I think my intent of trying to ease my suffering and the suffering of others by the sharing of ideas of which can both ease our pains is nice on paper. However, I have to be careful as not to talk down onto anyone else, for I do not believe I am above anyone else, but I could come across as exactly that. As if I know it all, as if I have some ultimate confidence in what I have to say. However, this is not the case. I don’t. I have some amount of confidence in what I say and think because otherwise it wouldn’t be my belief, it would be something else, until I did have that confidence, but even then, it’s limited, because when something else I believe to be more fitting comes along, it will replace what was once there. There is always the exception of contradiction, where I don’t act in accordance to my beliefs, but that’s a sign of a problem, and I would assess myself before sharing something that would obviously be contradictory, or I would make direct note that it is contradictory.
I would also like to mention that people online like to talk with total confidence and state things as if they are impeccable, as if it would be impossible for them to be wrong. YouTube tries to recommend videos that are usually of a similar format to this, someone talking to a camera, whether virtual or in real life, and they state how things are, in total confidence, without the possibility of gray area or their own imperfections. This is something I’m trying to avoid. I don’t like when people tell me how I’m feeling, or tell me what I’m thinking, or tell me what I am. Just because they say it with confidence does not make it suddenly true. What I want to bring is an assortment of ideas, and I intend to branch out, and this is information that can be taken or left. I don’t say that my words are truth or are fact, but I say my words are beliefs created from my knowledge and experience. These are both flawed, but despite this, I think there might be some value for those who believe their own words are even more flawed than my own, or perhaps, I somehow attached myself to some string of words from someone else, held onto it, and then wrote it in one of these videos, and now that it is shared with you, it can have some impact on you, a positive one, I’d hope.
But why might one actually care? Maybe that’s what I want to do, to share ideas and information that can be helpful, maybe that’s my attempt, but why would anyone listen? There are various channels all rambling about their woes and misfortunes, their depressions, or their flaws, and that’s fine and all, I think that’s okay to share. I have many woes, I have many flaws, and I have many more issues, but to share them online does not bring about change, it does not fix the situation. It is very easy for someone to go “oh, I’m sorry to hear that” or some other equivalent rehashed in another form, and they move on with their lives, without trying to help or change what is hurting the person. This isn’t something I’m aiming for. I want to branch away from venting sadness and instead focus on dealing with it, and my means of dealing with it, which I believe to be helpful, but it does not mean it will be. Although I will mention that’s it’s okay for someone to talk about their life and the experiences within it, because that is a showcase of their humanity, and it shows that we all have faults, and none of us are perfect. At one point or another, I would like to do this as well, which might actually help people care about what I have to say.
One might care as a result of agreeing with my ideas or beliefs, and they might help the person work through their own problems. If not, then the only thing they’ve lost of their own is time, or if they disagree because they believe they know a better method for dealing with their pain, issue, or woe, they can share it with me, and if I believe it to be better, then I can use their method. There is also another scenario, where they may have lost their time, but it was okay, because they were lost in the ideas of someone else, and not their own, and that would have been a benefit to them if they wanted to escape their own mind, even temporarily. It becomes beneficial to those who do not know better and it becomes better to me if someone else knows better and is willing to share it. This helps explain one reason as to why someone might care, because if they are looking for something and don’t know how to deal with it, they might come across something I’ve made and from there they can decide to proceed. However, as you might imagine, there are many people, and so there are many methods for people to deal with their problems or feelings, so why might someone consider my methods in particular? What do I offer in specific to be more appealing than just about anyone else?
That’s actually becomes pretty subjective. Someone would have to find my means of speech appealing, or maybe the form I choose to project myself with, or even just my voice; these could all be appealing as to build a level of trust as to think what I say is actually worthwhile. My own admittance to my lack of confidence, to a certain extent, because of my willingness to change ideas that I deem better could seem controversial, but to others, it could be a positive sign, as to finding someone who isn’t static and stuck in the same form forever. I’m not special, and I don’t bring anything particularly special, but I do bring equal ground. An issue I find with online content of a similar form to mine is that it tends to be a person talking down to others, rather than trying to bring them up. Or if they aren’t talking down to you, they look down upon you, or try to make it seem so, as if they’re greater, as if they know better than you, and trust me, I’m better than no one, and I know better than no one, but I want to share what I think I know.
