The dark bit in the pit of our stomachs.

A drive we all have in life is the drive of fear. What we do with it determines who we are. We may not give it the recognition, but fear is just as strong as a drive as love. We either live in the circle fear provides, or we try to strive and reach new boundaries. We all hate the feeling of fear, but we never realize how important it is to helping create our persona. There is a difference between fear that helps us and fear that just cripples us. It’s the matter of knowing which is which and trying to overcome the ones that simply cripple us.

Most people refuse to go out and face their fear because it’s just that, their fear. They spend so much time avoiding the things that bring discomfort that they never try to rise above it, they simply ride the waves chosen. Living a sheltered life isn’t always bad though. The fear we try to avoid keeps us from doing things without thinking of the outcomes, which helps keep our bodies away from unnecessary harm. With the help of fear, many of us would stay away from the edge of high buildings, running around sharp objects, and other mishaps. Fear may control us, but it’s not always bad to live in it.

A very few people are willing to go out and face their fears, these are the ones we some times consider brave. There are different directions the lives of people who do this go. Some can go out and do simple things such as going out and jumping out of helicopters, or getting on a simple board and going at high speeds with only a helmet and some padding to protect them. Other people may end up swallowing their fears and going out to do something heroic such as helping protect what they stand for or trying to make the world a bit brighter. These people can range from soldiers to just people willing to stand up and let their voice be heard, even if it costs them their lives. Some people will end up doing something stupid trying to live above their fears, and may end up in the hospital or dead. The ones that do something great with their ability to overcome fear, those are the ones that we remember.

I’m not saying that all fear is good though, there are a lot of irrational fears that just make us incompetent in life. There are some things that keep us from doing the most simple things such as going out and being who we are. These irrational fears could lead to people continuously putting on a mask in order to please the masses, to just not being able to go out and socialize with the world. These are the fears that keep us from properly living our lives because we are afraid of what would happen if we were to do anything, and these are the ones that we all must try to overcome. People have convinced themselves that these fears are so strong that they refuse to fight it.

There’s a very thin line for us between which fears are rational, and which aren’t. There is a huge difference between the two, but in our minds they have become so raveled up that we can’t tell which is which. Some times it seems like it’s actually a fear to try to unravel our fears. We simply refuse to try to figure which fears are irrational because we feel that all of them are logical and make us who we are. It’s human nature to refuse change if we feel that change isn’t needed. It’s the simple fears that keep us from trying to change ourselves for the better by trying to take out all the irrational ones that leave us helpless in this world.

This doesn’t mean everyone is either controlled by fear or live to overcome it. There are people who live in fear but manage to have moments where they break free from it. There are also people who live to beat their fears yet still some times venture away from situations. It’s just a matter of whether a person is willing to go out and try risking themselves everyday or are only willing to when certain situations call for them to do so. Everyone has little moments of bravery when a situation dictates we put our fears aside to help better situations. It ultimately comes down to whether we are willing to let the fear drive us or if we’re willing to go above it.

A means for our sanity.

Everyone practices a form of escapism whether they choose it acknowledge it or not. We find ways to escape because life can be absolutely dreadful at times. The reasons we feel the need to escape from reality for a bit can be as simple as boredom to just escape something that seems so hard. Most don’t realize that they are escaping because it  has become most’s everyday life. We don’t realize that we start watch movies, read, etc. because we’re just bored of reality. If we weren’t trying to escape, there would be no reason for the book written for people to read or movies to help entertain us, we would be out there just living. Many strive on our need for escaping, we pay people millions of dollars to create a diversion for us. Escapism has become such an essential part of our lives that actors and athletes manage to make more money than people who are actually doing something important, like doctors and researchers. To an extreme level, some people use drugs and alcohol to escape a reality they can’t endure.

We give all this money to actors, musicians and athletes without realizing the most simple thing, they’re doing the same thing we are. What do you think actors do all day? They go onto sets and live a fictional life for the cameras. They managed to find a way to profit off the fact that they hate real life. These people became untouchable to normal people simply because they were smart enough to decide that it would be a great idea to try to profit off of the idea of leaving reality for a bit to help create a world the viewers dream of as well. Are they the same as us? Of course. Were they smarter than us? Possibly. They are making a lot more money than the rest of us, but at the same time, they are spending the money on stupid things such as huge houses and fancy cars. It is as if they are buying these things simply to say, ‘hey I’m better than you and here are material items to prove it.’

