Tag: frustration

A Tall Tree In A Dark Forest

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

I was lying in bed this morning feeling frustrated. I’ve not been sleeping as well as I usually do and that usual is to close my eyes and suddenly the alarm is going off nine hours later. I’m not sure why I’m not, but for whatever reason I find it understandably annoying. The frustration I suspect is like a wind that gives the fire oxygen but it’s a lack of something that’s the kindling.

I’ve led a reasonably interesting life so far, been to a few places and met many faces. I don’t really feel proud of it like it’s some accomplishment despite the positive response I get when I tell some people. There is certainly a lack of contentment and despite how it may appear I feel a constant drive to achieve things. I often see some of my friends or really successful famous people and I’m envious of their lives. They seem to have a success I don’t. Careers, homes, families and bank balances yet I’m thirty four and my instincts have rejected all of these things until now. In fact I still see the futility of some of them and I know the things they have sacrificed to achieve them, things I’m seemingly still unwilling to as I plan my next adventure. Can we adventure forever though? We can’t eat our memories, we can’t shelter under them and eventually we just become those repetitive old travellers others avoid because all they have is their stories. I don’t often tell my stories unless they come up as a relatable anecdote, I don’t want to be that person.

So why the frustration? I hope you don’t feel me to be self indulgent with this piece but it’s simply I know expressing thoughts like this can help others with their own thoughts. I’m not saying my thoughts are anything special but more that I’m not unique and we all suffer the same things just through different eyes. The frustration stems from a lack of something in life as I said. I’m not sure if it’s a home because I have one now and it’s great and safe but it’s not going to bring me happiness on it’s own. Maybe it’s a family? A wife and kids. Again I’m unsure of that, although I don’t doubt it would be nice to have a woman in my life. Perhaps it’s just wanting it all, or more precisely wanting an idea of how I imagine it’ll be.

I was thinking that for all the knowledge I’ve learnt over the years; meeting wise people, reading wise texts, experiencing moments of understanding; I still don’t seem to put much of this into practice in my own life. It would explain why it is still knowledge within and not wisdom. The only thing I’ve learnt is that unlike twenty five year old me I try to avoid giving wise enlightened advice or talking in that empty way people do when they think they know it all. I feel an immediate inclination to end the conversation, or I’ll carry it on but sometimes it just feels stupid. I know it can impress people, and you see people taking it in but it doesn’t feel real. Unless you start living it it’s just a series of empty words.

A series of desires about something we imagine we want and a series of empty words then. I know the rhetoric about contentment and desires but I’m not content and I still desire. I know the words that give the impression of a level of enlightened but I feel as far from enlightened as I’ve even been. This is the frustration then. Why what I know doesn’t correlate in any way to how I act. This is why I feel confident I can say this aloud and it will resonate with others, another thing I know is that others don’t act on what they know either. Perhaps it’s just part of being a fallible human. Perhaps we just need more than knowledge of words. This drive to achieve life, live it to whatever fullest version we choose. Again this is just an idea of a desire. I think I need to end this here because I can see myself going in circles. The answers aren’t attached to my tail. Maybe the answers aren’t attached to anything. Maybe there are no answers. Perhaps that’s what I’m missing, but what does that even mean? Just empty fucking words again.

Inanimate Anger Destructed

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Has anyone every banged their leg on a table and got angry with the table? How about when constructing some IKEA furniture and getting pissed off because what you’re experiencing is not what the instructions suggest you should be? How about installing something on a computer and the procedure not proceeding as simply and immediately as you assumed it would? What is it that frustrates us about inanimate objects? Computers possibly less inanimate that tables, but the idea that something that cannot think for itself and just exists angers us is an interesting one. What is it that enrages us so much and why is it that animate objects like people or animals do not illicit such angry responses from accidental actions that may do mild harm or inconvenience despite the fact they’re to varying degrees conscious of their actions.

Perhaps we instinctively don’t want to do harm to living creatures because we recognise the life within them and the suffering our anger will bring. That may be true for some but certainly isn’t true for others. There are far too many examples of people taking our their anger on either their partners or pets for example. Maybe we know an inanimate object cannot fight back although it would be worth referencing partners and pets again here. Also I’m sure there are plenty of videos online of doors doing exactly that as they swing back and hit the aggressor in the face. What it may be then is an unconscious frustration with ourselves and our inability to not walk into tables, build confusing furniture or download software.

Anger is a funny thing when you break it down. That angry driver shouting at you because of some mild traffic faux pas you just committed may appear to be angry at you but there’s a good chance his real anger is linked to something else. The same when partners get annoyed at you for some little thing you’ve done and appear unreasonable with it, there’s a good chance something else is bothering them, be it with you or something else entirely unconnected in their life. With inanimate objects we have nobody to justify the error in the moment with as we’re the only one involved. We can lay blame in the direction of nobody except ourselves and this is very hard to accept, especially when usually everyone else is responsible for whatever it is that makes life an angry one.

We’re simply frustrated with ourselves then. Frustrated we cannot avoid IKEA or their tables. Frustrated then that we cannot do better or are not better at whatever it is that is enraging us so much. Why not use this frustration to get better, become an accomplished furniture constructor or be someone capable of not walking into the furniture once constructed. Perhaps then it’s about using this emotional response in a productive way and not allowing it to hold us back. A life constructed as opposed to one destructed.