I would also like to mention that by using this format I can bring in specific people. If I use a furry avatar, that will cut off a lot of people who don’t like that kind of thing, and now instead of listening to me, they’ve branched off to someone else. If I were to use a human avatar, or just use a camera, I could appeal to a broader audience, because we’re all human, but not all of us like anthropomorphic animal characters. Yet, it must be noted by using these forms, it can appeal to those specific people, which would be my goal, because I’d like to think that there might be more of an appeal to them rather than others, but I could be wrong, and this is something I’ll have to find out as I continue doing this. How did I come to this belief? Well, as you might guess, I’m in VRChat, and when chatting with others, especially furry’s, I found that they best linked up with my when I would talk about things, and were able to listen and hear what I had the say more-so than other groups of individuals, but once again, that’s a very small sample size, and might not be accurate or indicative of reality. I would also like to mention that even thumbnails, titles, and descriptions, play a part in appealing or not appealing to certain people. I am trying to appeal to people I think would want to see or hear this, but that doesn’t mean I can properly execute my attempt, and so people may not find my content or it will appeal to the wrong people, thus causing more people to not care about what I have to say. Likewise, someone might think I’m talking down to them, even though I’m not, and if I’m appealing to the wrong people, that might even seem like more-so the case than not. Once again, in my imperfections, I unfortunately can’t perfectly execute what I want from the internal world into the external world, but I think that’s part of being human.
To someone who might just click on one of my videos, who has not listened to this one or the introduction, how would they know I have these feelings? How would they know that I don’t look down upon them, but I am trying to bring them up, or even just make them aware of different ideas? I view every viewer and listener as an equal because they are an equal, and even if I have these feelings and thoughts, how can this be executed in rambles or explanations of systems that have worked in easing my pain? How might someone not interpret it as me talking down to them, just as I have interpreted many online videos as others talking down to me? I don’t know, but I’m trying to figure it out, and I think the best thing I can do it be direct about it with something like this. Even if someone were to never click on this video, for all those who might click on the channel page, now see this title and thumbnail, which might influence their thought process, without ever actually listening to the video.
So really, the only reason someone might listen to what I have to say is that they are looking for what I have to say, and it’s a lot less connected to me, the person, than it is the content itself, the words being read aloud. No one cares about what I have to say, but they do care about the digestion of information that I have put forth, and that is the information they seek, and the digestor of that information just happened to be me, it could have been anyone else, and it will be and already has been other people, but with a mix of chance and their own personal backgrounds, maybe with the help of algorithms, or maybe fate, if you believe in fate, they happened to listen to me, or tried to. This becomes slightly a problem because I want to appeal to people who think similarly to me, for those people I believe would be helped the most with what I have to say, because we already have some similar thoughts, and that means there can be a lot more of a crossover. It becomes especially beneficial if they had not thought of what I have, or they have thought of what I haven’t. My issue is attempting to find and detect those specific people, because I have not done a good job of it at this time, but I hope I can try and appeal to those people, for I consider those “my people,” meaning that we would get along and probably be good acquaintances or friends. In something as generalized as the internet, with many different types of people and with it, many different ideas, it’s very rare to find someone who thinks similarly, but this might be seen as me not trying hard enough or I’m looking in the wrong areas, or just my unwillingness to adapt to others in some ways so we can have a friendship that’s not totally perfect in my view. Even if I get lucky enough to come across such a person, there’s no reason for them to interact with me or acknowledge my existence. In many such cases, for them I do not exist unless I initiate, and even if I do initiate, there’s no reason for them to react back. I have also noticed a trend where I can maybe find one or two of these people, but they are terribly busy or focused on their meaning that they aren’t around to talk very often.
Despite all this breaking down of “why might someone want to listen to me,” I also need to acknowledge why someone wouldn’t want to listen to me. And to this, there are far more reasons why someone wouldn’t want to listen, some of the most prominent ones being my lack of experience, my lack of genuine hope, my own willingness to change, my behaviors, and my own judgements. Not to say these would invalidate anything I’ve said that you might find meaningful, because those things that I’ve said that you find meaningful are more likely to have been someone else’s thought, and not my own, and that’s why you were able to take away something good. This is why I do intend to put together a compilation of influences, for those might be beneficial to you more than my “own” words.