Musicians are a little bit more difficult to achieve success with, you have to create the world instead of just acting in it. They have to sit there and think of a way to create a story simply with words and help set that mood using instruments. As difficult as this is, when they manage to get it right, they can become the voice of a generation. Musicians have the ability to express certain moods, they can choose to create a song that can liven people, or do the opposite and create something sad, but with a hint of beauty. They use their words to convey a message, which may seem easy, but hard to do correctly. Out of all the people we overpay, I feel musicians deserve it the most. Although, not all musicians are deserving, some get away with saying absolutely nothing, yet getting paid because they’re glorified by the masses. The ones who are deserving are the ones that, in the minutes you listen, you can’t help but be moved by the song.

Athletes are most likely the most strangest of the bunch that receive massive amounts of money. The only reason they manage to earn so much is because in the amount of time they play, the fans manage to unite and root for their team. It seems that all the troubles they have are pushed aside, if only for a moment, so they can root for their team to win. Yet at the same time, the fans will sit there bashing the other team, creating rivals, and some times even ending with physical altercations with opposing fans. At times, it seems as if the fans are willing to endure just as much pain as the players do just to defend the honor of their team. Athletes are nothing without the team, and the teams are absolutely nothing with the die hard fans willing to back them up. Yet, how does it help a fan to get into a fight with another fan? They don’t get paid the millions of dollars to back up their reasoning for risking their physical health, yet here they are ready to throw up their fists just because there’s a rivalry between teams. How does it seem effective to take something that is supposed to let you escape from a harsh reality during the times you are fighting to defend this make believe honor of a team that doesn’t truly see you?

The things I enjoy to escape reality is, well of course, writing and music. These are just easy ways to get away from everything while managing to release all the terrible things trapped inside. Writing has two main purposes, it either helps by letting someone express how they feel inside, or it can also help bring out a new world that the writer chooses to write about. The first purpose of writing is what leads to things like blogs and other some times poems and other outlets. It helps you because you can just let all that crap that’s inside of you out, you don’t have to address it to a certain person, you just have to let the raw emotions out. For example, i write a bunch of really depressing poems, but I never state who I’m writing to, but from the way it’s written, it’s obviously to a girl. I do this because I just have those emotions inside, but I’m too afraid to actually tell the person that I feel that way for her. As you read in the last post, I’m very fond of doing things for other people, and all the poems, well… they’re meant for whomever it is I feel compelled to at the time of writing. The second version has the same effect as if someone were to read, but the difference is that the writer is able to create, as the reader is only able to join the world. When you’re writing, there is no limit to the things you can imagine. If you want to have a wizard fighting vampires on unicorns, go for it, it’s your story. You’re able to create this world that otherwise wouldn’t exist, because you feel the need to go into that world and explore new things that wouldn’t exist in your everyday life.

Music tends to give the same feeling as reading, except without all those annoying words you have to read. You can find different songs to fit the different moods, and depending on what you want, you can either find things to compliment your mood or to try to change moods. The musician takes a bit more of a difficult route than a novelist because what an author can do with over 100 pages a songwriter is challenged to do within a couple lines. I’m not saying that a novelist has it easy, far from it, but it just seems that musicians have that difficult duty of creating a song between 3-5 minutes long where they have to try to create a sort of mood and try to tell some sort of story. When I call someone a songwriter, I’m not speaking of people who just throw random words together and create these stupid lines that make no sense. I’m talking about a proper songwriter who manages to create this world within their song for people who just fall into for whatever amount of minutes the song may be.

Some people may choose easier means of escaping, they may use drugs and alcohol as a quick fix to mask their sorrows. When most people think of alcoholics and drug addicts, they imagine these depressed beings who have nothing going for them. If you ever for some reason decide to listen to celebrity gossip, realize that even those who have everything going for them turn to drugs. Maybe it’s because they’re so high on the social ladder that we don’t want to categorize them with all the ‘low life’ drug addicts, but they’re all one in the same. Drugs and alcohol are just the same as any other thing, it’s just a means to escape. These are just ways that people have decided to get away for a bit, and sure we’re quick to judge them for what they do, but they’re really just trying to get away for a bit, just like the rest of us. We’re all doing the same exact thing, but just finding different ways to do it. Escapism is all around, but most are too blind to see it. All we see is that we’re here living our lives and not realizing we don’t truly enjoy it. Who’s to say this isn’t right though? I’m sure all the actors, musician, and athletes would gladly say that our need to escape reality is good. Hell, why give money to the ones who are actually doing something important when we can give it to someone who is simply trying to get away as well.

