalist societies don't pride people like this, those with childlike wonder, those who can rise above the rat race. Yet, when we do stumble upon the odd person who's stepped out of the box, we all gasp and think how wonderful and amazing it would be to be like this person. It's almost hypocritical and I don't understand it. It's sad that I only truly get it now when people say they long for their five-year-old selves. It's not just one thing they're yearning for. It's the whole package.