I have a genuine lack of life experience. This means that my ideas and systems are limited to that lack of experience. You could think of it as the difference between generations or ages, where the older person maintains far more wisdom and experience than the young person, but I also would take in account that I have especially little experience for my particular age-group. Having material experience can be greatly beneficial in changing your ideas or systems, it can help you open up to things you would have never considered, and yet that is something very limited in me, so this is something you have to be aware of when I speak about anything. My experiences are limited, and within those limited experiences, there has been a large quantity of suffering and pain, and because I know little of anything else, this could make you also believe I might know a little bit more in that particular area, but it could also make you think the opposite. For if I do not know what true goodness feels like, how could I know what true suffering feels like?
This might make you wonder something like “if many of your ideas aren’t from experience, what are they from?” In response, I’d tell you that it’s a half truth, as I mean to say I haven’t done much outside of reading and talking to others. Like, I’ve never chopped down a tree, or played a game of tennis. Perhaps these aren’t the great examples, but they are indications of my lack of expansion as a person, making me a lot more focused around what I choose to consume, or what is presented to me to consume. I’d tell you my ideas have been sought from literature and other people. For me, I have been most influenced by books and people, and so, when I speak of something that might actually be helpful, that’s where it tends to be from. I just happened to be the digestor, in the right time and place, and you just happened to be the listener, which benefits both of us, but this further emphasizes that it isn’t about me, but about the things that have been put inside of me without much of my active awareness. Often, I try to read something for a particular purpose, but that doesn’t mean that particular purpose will be fulfilled, and there’s a tendency I’ll learn something entirely different instead.
As much as I want to have a focus on things becoming better, getting better, things changing, things improving, and avoiding the usual “I’m sad, this is why, and I have lost hope,” it doesn’t matter if that’s what I genuinely believe. If I genuinely believe that hope is totally lost, and there is no reason for anything I’m doing, and that I’m unable to be helped and that I cannot help others, then that will shine through my writing. Even if I want others to feel better, and that is totally true, if I don’t genuinely believe I can give ideas or hopes to those people, they will notice, and ultimately, I will hurt others instead of help, which is something I want to avoid. I often flip through having hope and losing hope, for example, as I was writing this particular paragraph, I had no hope. However, if I’m reading it aloud to you, I must have some amount of hope, in this particular moment. However, whenever when you’re listening, that hope might be gone. The point is, when the content is written, that is what you’ll be hearing and understanding. Hopefully, things will get better, but I think many of us aren’t so certain of that future, but all we can do is try to be okay in the present.
Change is an important aspect of trying to make things better. How I go about change is not so much with the physical world, but with the mental world, and so when I try to talk about dealing with problems, I think about dealing with those problems internally. This isn’t a totally awful way going about dealing with your internal issues and sufferings. Unfortunately, it doesn’t encompass all problems. There are many times where the external environment is the cause of your problems, and that’s what needs to be changed, but if you’re so focused on the internal, you will begin to believe the issue is you. This can become difficult, as you don’t want to blame others for your own problems, but you also don’t want to blame yourself for what you don’t have control over.
I have many ongoing battles internally and externally, and it can be difficult to figure out which ones are actually internal and which ones are actually external. If we get this wrong, we can end up hurting ourselves, or even hating ourselves, because we believe that we are the issue, while actually, it is others that are the issue, and they are one’s that need to change, not us. This comes down to your own beliefs of what is right and wrong, and what a person can and cannot do, and these ideas tend to be told to you from an early age. You believe you know right and wrong, and you believe that it makes sense, but that’s only because you’ve been told one particular system of right and wrong, and when we get older, we are told that things actually aren’t so black and white. I think almost every American high schooler had to read Shakespeare, and I think that “Fair is foul, and foul is fair” is the indication that we should start questioning our beliefs of what is right and wrong. Do you think those who are rich and abuse others have the same beliefs of right and wrong as the poor man? No, obviously not. Are there exceptions to the rule? Yes, always, there are always exceptions to the rule. However, the point is, you should think and question what you have not thought of and questioned for a long time, for within that, you might find reasons for your own suffering, and because I have not done enough of this, it can hard for someone to take me seriously. If I have a misconception of an issue, which is believe to be internal, but it’s actually just an external problem, I look like I’m the one needing help most, and then, I’m not really helping anyone, I’m really just asking for help. This can be okay, but my goal is to help, not be helped, as being helped is just a hope, an addition to my main goal. This plays into my behaviors.