Whether we see it or not, all of these things are just a means to get by. Escapism is there in order to keep everyone sane. We may enjoy our lives, but we wouldn’t want to be in it at all times, some times it’s nice to have that escape. Our lives would be terrible if we didn’t have all these distractions to help ease time. Although I do feel the deserving get paid wrong as the ones who don’t truly deserve get paid millions, I understand why this happens. The entertainment value isn’t really there for the entertainment, it’s there because a little part of us does need it. It may not be a life or death necessity, but it helps ease our mentality. Most of use would go insane if we were stuck with no escape, so we have people there to help create one for us.

The one thing we all wish for.

Since it sort of is the reasoning for this blog, I’ve decided to talk about love. Now I’m not saying I love this girl, there’s no real way of telling since we’re nothing close to that. Love is a thing that everyone has an opinion on. Most of the opinions either lie in two extremes, people either believe love does exist and some believe it is nothing more than a hoax created by Hollywood. Love is something that is misunderstood but has no one trying to figure out what it truly is. We all just have our opinions about it and refuse to be swayed one way or the other. We may not realize it, but love is a controversial subject.

The easier of the two extremes to talk about is those who believe that love exists. The reasoning this extreme is easy is that, sure I do believe that love exists, but they are very moved by the way they see it in movies. They believe that love is this thing that just suddenly happens and everything becomes simple after that. They believe that love is something that doesn’t require anything more than the two people falling for one another. They make it seem like love is just a wonderful object that one day everyone will experience and everything will be great after that. These people have grown a blind eye the possibility that things may go wrong, and some times things end badly. These people are the ones who only enjoy watching movies with a happy ending. If they watch a movie where the man and the woman go their separate ways in the end, it is a horrible movie.

Hollywood gave this image to the idealization of love and the people just ate it up. They made it seem like everyday life should be as graceful as the movies make them seem. Every big Hollywood movie comes with a guy and a girl where one is a bit down on their luck, but at the end they both manage to get through all the obstacles and happily in the arms of the other. The two lovebirds always seem to find each other within the first 20 minutes of the movie and then fall deeply in love near the middle of the film. The films always create something that makes it a bit difficult for the two to be together happily, but not so hard as to make it seem realistic.

The people who believe that love isn’t real are those that seem to either say they thought they did but were proven wrong, or say that it’s something they never experienced. What the people who say they thought they did don’t realize is it wasn’t really love and they just believed it to be. People have this misconception that you’ll know when you’re in love, but the truth is that there are so many things that are very close to love, but are so different. They may think they had once loved, but it was probably just something close to love. Which leads to the second of the two, the ones who say they never felt love, and they’re most likely correct with this statement. These people have probably gone through life expecting love to be exactly as they had seen it in the films that they have never had the ability to feel exactly what it is that they should have been feeling. They most likely stood there waiting to lock eyes with someone and just fall deeply in love with them.

Love does exist, sure it’s not like the way people imagine it, but it is there. It may not be as simple as the world makes it out to be, but it is something that is there for people to feel. It’s a feeling that isn’t instant, and definitely isn’t something that easily comes. Love is a gradual thing, you learn to love, you grow to love. All that instant love people feel is nothing more than lust. They lust after someone, it’s impossible to love someone without knowing who they are. You get to know someone and then you fall in love with who they are. All those people who say they fell in love with someone when they first met were merely attracted to a physical being, and then started to understand who that person was and then the love grew. Love is in fact real, love is something we desire, and love is something that will forever be debated.

Love may not be a simple thing to obtain, but it is something worth obtaining. Sure, it’s not at all easy, you’ll go through a lot of people who you thought you loved, but ends up you didn’t truly. Sure, you’ll probably never find love during life, but if you do, it would have been worth the struggle to get there. We want to believe so badly that Hollywood’s version is right that we will go blind through a relationship and just tell ourselves that we love the other. This is the type of blind eye that makes the world’s divorce rate skyrocket. It’s this type of blind eye that just makes the world grow bitter and grey. Hollywood tainted love with this version that is instant, so we no longer want to work for it, we want it to be handed to us. We refuse to get to know someone before saying we love them because we believe that we should know from the start. It’s Hollywood who made this so controversial, they made it what we believe it to be today. People just need to realize that it isn’t instant, it isn’t the lust we feel at first glance, and it isn’t easy to obtain.

