Did You Hear the Rain?

The news. The media. The trends. Everything else that has changed your opinion on how this world works. Influences that surround and shape our lives in more ways than we can comprehend. Looking back at our adult lives can be embarrassing when we realize the matrix might actually be real. We have been influenced by outer voices more than we can easily explain, and more often than not, we were just the audience as life unfolded right in front of us. Our worldviews have been shaped by others’ lenses more than we can clearly tell. Our accents, fashion, mindsets, and sometimes, physical shapes have been altered by our “environment” to the point where we cannot individually really take credit for the ways our lives are shaped. The best part about this? Letting go. Being in control of a lot can drive us mentally insane, we might even lose the one thing we are always with, ourselves. The worst part? Letting go. Sometimes not having any control over our OWN lives makes us live off borrowed time in borrowed bodies that we will need to return to some unknown owner at times we are not aware of and with progress, we are never able to track. So what is it about letting go that makes it such a big blessing and a greater curse depending on the side of the room we stand on? Perspective, Choice, and Perception. Being boxed in or out means we miss what’s on the other side as long as we never move, and usually when we move, it is too late.

Where you usually stand is a blind spot. Everything around alters you and you never are aware of how much is happening until it is done. It happens so much so that ‘Who are you?’ can only be answered by summing up a lot of experiences, subtracting what you hate, coming up with a product of your environment and dividing it all up, getting a solution of what you can share for now and what you will share in the aftermath, when relationships fully develop, again, into something purely meaningful. In your eyes, you are always doing the right thing, or at least what is necessary, and honestly, that is valid. Whenever I wronged people I loved, I thought I had their best interests at heart. When I got my loved ones the gifts they didn’t like, I thought that was the best for them. When I moved on the right path and made others proud, I had the intention of doing that as well and their satisfaction was validation enough that sometimes, things actually go right, and the seeds we plant amount to something beautiful. In all honesty, even the bad I sometimes found myself indulged in had some sort of “good” hiding somewhere behind it. I thought I was teaching someone a lesson. I sometimes thought I would ultimately feel good from that rebel behavior. Sometimes I felt good, after doing bad, and to say this never confused me would be a facade. With all these thoughts, actions, and results surrounding us, we still are in a blind spot, and we are ultimately selfish. We give gifts to feel valid about ourselves. We act in certain ways to feel great about ourselves. And while that might sound bad, again, depending on where we see it from, the truth might be that acts of selfishness, done with the ultimate good for the actor and receivers, are the greatest ways we can act. Why? Perspective.

When we move from the blind spot, we start to see, of course, but what is there to see and focus on in this labyrinth of a life? Everything is in our faces so much that we ultimately see nothing. And that might be the blessing, the blindness that creates a new vision. A vantage point where we can have blank canvases from allows us to function ultimately on what we need more than what is demanded of us. Truth is, summarizing life and experiences is a terrible exercise of downplaying ourselves and trying to fit in so much with the people around us that we constantly change the state of who we are depending on who we are sharing our experiences with. From the blind spot, everything is everything, life is always happening to us and we tend to never have any sort of control over what it is we are, we are water and our containers are chosen by everyone else but us. After leaving the blind spot, perspective becomes different, we can look back at the blind spot, and we have a clear conscience. You can finally look back and say “Hey, I really never deserved that” or “I was a really shitty person for doing that, I could have done better”. Once again, words will not be enough, actions have to help you follow through. That toxic cycle you can see yourself stuck in will not get rid of itself. The people who influenced you into it will never be able to help you out of it, and neither can new people. Guess what? Changing your friends might not even be helpful. You might just need to be selfish enough to do it for yourself because that’s the only way you can be better for everyone else. From this perspective, your selfishness means something mostly to you, but it does not take a break there. You have to give up. Give up the good which never brings any peace of mind. Chase the discomfort that makes life worth living, maybe that’s a new perspective to respect.

When does “be selfish” become a good piece of advice? When our selfish acts do not cost anything from others’ lives. This blog is my selfish act. I don’t do it for you, I do it for me. I talk to my future self through these posts, and I have somewhere to keep them that is not my notion or notes app. Your consumption of what I write is good for you, but that only means you appreciate me more and give me more reason to live and write more. There will never be a point when I am inspired to write something offensive to you. That is my ultimate choice. Not only would that action be bad for me, but it means I get to miss out on the ultimate good that could come from the developing relationship between you and I. I never intend to hurt myself anyway, and that is my selfish act. A few days ago, I needed to read one of my posts, and I’ve never been more glad I do this. But that’s just my writing, what about the choice of your reading? It’s selfish as well, you have your reasons for being here and honestly, this is one of the best decisions you’ve made today, reading something this long and meaningful will do so much good for you, not only today but in the near and the unknown future. The selfish decision to become better in how you interact with yourself, and in turn, with the rest of society drives us to be a better species, makes our survival on this floating rock more bearable, and overall, can help many who are just trying to stay afloat. The primary factor towards that betterment is our agreement to choose selfishness. I will not talk about it as good or bad, that is up to you, the individual and primary crafter of your life and behavior. The choice is not even the selfish act, it’s the move from the blind spot and the focus that will exponentially set you ahead of “normal life” as defined by our environment. Choose and act on choice, that’s how you prove to be more than just who you think you are.

My claims to be blind and not seeing things as they really are might be a bit too confusing when you never take perception into account. Living in a high-rise apartment building has made it difficult for me to notice multiple things about the weather. Because I’m so used to my room back home, whenever it rained, I could easily hear it and you know, take naps or get up and work without the need for any music. Now, I miss the rains so much, and Malaysia rains at least once a day. Missing the rain is not the bad part, it’s what I do because I can’t see or hear the rain. I take more naps than needed sometimes and work less when I’m not in the right mood or when the music is not good enough. When I see the rain, however, it’s a beautiful sight, but the fact that I miss it more than I can count gets me a bit sad sometimes. I now brush it off by claiming I’m not really fond of the rain when in reality, I love the art, calmness, and sometimes, violence in the rain. The fact that my room gives me a perception that makes me miss the rain has given me so much reason to be a hater for no reason. And it has disrupted how I interact not only with the rain but with myself whenever there is rain outside. It has carved out the beauty in something that happens every day. The room has taken away the simple things. The room is a blind spot. It takes away what we love and makes me pretend to hate what I love. It makes me judge myself when I never needed to. It makes me overdo some things and not do some to my greatest potential as well. Only because I can’t perceive the rain, my choices and perspective are affected, I cannot be selfish. It keeps costing me more of my life and time.

Did you hear the rain? Or are you locked up in my room? The willpower needed to hear the rain is more demanding than ever now. Mazes are difficult to navigate. Without a defined map from our first days here, we just become who we are told to become. We do what we are told to do, for others’ reasons. We are sometimes not given the chance to be selfish. A kind of selfishness that brings clarity. A kind of selfishness that makes us not wait too long for ourselves. A kind of selfishness that makes us love ourselves so much that loving others is not too difficult. To hear the rain is to have clarity. It’s to have control over the zoom and focus of our lenses. It’s the shift of perspective that gives choice a chance before we miss the beauty of the rain. It’s the selfish choice to reshape ourselves and enjoy the beauty in the truths about how we are living. As you perceive everything right now, did you hear the rain?