Like mentioned before, I can act in contradiction to my beliefs, making it obvious that I have a problem. Once again, this doesn’t help anyone, because if I share a belief, idea, or system, that is flawed and contradictory to how I do things in reality, the belief, idea, or system, is no longer going to help someone. I would like to think everything I say, do, and think, is flawed, but there is also a range of how flawed I really am, so sometimes, something less flawed can be beneficial but something utterly flawed won’t be helpful at all. Eventually, perhaps even now, I can give my thoughts or feelings on something, or my means of handling something, and it makes no sense to anyone besides me, and I didn’t help anyone. I have to be attentive to my own behaviors, and this can be very tricky and energy consuming, and even if I spent a lot of time on these behaviors, I will and can slip up on some, for I believe they exist for one reason but they are actually for another. An example of this might be a certain time period where I was playing VRC every day when I didn’t work, but I’d try to play guitar while listening to conversations, and sometimes chiming in. I believed the behavior was to help make me play more guitar, while actually, it was to find people to make me feel less lonely, and the guitar was an excuse to go and try to find those people. It didn’t end in success, so when I stopped, I realized that was actually my goal, despite lying to myself to think it was for another reason.
Sometimes it can be okay to lie to yourself, however in this case, it was a sign that I wasn’t even aware of my own actions. If I’m not aware of my own actions, or why I’m doing something, or why I’m not doing something, how can I tell others why I think or act a certain way? I can’t, and if I try to, and I don’t realize it doesn’t make sense or doesn’t add up to reality, no one gets helped, and I look even more like a fool than I normally would. This doesn’t even touch upon circular behavior, where I do the same thing over and over again, expecting a difference, until I finally realize how foolish it is and only until then do I move on or change. If I share the circular problem, I won’t have a solution, and then, what the point of sharing it? How many circular problems do I have that are part of other problems that aren’t circular? It’s hard to know, and because of that, it’s hard to know if what I’m saying actually even makes sense to others, it might just sound like insanity.
Only recently have I found out how judgmental I am. As I’ve been totally unaware of it, I’ve pushed people away or hurt them with judgements, when I didn’t even realize that was what I was doing. I think we all do some level of judging, but my judgements were almost always negative, which is why someone might be upset or want to get away from me. These could come through my writing as well, I might be judging a certain group of people without realizing it, or judging myself negatively, which I believe is helpful, when it actually is harmful, and I believe people are supposed to get something out of that. Even here, now, am I judging myself too harshly in the value of my words, thoughts, and beliefs? I don’t know. And so, due to always being in a state of judging, I can and am trying to correct how I judge things. For example, I went on a hike with a friend, and I was judging her for actions she would take, and due to my own tonality and her previous data on me, she believed I was negatively judging her, when that was not the case, and it was cleared up, because I tried my hardest to make it so. This shows that even with some level of awareness, even in my speech, how I say words, and what words I use, I can be perceived as negatively judging someone, when I’m not trying to do that at all.
These negative judgements have not only placed upon others, but also myself, and because they are inaccurate and not representative of reality, they only harm, instead of help, and this causes other systems to be problematic, everything just goes a bit haywire, so when I was to share my thoughts on something, and that something is totally flawed, just from negative judgement upon myself, no one will find something useful out of that, and then it seems to them that they wouldn’t really care what I have to say, if that’s what my content is like.
Briefly, I’d like to mention that I had shared all my writing with a friend of mine. In reference to this document, with what I’ve shared with you, he told me I was actually too harsh on myself, and by sharing this, it would actually take away my credibility, because it seemed as if I couldn’t even trust myself, so how could anyone trust my ideas? Well, I do have a hope that I will become more trusting of myself, and since this was originally written, I have begun to trust myself more, and even when re-reading all that I’ve written, some things have passed, but I try to make adjustments to them to accurately depict my modern feelings. People will care about what I have to say if they want to, and they won’t care if they don’t want to, and that’s okay, and I have to be okay with that.
This doesn’t encompass all the reasons why someone may or may not listen to what I have to say, but despite this, it covers enough ground to give you an idea of the kind of people who might listen to me, and those who might not, along with what you might want to consider when I do speak, and what you might not want to consider. I invite you, the viewer, to critically listen to what I have to say. Critique me, even mentally, and don’t allow me to come off as the one with answers or whole truths, instead, critically find where I’m right and wrong, in your own mind, and from there, see what you can get out of it. I don’t view you as a sheep, I see you as a person, and people can think for themselves, but they can also just as easily be influenced by others. Be careful with your influences, and if you think I have said something that might be helpful to you, make sure that is actually so, or do your best to. I’m just a person on the internet, your trust to me should be limited, but I will do my best to be logical, accurate, and honest, and I will try to say things that I believe people need to hear, and that actually ends up being helpful.