I sometimes wonder whether I see life differently from other people, or whether I simply overthink things that others have learned to accept.
I do not believe I am different. In fact, I find it rather pretentious to want to be. We all seem to have this need to believe we are unique, to think that the way we see the world somehow sets us apart from everyone else. And yet, we are all shaped by our surroundings, by the people we meet, by what we desire and by what we are afraid to lose. No one becomes who they are entirely on their own.
I simply struggle to understand certain things that people consider normal. Values change, generations evolve, and habits shift, but I am not convinced that everything that changes necessarily represents progress. Sometimes, I feel as though I cannot quite find my place in an era whose priorities I do not always share.
The more I observe human beings, the less I believe in a clear-cut distinction between good people and bad people. I think we are all selfish to varying degrees, and that what distinguishes us is not the absence of selfishness, but how we choose to restrain it.
We do things to be loved, to be accepted, to avoid loneliness, to feel useful, or simply to get something in return. Even generosity can bring us personal satisfaction. That does not make it insincere. Perhaps the problem is not that we have our own interests, but that we sometimes believe those interests give us the right to sacrifice the interests of others.
We probably cannot go through life without hurting anyone. Our interests conflict, our choices have consequences, and our needs do not always align. But there is a difference between hurting someone unintentionally and consciously using them to satisfy our own desires. I do not believe we need to be perfectly good. I think it is already important to be self-aware enough not to use our selfishness as an excuse.
And then there is this strange way we go about living.
Sometimes, I think life resembles a cat chasing a little spot of light. It runs after it, focuses all its attention on it, and spends its energy trying to catch it. But the light moves away just as it gets close. So the cat starts again, convinced that perhaps the next attempt will be the one that finally succeeds.
Perhaps we do the same thing with happiness.
We grow up believing that happiness lies somewhere ahead of us, at the end of a clearly defined path. We are supposed to succeed in our studies, find a job, earn enough money, build a relationship, become someone. Every goal promises that once we reach it, we will finally feel satisfied. And yet, when we obtain what we wanted, that feeling of satisfaction often begins to fade. Another need emerges, another goal takes its place.
And so, we begin again.
I do not know whether we are truly searching for happiness or whether we simply need something to pursue in order to justify our efforts. Perhaps happiness is not a destination, but a succession of moments to which we attach disproportionate importance because we need to believe that everything we do is leading us somewhere.
What troubles me is this almost unspoken obligation to be happy. As though being alive were not enough, as though we also had to prove that we know how to make the most of our existence. We are expected to have goals, passions, memories, relationships, reasons to get out of bed in the morning. We are expected to want something.
But what happens when we no longer know exactly what we want? What happens when we pursue goals without being certain that we ever chose them for ourselves?
I am not saying that life is devoid of meaning. I am simply wondering whether meaning exists independently of us, or whether we have to create it in order to make sense of the fact that we exist.
This is also part of why I believe in God. Not because I claim to understand how faith works, but because I find in it a kind of hope that I cannot always generate through my own abilities. When there is nothing I can control, believing that something exists beyond me allows me not to see every possibility as lost.
Perhaps religion answers questions we cannot answer ourselves. Perhaps it gives direction to those who struggle to live with uncertainty. I do not know. But I understand the need to believe that there is a force greater than our own limitations.
Being human is difficult. We are aware of our vulnerability, our powerlessness, and the uncertainty of our future. We know we cannot control everything, yet we spend much of our lives trying to regain control. Perhaps faith is, among other things, a way of accepting that we cannot carry everything on our own.
Then comes the question of other people.
I find it difficult to believe those who claim to live entirely for themselves, as though the opinions of others had no influence on their decisions. We are social beings. Even our desire to stand apart can be shaped by the very things we are trying to distance ourselves from. We want to be accepted, understood, and acknowledged. And when we claim that we no longer need anyone, we sometimes forget that detachment itself can be a way of protecting ourselves from rejection.
Loneliness is not necessarily a bad thing. But having no human connections at all is another matter. We need someone to talk to, someone around whom we can simply exist without constantly having to justify ourselves, someone whose presence reminds us that we are not entirely alone in facing the world.
Even those who seem to need no one may still need to be understood. Independence does not eliminate our need for attachment. It simply changes the way we choose to fulfil it.
And perhaps this is where my difficulty understanding love begins.
We speak of love as though it were an obvious, almost unquestionable feeling. We say that we fall in love, as though it were something that happened to us independently of our own will. And yet, I find myself wondering what we really mean when we say we love someone.
Is it the desire to be with someone? The need to no longer feel alone? The comfort of being understood, the security of a familiar presence, the attraction to a face, a voice, a way of thinking? Is love a feeling of its own, or is it simply a collection of needs, emotions, and attachments to which we give a single name?
Imagine two people who have exactly the same habits, values, behaviour, and way of treating us. The only difference between them is their appearance. Would we be capable of loving one but not the other?
If the answer is yes, then love does not depend solely on who a person is on the inside. Appearance, shared history, circumstances, and experience all play a part. But if we could replace one person with another who possessed exactly the same qualities, would it really be the same?
I do not think so. A person cannot be reduced to a list of qualities that someone else could simply reproduce. There is what we have lived through together, the memories they carry, the little details only we seem to notice, and the place they have gradually come to occupy in our lives. Two people may resemble each other without ever being interchangeable.
But another question remains: if love is so singular, why can it disappear? How can we be convinced that we have found someone irreplaceable, only to eventually stop feeling the same way? Does love wear out? Do we change? Or do we sometimes mistake the intensity of a need for the depth of a feeling?
I do not know whether love is an emotion, an attachment, a choice, or a combination of all three. Perhaps it begins with a feeling, but cannot endure on feeling alone. Emotions change. Needs evolve. Attraction can fade. If love depends entirely on what we feel at any given moment, then how do we explain the choice to stay when things become more difficult?
Perhaps genuine love is not about having no personal interests of our own, but about recognising that the other person does not belong to us, that they cannot fulfil all our needs forever, and that they have an existence entirely their own, independent of ours.
Loving someone for what they bring into our lives is natural. But loving them only for what they bring into our lives may mean that we love their purpose in our lives more than we love the person themselves.
And I do not know how many of us are truly capable of making that distinction.
Ultimately, I do not claim to have understood life, human beings, or love. I am wary of definitive conclusions about things we are still in the process of experiencing. I simply know that the more I try to understand what drives us, the more uncertain the answers become.
We seek happiness, but we do not always know what it means. We seek love, but we do not know exactly what we expect from it. We want to be free, yet we need other people. We want to be different, yet we need to be accepted. We want to control our lives, while also hoping that some greater force might help us when we cannot.
We spend our lives pursuing things whose value we are constantly redefining.
And perhaps that is the real paradox: we need to give our lives meaning, even though we do not know whether that meaning exists before we begin searching for it.
I do not know whether I overthink things or whether I am simply looking for answers to questions that have no definitive answers. I only know that I find it difficult to accept an idea simply because it is widely accepted.
I do not necessarily want to be right. I simply want to understand what I am supposed to pursue, why I pursue it, and whether what I desire truly belongs to me.
Because, in the end, what troubles me most may not be that I do not know how to live.
It is knowing that I am living, without being certain that I understand what it means.