Shame on The Universe   Poetry and Thoughts on the Universe

I don’t know what I want to do with my life. I’m not sure where I am supposed to go. I just know at the moment I’m not happy with it. I look back and see all the missteps I’ve taken; the time wasted. It makes me angry at myself. Makes me depressed. Makes me feel like I have no purpose. Makes me… really understand Linkin Park better.

I know I’m just going through a bit of an existential crisis, and have been for a while. Its the reason I’ve decided to start blogging. But I’m not going to use this post to dig through the depths of my despair and discoveries stemming from them. I’m sure there will be enough of those posts with out me really trying.

Instead, I’m going to talk about something that I hear all the time from people trying to give me advice to get past this crisis. They are usually coworkers, but I hear it all the time. People me well when they say it, but it always kind of bothers me. What they always tell me is this:

“Just open yourself to god, and he will guide you.”

It’s either that or something very similar. Now, that annoys me for a couple of reasons. Firstly and more personally, people are making assumptions that I believe in a god, most likely the same one they believe in. Or, if they are my coworkers, they know I’m an atheiest-leaning agnostic (5 on the “Dawkins Scale“), and they feel a conversion coming on. If they say stuff like, “Calm down and focus, and the answer will come to you,” I’m not bothered at all by that. But many people feel grounded by their faith, and feel it works for everyone. However, assuming I haven’t prayed enough or the solution is just god is insulting to me and to you. Sadly, for every person who is kind in their advice, there is another who does that exact thing.

That ties into my second point. Whether your intentions are selfless or not, I have a problem with the idea itself. The problem is you are giving someone else the power and responsibility to make you happy. As I stated in my writing on free will vs destiny, I believe we are in control of our own destiny, for ill and for good. It’s not even a matter of God, it’s a matter of free will. Giving in to god feels like giving up the very thing that allows me to think about my life. Sure, it’s giving up the part of me that brings me down. But it’s also losing the part that allows me to be better in the end. At some level, I feel like asking god to guide me is giving up on myself.

I’m the one who should fix my problems. I’m the only one who can. Therefore I’ll be the one who guides me.