Day 54: A quick question

Imagine this: your close friend comes to you and tells you that they've become interested in origami, that they've started creating origami models, but that recently someone has been messaging them saying horrible things, telling them their models are rubbish, that they (the friend) are a joke, that everything they make looks pathetic, that everyone is laughing at them, that it's all a waste of time and the friend should give up before they make an even bigger fool of themselves.

You'd give this friend a big hug, right? You'd give them a big hug and look directly into their eyes and tell them in complete honesty to ignore that prick. You'd say that that stuff all is nonsense. We're all only going to die, we're reaching no final goal apart from that, death, and if we can find something that gives us meaning in the doing of it, for a short while, then that is worth doing.

You'd say that you bet the origami models are not rubbish, that you bet they're really cool. And that even if you did personally think they were rubbish, that still would be only your opinion, that there is no one objective truth about art. That even if there was, and even if your friend somehow ended up making objectively the worst origami models the planet had ever seen, they should just get on with doing that, over and over, that they should love it all, should gather up handfuls of their terrible origami models and set the fuckers alight, torch them, and dance naked over the flames, dance and howl at the moon, spit at the stars -- then put their clothes back on and make a whole load more terrible origami models.

You'd say that we contain no permanent selves. That we are not fixed, there is nothing in us to be a failure, to be not good enough. That we are a flowing dream of a ghost passing through carbon atoms arising and falling on a rock hurtling through infinite space on its way back into the birthing pool of nothingness, and that with all that in mind if they, your friend, want to make origami models then they should bloody well go and make origami models, haters be damned.

Right?

That is what I would say. That is what I truly believe. It would be easy.

And yet when we ourselves are beset by self-doubts over our own endeavours, when that negative voice in our heads is telling us it's all worthless, everything we do is pathetic, that we should give up -- why then do we find it so hard to be similarly kind to ourselves?

If you wouldn't let a stranger say it to your friend, don't let your own head say it to you. Disagree, argue, talk it down. You are deserving of love.

I'm trying to keep this in mind tonight. It's so tough, but I'm trying.