Late Night Fiction One man’s non-fiction

Putting a Title to a Situation

This isn’t the best thing to do. When I say situation, I mean anything that ranges from a state of mind to an environment to a relationship with another person. And this is why it seems, to me, to be a bad way of thinking.

I’m ever-changing; every day in my head is a different one. One day I might think I’m the shit because I can’t find it in me to care about anything anyone around me thinks. Another day I’ll think I haven’t changed at all and am accomplishing nothing. But I should avoid thinking them both. You see, the whole reason for changing myself has been an effect of me realizing that the cards I was dealt until this point in my life [when I finally gained some control] have been shit. Well, this same shit that I speak of occurs when I think of something solid—one of these titles; it essentially does the same thing as the obligations and expectations I’ve learned since birth that have screwed with my head: gives me something to abide by.

And that’s no good. In fact, that’s the whole point of not blindly accepting what you’re told from birth: you become a slave to these ideals and are never truly free (I’ll clarify free later). Yes, of course my parents had some things right that helped me become a good person and someone I actually like; but, just as well, they had some things wrong, similar to the other 6.8 billion of us—none of us have it all down, hence my personal never-ending quest for some kind of answers.

..And my search for freedom. What I mean by free is simple: truly your own thoughts; your own feelings; you. Obviously, in our social world this is a lot more complex than simply stating it. We’re all a product of society in one way or another, and it takes time to differentiate between causes for why you think/act the way you do and what novel conclusions you’ve come to on your own, using all the information you’ve gathered from the outside world. It’s not impossible, just difficult. So what I meant before was that realizing what inside your head is you and what is them will make you free. It keeps you in society but it keeps you above all the unreasonable and non-thoughtful ideas that have become reality in our world. In other words, you’ll be the one at the end of the day who isn’t upset with their life because they don’t have someone or because they are poor or any other so-called “necessity” that has been taught by the masses.

Putting a title on a situation infringes on freedom because it also rules-out flexibility more than it should. I’ll use “dating” as a title for an example.

Let’s say I’m dating a girl. I’ve known her a few months, but only really gotten to know her for the past few weeks. I think I like her; regardless of the reasons, I’ll leave it at that. Now, because of the dating title and inherent obligations (again, they’re already present based on society), if I meet another girl that I start to like, this is “bad.” For one, if I like her more than the girl I’m already with, I have to convince said girl that I want to “leave” her and break the expectations she holds me to as a result of our title. Even if I don’t decide I like New Girl more than Current Girl, if Current was to find out, again (depending on how invested she was in her expectations of me) I would affect her emotions negatively. This all seems silly to me—especially because of the expectations factor.

If you lower your expectations, you can’t be let down—this has been my mindset for a good while, because you can always go up. And once I internalized the fact that I can’t control anyone besides myself, it was even easier to give up all expectations I have in other people. But this is the main problem with having these titles I speak of. If you’re Current Girl in the example I mentioned above, you will have your “heart broken.” This will bring an onslaught of over-analyzations, what-did-I-do-wrong’s, the whole enchilada. This isn’t good for Current Girl, or any other human being, for that matter, that experiences this destruction of their expectations. So, quite simply, why do it?

On those days that I feel like I am completely free from what people around me think, it’s great. I consciously realize that I am, in fact, free from what all these other people think about me, and more subconsciously realize that nothing can bring me down—that is, until I let them in. This only brings me down because I expect that no one will affect me. If instead I walk around feeling free from the people around me and simply ride it—not recognize it—then I can continue to live it, all the while remaining flexible when I have to interact with people close to me, such as friends—people I do have to let it, even if it’s just a bit. In this case, it’s about managing your thoughts and when you start to realize how good of a mood you’re in or how on top of the world you are, you have to stop it and literally distract yourself. This keeps you free from not only others but also the darkest parts of yourself, which is half of the struggle in life.