The Right Way To Look at The World

I've been watching the first season of The White Lotus and for those unfamiliar with the show, it follows a few rich families as they spend their time at a resort in Hawaii. Each family is massively flawed though one particularly caught my attention due to their conversations. The mother is a CEO of a multinational cooperation, the father is unknown but makes less than her, son is addicted to pornography and screens, and daughter is a drug addict with insane jealousy issues. They all have different ideas of what is right and voice them often. The daughter has a black friend who she brought, who both share the idea that "it's time for the white man to step aside" which is contrary to the mother who feels for her son, saying that it's not his fault and not he's being unfairly ostracized from society. The resort they are staying at used to be native and sacred land but the government and developers didn't care. Some of those natives now work at the hotel. Tha...

I don't have to listen

 Maybe it's because I thought everyone had a little voice in their head, but I always believed it was normal to trust what was being said. When I started to focus on meditation and staying present it still didn't occur to me what those practices did for me. I felt better because it was time away from the critic. The critic is this little fucker in your head that's sneaky. He will creep in with tiny, minuscule slights to your self-worth without you even realizing it. Luckily, I have finally become conscious of this and have begun work to suppress its negativity. 

Now, before I continue I want to emphasize how much control this has had over me. It's the reason I'm afraid of people, it's the reason I judge so harshly, and it's the reason I hate myself. For my practice, I notice it anytime it comes up and stop it by talking to it. I'll say "Come back here fucker" or visualize putting the thing in a chokehold. 

So if I'm walking in public and a pretty girl makes eye contact, instead of turning away and telling myself that I'm not good enough for her, I instead know that's not me thinking that and become present. Right now, I'm focused on being gentle with myself as I go through this process. I don't want to rush anything and go too far outside my comfort zone as I may trigger something again. 


So yea... my parents are narcissists, which isn't fun to realize but has helped me put a lot of things into perspective. 


Onward and upward, 

Matthew

 

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