Faith is an active thing from my PRSPCTVS. When dealing with faith, you have to believe in something without logic or evidence. I grew up in a Christian household, so this is something I’ve thought about most of my life.
To be clear in case people question it, I am Jewish. I was also baptized when I was 16 years old during what I dub the “Super Christian” era of my life. Maybe one day we can delve down those corridors of my mind, but for now a lot of that is memories left unspoken.
To be extra clear, my mother’s maiden name is Goldberg. At 8 days old I was snip snipped via a religious ceremony. One of my earliest memories of life is my little brother’s briss.
Law of attraction is real
Faith matters because it puts a good energy into the world. It takes a lot of confidence to have faith that what you believe in is worth pursuing.
When I look around, I often see an absence of self esteem. People have amazing ideas and they are incredibly talented. They just choose not to pursue anything because they don’t believe it can be real for them.
While I acknowledge some people are born virtuosi, that doesn’t mean the average Holdie can’t figure out how to find greatness in anything.
Okay, I will never be an NBA player. I’m 5 foot 7 and have never enjoyed athletics like that. What I can say is being salty over that would put out a bad energy. Instead I found out I could write poetry really well.
The more I try and put myself on a path where I’m constructive and creative, the more I find those type of people. I think humans like to work with like-minded humans.
If all you do is complain and look at the obstacles, then only the people who like that kind of thing will be around. I’m a sucker for a good whiney session in life. However, once I learned that most people don’t enjoy listening to your problems as much as telling you about their issues, it got boring.
I’m 35 years old, at this point I need to be focused on attracting the kind of people who dream like me.
I struggle with the middle class
The middle class is not the merchant class of yesteryear. The merchant class was a group of entrepreneurs who owned their businesses and provided the goods and services of life. They were this group of people who weren’t peasants but were also not landlords.
Adam Smith wrote a giant book about it. My favourite part is how corn was used the way the US Dollar is now to measure value across nations.
The middle class is an invention of capitalism to sell things. Often faux-rich experiences to people who aren’t poor, but also can’t actually do rich people stuff.
Each of the social classes out there come with their own behavioural norms and acceptance criteria. My experience with the middle class is they are all about fitting in. No one’s trying to attract too much attention to themselves.
Heaven forbid you are a weirdo breaking the homogony of the workplace. My biggest struggles in the office place were with regards to social etiquette. “It is the way it is” became a common mantra to justify irrational self deprecation.
My family grew up in the lower class. We were on welfare and thank goodness my mother had access to all those wonderful Jewish resources. We never had to struggle like other people did when times were tough.
My younger years were different. I was isolated in a way where I didn’t realize what the middle class was like until I was already an adult.
Community and culture
Most pleasantries exist to provide a social lubricant, so people don’t get punched in the face. It doesn’t cost a lot to be nice. Usually, the price is humility.
I think the middle class took this to the extreme. People aspire to be nice as a central attribute. Google, backed by Oxford Dictionary, defines nice as, pleasant; agreeable; satisfactory.
Tell me that doesn’t sound like a good little office worker. There is no revolution or social change when people are nice all the time.
I’m not advocating for conflict. I do think that culture is this common set of ideals that bond people together. When the culture is derived around social complacency and blending in, I find it hard to be there.
The jargon and expected actions are so different than what I grew up with. My parents were the type to embrace happiness in moments by being themselves, unapologetically. Now I do my best to adopt a distinct set of principles backed by my personal faith system.
That is so not middle class. I reek of some imposter. I’m the dude the Among Us people are kicking off, and depending on the environment, rightfully so.
The last few years my entire art journey is a quest to find my tribe, build my community and craft a new culture, where I feel comfortable.
Being yourself kind of sucks
I wouldn’t change being me for the world. It took the better part of my adult life to become comfortable with who I am, sinful nature and all. Through this I’ve found an inner strength to pursue my vision even when people think I’m a cornball.
When you do go on your quest to embrace who you are, it comes with beginning to cast off the chains of learned behaviours. My entire adult life has been accepting that a lot of things I used to say or do can hurt people. Through the knowledge I’ve gained I’ve been able to craft my own values.
There are things the world thinks are morally wrong that I think are totally fine. There are things people think are acceptable that I find reprehensible. I do my best to leave this kind of thing malleable enough to evolve, I am often wrong.
To truly embrace yourself means you are going to make mistakes and hurt people. These are opportunities to gain wisdom that you can use to move smarter.
The entire process of finding self is painful. Think of it like emotionally teething. Only instead of the empathy people have for babies, no one gives a flying fuck about your problems.
Your family and friends will care. You will still need to work through whatever is in your head to get to where you need to be. It’s a lifelong road.
It comes down to perseverance
Well, there’s more to it than perseverance. I am adding the caveat that you take the chances to learn the lessons you need to. One of those things you can do is learn to say yes.
There are so many times I cock blocked myself in life because I said no. If your perseverance has you hiding in your room complaining, that is not what I mean.
I mean you have to keep trying new things. Most people don’t do one thing forever. Even your lifelong rapper heroes probably became clothing guys, restaurant owners and all kinds of things.
In fact, once you have money, you should probably diversify your life portfolio a bit. I will make music until I die, but I am super okay if podcasting or blogging pays my bills.
If it turns out that pickles become my bread and butter, then so be it. That will just let me make more music. The longer I do that, the better at it I get.
That’s the real sauce, keep doing things with the vigour of when you started. I like what Taigenz said yesterday, keep trying to put yourself in rooms where you don’t know anyone. Persevere in your networking goals.
Catching up is life
I’m not sure where to take this anymore so I will end it. I have this giant checklist of things to do that I need to get to. Writing new articles and keeping my sword sharp matters and has become a time consuming one of them.
I am learning a lot more about balance and how bad I am at it. Still, the more I force myself to sit down and get things done, the more I can check off that list.
I will then add more to that list. Then comes the anxiety of getting past procrastination. Still there are some cool things happening in my life that force me to get the work done on time.
I’m really excited for the next article as the Smif-N-Wessun show is tomorrow. Y’all seem to like the event reviews more than the musings so far. Not every day is exciting, sometimes you just do chores.
Live Long and Prosper Everyone
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