The world needs a clean look on what it is that we are searching for. We need to stop trying so hard to get into someone’s pants. We need to start to get to know someone, to understand who they truly are. It’s the bitter world we’re up against, we need to break away from it and go search for someone we are willing to grow old with. Searching for the happiness with another will be a treacherous task, but when we get to the end, we will be happy with who we paired ourselves up with. Forget the lies the movies give, forget the bitter old souls who tell you it isn’t real. We need to go out and find it ourselves, stop listening to what others say and just go out and get to know someone and just hope for the best. We’ll get knocked down plenty of times, but it’s our ability to get back up that will help us make it in the end. It’s our strength that will guide us to the person the world had prepared for us. Don’t keep a blind eye, go see the world for yourself, and see what love truly is.

The motivation we all seek.

Motivation, seems like a simple thing. You go out and do things while telling yourself you are capable of doing whatever it is that you set your mind to. Just keep telling yourself that you are doing whatever it is you’re doing because you are trying to better yourself. An idea that seems simple enough, right? How hard could it be to convince yourself that whatever it is that you are doing is worth doing?

This has been something I’ve always been terrible at doing. I’ve never been able to do things for myself. The only reason I usually go out and do things is for a pathetic reason, a girl. I go out and think, if i can just get myself to do these things, maybe she’ll like me. Maybe by some mysterious force, she will think to herself, ‘hey this guy is exactly what I’m looking for.’ Self motivation is just one of those things I never had. Even as I write this, I’m not writing it for myself, I’m writing this hoping that the girl I admire would happen to read this and just think that I would be worth giving a shot.It’s a terrible reason to go out and do things, but it’s sort of the only reason I even get out of bed nowadays.

If there weren’t people like me in this world, all those scam artists who claim to be ‘motivational’ wouldn’t have an easy job. They would have no one who would think that it would be helpful to sit there and listen to a guy yelling out stupid ideas that I could have thought of myself. What would these people do if there were no one like us to scam? We’re always viewed as being weak for being unable to do things that the world makes seem so simple. Life would just be a lot easier because everyone would be able to go out and just live the life they desire. Yet life isn’t like that, there are people who can manage to go out and do the things they want. Then there are people on the opposite end, like me, who barely want to wake up let alone go live life properly.

I guess it’s not really that I don’t want to live life, it’s more that it seems so difficult. I look at all these things that I want to do, but I just can’t find the voice telling me that I should. Simple tasks that i just shrug off, I know if the girl i like were to tell me to go do it, I wouldn’t second guess her and I would do as she told me. It seems like such a stupid thing, to do things for other people, but it’s just the way I’ve always been. If I strive to be loved by someone, I’ll go out there and try my best, but when it’s something i want to do for myself, I just can’t seem to get myself to do it.

Motivation seems to go hand in hand with a person’s self esteem. It seems like the people who go out and do things for themselves are the people that are genuinely happy with themselves. It’s the people who see the world and see how wonderful it is, because they are happy with who they are and happy with where they are. They’re always the ones that can walk around with a smile on their faces, and are out there living their lives for themselves. Although, too much self esteem can also be a terrible things, you end up getting those cocky people you just can’t stand.

I guess the point of that is that with self esteem comes the ability to be self motivated. Just being able to be happy with yourself is what gives you the drive to go out and do things. Well, this is an obvious fact, everyone knows that these two go hand in hand, but the one thing that baffles me is, why does the world make it seem so easy to do these things? Any time you speak to someone, they always tell you to just go and do it. It’s like they just give you the layman’s term of things without telling you about all the in between that create this difficult task. I’m always told to just be happy, or just go out and do it. The thing that these people seem to lack in understanding is that as hard as I try, it’s close to impossible for me. Just like everything else, when you’ve been told so many times to just be happy, it becomes frustrating. There are many times when I just want to blow up on somebody and tell them they’re stupid for believing that if they repetitively tell me this, I’ll wake up realizing that it’s stupid to be so down on myself.

It always seems like if you’re not happy, you aren’t understood by the world. Everyone makes it seem like you should always be happy. As if there’s some magical way to make all your problems seem so far away. It’s difficult to tell people that you just can’t do it. They always ask, why can’t you do it? It’s as if you’re speaking some sort of foreign language that they have never heard of.

Going back to my point, there are people who can properly motivate themselves, and people who can’t. Motivation is a factor that seems difficult to achieve if you can’t just be happy with yourself, and if you don’t have high self esteem, it’s hard to achieve. Everything I have done up to this point, I’ve tried to do for someone else, and for the past year or so, it has been the same girl who, trust me, will never see me as anything but a friend. Yet, doing things in hopes of getting her to notice is a form of motivation. It may not be a healthy means of motivation, but it is motivation nonetheless. So here’s to me still hoping that the things that I do will get this girl to notice me. Here’s to my unhealthy means of motivation, and here’s to me hoping that one day it will get me where i want to be.