Visakan Veerasamy’s answer to: If you could write a 10 note to your younger self, what would you say?
Your frustration is valid, but your response isn’t helping you.
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When I was younger, I was very angry with the world, with authority, with institutions. I thought everybody was mind-numbingly stupid, just following orders and instructions, nobody was thinking for themselves, etc. So I rejected it. I rejected school, I rejected my parents, I rejected my teachers. I thought they were all incredibly myopic.
I don’t think I was entirely wrong about it, but my response threw the baby out with the bathwater. I was so hell-bent on not following anybody’s orders that I never learnt to follow my own. I thought that I could reject ‘the system’, but abstaining from it is really a vote for the status quo. I’ve since learned that most people have difficult lives and are struggling to get by. The world isn’t malicious, it’s just indifferent, and life is a lot harder and complex than most teenagers realize. I recognize that school was a shitty experience for me, but I don’t blame the institution for it anymore. I wasn’t a good fit for it. School tries to do its best with what it can, with limited resources, time, etc.
Teenage Visa, you can’t hide from the world. All the cigarettes and alcohol and rock&roll do is numb you, but it doesn’t make the world go away. What you need to do is to figure out what matters to you, what you care about, and run towards it with all your might. What will surprise you is- when you do that, others will join you. As Steve Jobs said, the world is designed by people no smarter than you are. You can recreate and rebuild. You just need to lose the cynicism and focus on helping others, connecting others. Be the beacon that guides others through the darkness that troubled you.
And in that is a fulfillment and joy that you don’t even realize that you’re craving, is the answer to the emptiness that you’re misdiagnosing as some sort of deep existential pain.
You don’t heal yourself by rejecting the world, you do it by helping others. And in doing that, you co-create the reality that you wish you were a part of.
Your frustration is valid, but your response isn’t helping you.
Visakan Veerasamy’s answer to: If you could write a 10 note to your younger self, what would you say?
Your frustration is valid, but your response isn’t helping you.
—
When I was younger, I was very angry with the world, with authority, with institutions. I thought everybody was mind-numbingly stupid, just following orders and instructions, nobody was thinking for themselves, etc. So I rejected it. I rejected school, I rejected my parents, I rejected my teachers. I thought they were all incredibly myopic.
I don’t think I was entirely wrong about it, but my response threw the baby out with the bathwater. I was so hell-bent on not following anybody’s orders that I never learnt to follow my own. I thought that I could reject ‘the system’, but abstaining from it is really a vote for the status quo. I’ve since learned that most people have difficult lives and are struggling to get by. The world isn’t malicious, it’s just indifferent, and life is a lot harder and complex than most teenagers realize. I recognize that school was a shitty experience for me, but I don’t blame the institution for it anymore. I wasn’t a good fit for it. School tries to do its best with what it can, with limited resources, time, etc.
Teenage Visa, you can’t hide from the world. All the cigarettes and alcohol and rock&roll do is numb you, but it doesn’t make the world go away. What you need to do is to figure out what matters to you, what you care about, and run towards it with all your might. What will surprise you is- when you do that, others will join you. As Steve Jobs said, the world is designed by people no smarter than you are. You can recreate and rebuild. You just need to lose the cynicism and focus on helping others, connecting others. Be the beacon that guides others through the darkness that troubled you.
And in that is a fulfillment and joy that you don’t even realize that you’re craving, is the answer to the emptiness that you’re misdiagnosing as some sort of deep existential pain.
You don’t heal yourself by rejecting the world, you do it by helping others. And in doing that, you co-create the reality that you wish you were a part of.