I suffer. I’m filled with loss. I’m filled with pain. I’m filled with ennui, frustration, anxiety, boredom, fear, pathos. The list truly goes on and on and on.

The human condition. Dostoevsky talks about it. Many great scholars have written about it, and yet I have to live it. Me. The individual me.

Leon. So then given that this is all true, when I look around me, I see a great many people that seem to be controlled by these emotions. They are not free whatsoever. Their lives are frustrating, somewhat hopeless, certainly painful. And many of these people, we know, we love, we care for, we want to help if we possibly could, but we can’t.

Why? Well, as one young woman asked me the other day, what can I do to help my friend? In reality, the harsh truth is nothing. You can truly do nothing to help your friend. The only person you can help truthfully is yourself.

This is the only person that you can change and you can then potentially be a model to other human beings. But you can’t change them. And this is the secret I’ve read about Alcoholics Anonymous or any addiction in general, you can rail against that person’s addictions. You can plead. You can cry.

But unless they decide that they are going to ultimately change how they feel and what they want from their piece of life. They never will. They will apologize. They will make up excuses. So how does one begin to change oneself?

Because I am my own teacher, of course. How does one begin? Well, Emerson tells us that we must learn to write to write to the self, to me. I must learn to write to myself. My thoughts, my ideas, get them in my notebook.

At the top of my notebook, I place the day and the date. And if the page remains blank, so be it. The next day, I can fill 10 pages with my thoughts. And ultimately as well, the secret is that I will share this with no one, not another human being. Perhaps I’ll verbally engage my thoughts, but my intimate notebook, I won’t share.

I won’t share it with you. Why not? Why not? Well, ultimately, because the people who are truly close to you love you. They carry great deal for you, for your well-being, etcetera.

And this means they maintain that their view of reality is correct for themselves and also for you. So they will try to influence you with their reality. Be it may wealth, relationships, perception, philosophy, ideas, whatever it is. But these are worthless to you because only you can give yourself that philosophy, those ideas. It’s totally up to you and only within your own command.

So if you foolishly believe that your life can be changed by another person, you are sadly mistaken. The only way you’re going to change another person is by being a model, a model to that person, a guy, someone they respect like my grandfather for instance. One of the main attributes of his life that I truly respected was how he saw the world physically. He labored to always be well dressed, certainly for dinner. Always wore a tie.

Always was a gentleman. And some people would say, well, that’s just because of his military or naval training. Somewhat true, I suppose, because it was a level of respect. There is a level of respect in certain bureaucratic institutions, but much more importantly, this is how he saw himself as an officer, as a gentleman, as a person who had to be an icon to other people in this world. Right?

So the next time you think of pain, suffering, anxiety, all those things that is so much a part of every person’s life, certainly a part of mine. Remember, the only person who’s going to change any of this is me. I can do it through prayer. I can do it through introspection. I can do it by answering the 3 questions to life.

Why am I here? What is my mission in life? And ultimately, what will happen when I leave here? Where will I go? Well, it’s a beautiful day here, so I hope you have a wonderful day or a wonderful evening wherever you are.

And you know what they say. You know what they say. Critical thinking is necessary, and, of course, critical thinking is great. You take care. God bless. Bye bye.

The angst at being alive that we all feel