Do Not Become Like Me.

[petrus4]

I just posted this in response to someone in /r/unschool.  I've since reposted it to a self-development sub on reddit, and I am starting to realise that even if I don't know of anything else to do with my life, one possible mission I can set for myself, is to warn anyone and everyone else that I can, not to end up in my own situation.  To be the proverbial Jacob Marley to any other Ebenezer Scrooges who may, consciously or unconsciously, be heading down the same path.

my Parents didn'tpush anything onto me and expected me to just learn everything myself with out sitting down with me and teaching me anything I needed to learn (school subjects, basic life skills, driving).

At 42 years old, I'm a lot like you.  I blame everyone else for my own situation.  I spend my time mentally criticising my parents for holding me down, and members of various activist and religious groups for being the reason why I supposedly can't go into the city for a day here if I want to, because I tell myself that I am afraid of being killed by them.  I blame feminism for my being a childless bachelor.  I blame one of my younger brothers and the medical industry for my having lost a kidney.  I blame my mother for having a reverse Oedipus complex and driving away the one female partner I ever had.  Everything is always someone else's fault, and nothing is ever mine.

So I just sit here.  I get up, get on the computer, re-watch old science fiction and YouTube for 12 hours or so, watch the news and listen to how the bees and every other form of animal life and the environment in general is dying, go to bed, and then get up the next day in order to do that again.  I have repeated that pattern, with relatively few exceptions, for the better part of 30 years.  I virtually never see anyone other than my mother and a few retail people when I go to buy food, and I never do anything else.

Other people who read this are probably going to leap at the opportunity to tell me that I am the most pathetic, contemptible excuse for human life that has ever darkened the surface of this planet.  I hope they enjoy themselves; but that is not the reason why I am making this post.

I am making this post to tell you to avoid ending up like me, because from the way you are talking in your post here, you are already on track to following in my footsteps.  You are not taking responsibility for your own learning and development, but are blaming other people for not doing it for you, while apparently not realising that nobody else can do it for you.  We have to do it ourselves, and that is what home schooling is supposed to be about.  If your parents have not sat down with you as you say, then it is likely in this case that, rather than neglecting you, self-reliance is actually what they are trying to teach you.

Don't wait for your parents or anyone else to do it for you.  Figure out for yourself what you want to learn, and then start studying it.  I watch lots of videos about cooking every day on YouTube, and you can find videos on how to do pretty much everything else you could possibly think of.  You can learn mathematics, programming, ceramics, fishing, firebuilding; you name it.  If there is no one else around to help you learn to drive, then as hard as it might seem, you are going to have to figure out how to do that on your own, as well.

If you don't take anything else away from this post, then hear this.

DO NOT END UP LIKE ME.

Don't let it happen to yourself.  Most people are not going to tell you what I am saying here.  Most people don't care.  Most people are exclusively caught up in the proverbial mad scramble for their own gratification.  They are not going to help you, and if you wait for them to do so, you will wake up and find yourself over 50 years old one morning, and realise that you are going to die without ever having really lived at all, and that when you die, you will go alone, screaming into the void, and mentally desperately trying to prevent it from happening.

That fate is coming for me.  I can feel it coming.

Don't let it come for you.

[Shasta56]

You're 42.  You have time to become Ebenezar instead of Jacob.

[space otter]

Pets r us
we come in alone and we go out alone..no exceptions
and we are all faced with some type of things we need to handle..some of us have more things to handle than others..imagined or real..
the choice, while here, isn't what we face but HOW ... there is no wrong or right to it..it really is all personal
it's just what happens to work for you this round...and the thought that you might not get another chance to move this off the list of things you choose to deal with..
we are moving on.. some alone some as a group..
I'm going alone and am currently working on ways of knowing how to conduct that move....no, not ways to leave the vessel ..ways to move the entity after leaving the vessel

Other people who read this are probably going to leap at the opportunity to tell me that I am the most pathetic, contemptible excuse for human life that has ever darkened the surface of this planet.

that is YOUR accessement of you.. and only  you can change it cause only your judgement counts in this
the hardest thing any of us has to change is our mind...
you're a smart guy, a bit whiney, but smart..think about it.

hugs

[WhatTheHey]

   Hey petrus4,  it takes a human with heart to admit the things you have!  As you seem to know what you have done to cause yourself this grief, perhaps there is the best place to start a new adventure.  An adventure in forgiveness for yourself and others, in understanding that it is never to late to try and make a change.  Like spaceotter  said "that is YOUR accessement of you.. and only  you can change it cause only your judgement counts in this the hardest thing any of us has to change is our mind..."  It would seem you have already taken a very important step in this adventure of life.  Seeing ones self with all the flaws and talents gives us a better image of our whole, helping us understand where and even how we fail and succeed.
   This is a nasty world for a large part of its population so at least we are never alone in our disrepair.  From this often comes understanding and compassion for each other.  It is never to late to try a change because even when we fail, Its better to try and fail then fail at trying. 
   As you can see you have some caring friends here.   

[zorgon]

Pets r us
we come in alone and we go out alone..no exceptions

In the goode olde days following my other research  I came across a sign that was on the entry gate to the Potala in Lhasa Tibet.

Translated it reads "A Thousand Monks; A Thousand Religions"

What that means is all those monks in the Potala, whether just the plain ones spinning prayer wheels in the court yard to the high Lamas in the Palace... each one is on their own path.

Sometimes we cross paths with old souls from the past, sometime we share the same path for awhile... but in the end it is a solitary path for each of us

Hey otter  nice to see you back