Two paths

Dreams or Deception

Are you doing the best thing you could – that which takes you in the direction of your dreams?
Or are your actions aimed at soothing the pain that arises from letting your fears prevent you from doing what you should be doing?

I guess we all do some amount of each, and it’s understandable because the fear is real and it’s scary as hell! But let’s, with gentle compassion, guide our actions toward our dreams and the greatest good for all life.

The clarity of “the best thing you could do” can suffer as a result of our denial, we can kind of blur it semi-purposefully, tell ourself that we don’t actually even have an idea what we should do. For this we can (and I have) use(d) excuses such as “Since I can’t know what kind of an outcome would follow a certain action, how could I know what to do?”, but I suspect that we always have atleast some clue as to what would be the path toward our dreams. This blurring is also a defense mechanism, an attempt to dodge the pain that results from having to face and deal with the fears that stand between us and our dreams.
But the pain of self-deception is far worse, it accumulates to greater and greater heights with each destructive choice we make.
The effects of taking the first path, the one towards our dreams, accumulate as well: It gets gradually easier to face fear the more we do it. We’ll learn to live with it and not let it rule over us. The pleasure of being able to do what we want to do, living closer to our dream, accumulates as well.

It takes some balancing between short and long term gain. We need to be honest with ourself: if the short term gain bringing action eats away at our long term happiness, agency or health, then that short term gain bringing thing needs to be used with careful moderation, if at all. You don’t have to be absolutist if that’s not your cup of tea; most things might be okay or amazing in moderation, but overdoing it would be disasterous.

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