Before talking about the train
There is a very nice phrase from George Bernard Show that says: “The only man with a real sensitivity I met in my life was my tailor: he took my measurements whenever he saw me, while everyone else kept the same old measures and they expected me to fit in. “
Wonderful, because it expresses, in my opinion perfectly, the absolute misalignment between what we are and what others see in us (or want from us). Attention! The goal of this post is not to criticize those who judge. Everyone chooses how to live this tight time we have on Earth, and if someone likes to live it miserable, passing it on to judge others, let them do it … Who am I to judge it (pun strongly desired)? What angers me most is actually not the judgment that others may have about me or about a person dear to me. Towards this group of individuals, in fact, my Romanity has vaccinated me since I was a child, ever since I managed to really make my own the (all Roman) policy of the “sti cazzi”, or to put it in such a way as to be understood even outside from the Grande Raccordo Anulare, “and who cares”.
I don’t like…
No. What angers me most, but understood as displeasure and not as contempt, is what happens in those who feel judged. When will they invent a blessed vaccine for this “pathology” too? Think how much damage has been done by feeling badly judged by others in the history of the human being. Spanometrically, I am convinced, it has made more victims than all wars and diseases combined. So I am not saying anything new when I say that a sentence, a word, can hurt more than a dagger, a pistol, and this happens because not everyone has a sufficiently strong armor to withstand the non-benevolent opinion of those who judge us. We are always judged. We are judged in our aesthetics, we are judged in our school and work performance, we are judged for how nice and empathetic we are or are with others, and we are judged for our affections, for the way we express them and for the people with which we decide to express them.
What happens if..
And instead of responding to these judgments with a resounding “who cares” we bend our lives precisely to accommodate this judgment. Do they all want us beautiful and shiny? And then we kill ourselves with diets, we go hungry to take off the extra pounds. Do they all want rich? And here we are doing two thousand jobs, selling out with imbecile leaders in jobs we hate. Do they judge us for how we love? And even there the dance of lies starts. We engage in socially accepted relationships that go nowhere. And then? Good question! The answer is this: what happens every time we choose to follow the judgment of others is that we inevitably run into failure. 100%, absolute affirmation, denials are not accepted.
I’ll prove it to you.
What happens to those who do everything to change their appearance because they feel aesthetically negatively judged by others? He will do as much as a house to change but he will never, ever, ever be happy with himself. Looking in the mirror he will only see his flaws. What happens to those who do not accept their economic status and do everything to change it just to have a good judgment from those around them? He will simply become a slave to his wallet and you will never see him in the slightest able to enjoy what he has, precisely because what he has, he did not get it as it is his desire, but in fear of the judgment of others. What happens to those who shape their own affective sphere in fear of the judgment of others? It happens that he slips into sterile, facade, false relationships. Empty to lose with which to burn life without giving value to time.
As you can see, there is no compatibility between being happy in this life (or at least trying) and seconding the judgment of others. No chance.
Catch your train
So? How it comes out. Far be it from me to be able to provide general guidelines for which I refer you to your psychotherapist, what I can and want to do is simply share my life experience, the only “benchmark” on which I can rely. There was a time when I too tried to follow the judgment of others. I organized my life, my work, my affections, my times on the basis of what I believed to be “the socially accepted”. The result was only one: I collected pats on the back associated, however, with an incredible sense of cosmic emptiness inside me, a void that, for example, at a certain point, did not make me feel happy even with the great results that, for example , I happened to catch up in my work. Even beautiful things slipped over me as if they didn’t concern me, didn’t belong to me. I was socially accepted but empty inside.
Life passed in front of me like a train running in front of us, stopped in front of a level crossing. Devil! I would have liked to get on that moving train! But hell, it’s foolish to try to get on a moving train. And instead that’s exactly what I did. I decided that I wanted to take that train (which was my life), and with all the risks involved, I took it. I took a risk, in some situations I even got hurt but in the end I caught it, I climbed on it, and you can’t imagine how much better life is when you get on it, instead of seeing it flow by the side of the road. I took a risk but, I assure you, I made the best choice I could ever make, devoting myself to a new, very particular religion, which is contained in a single sentence, “just try to focus on your truest desires, and follow them , at any cost “.
That train has never stopped since then. It made me travel in space (physically taking me around the world) and in time. I have met incredible travel companions. In the meantime, some have fallen and a few tears have accompanied their farewell. Others have stayed and continue the journey with me. The train does not stop. I still have so much to run and so much to see; and like me each of you. Don’t wait to see the tail of the train of your life moving away to make you eat regret. Climb that fucking level crossing, jump right on it, take the risk. There will be, be sure, motorists behind you who will ring to warn you that it is not done, that the level crossings cannot be crossed, especially when the train is passing. But fuck it!
Whatever happens you will get hurt, if you don’t even try you will simply be already dead, without bruises for heaven’s sake, but dead.
