Solving Life's Problems

They say that the first step one should take to start solving your problems is that one must first admit that a problem exists. This first step is the single-most important step of them all.

But there is a problem.

Living in today's world, being a part of this highly-socialized civilization which demands such a high standard of each of its individual participants, it's citizens, an often unreasonably high and distant standard which is fed to us by the media, admitting that one has a problem is the last thing one would want to do. In a society that demands perfection from each and every single person, while knowing that no person may ever be able to achieve it, for one to admit that they have grown host to imperfection would be nothing short of, as some have referred to it in the past instances, "social suicide".

People's problems often stem from their inability to cope with society, especially in their self-defined inability to meet the expectations of others, which eventually grow to become their own standards for themselves. It's interesting that humans should want to take on other people's standards for them as their own, and while socialization is, to an extent, the basis of human progress, each of us asking the other to do more, creating a somewhat unconscious, interdependent need to do better, there are times when our societies around us ask for more than what we may be capable of. While dreams and imagination have taunted us with such high, over-idealized, near-perfect standards of living, at what point will we ever be able to say we've achieved those standards, if they are nothing more than completely un-concrete, ambiguous, ominous illusions of an ideal life?

It is almost safe to conclude that the things which we've fought so hard to resist as great societies, things like imperfection, disappointment, fear, insecurity, dissatisfaction, distress, etc... These are the things that make life what it is. Life isn't about being perfect, it's about being imperfect. And if life is about being perfect, then it's up to the individual to create their own definition for perfection. For all we know, the imperfections in our lives are in themselves the things that make life "perfect", but only on the imperfect conditions that allow live to exist.

But really, if anything, just be honest with yourself, and be honest with others, and you'll be alright.

-nesqu!k