0 Cruel Optimism

_26.6.2021_ I behave differently from what I know is good because what is good is often difficult to do. My behavior is often the picture of what I want, not what I need. Want versus need, want always wins. It's between temptations versus willpower. I choose temptation, it's cruel optimism. When what I want is the opposite of what will make me flourish. I want what is actually bad for me. Is it the default mode of me? To behave and desire what's preventing me from my flourishing. I think this is why knowledge is the true power. Self-mastery is the greatest challenge for all people. Who doesn't want to have beautiful body shape and who really has it? It's the closes example that what within my power I still powerless. Life is actually very simple and easy. It becomes difficult because most people make it so. If what I want is just to stay alive, to eat and survive, I can just work several hours a week. But it's not what I want. I want to be successful compare to most people, therefore I work for ten hours or fifteen hours a day. Most people do that, so do I. I think it's a new norm and it's ok as long as I am happy with that. Most people are not happy. They join the rat race. The competition to accumulate stuffs that they don't really need and even causing them unhappiness. It's common and people accept this as normal. Like working, if I am the only one who doesn't work as others, I am alone, not free because they meet their friends at work but I have all the time by myself and no one will come to visit me or I can visit them because they are working and busy. Same as schooling, no matter how obsolete it is and irrelevant anymore with the modern system, but it's necessary for the kids to meet their friends and socialize in daily life. Life just happens like that, I can't unjoin the system. I know that I'm always choosing. Whatever I have and happen in my life, at some point, I choose it. The problem is that I often make bad decision than not. I can see that by writing every day I start to make better decision in life. It's like self-monitoring. Especially to how I spend my time in a day. If I decide to walk for a month, I can imagine how far I can go. If I ride a bike for a month, it will be much further. Actually I know that all decisions I make is important in life. Whether I play stupid game and win stupid price like using social media for hours a day or I can read and make me wiser or I can exercise and shape my body or I can work and accumulate wealth. All of the decisions depend on what I want at the time. Cruel optimism is to want what is bad for me in the long term. It can be bad for health, wealth, relationship, and so on. What is easy is normally good for now but bad for future, what is hard is good for future but bad for now. It's always now. People always feel that it's now forever. Then they make bad decisions. What is hard to do, if I really do it every day, it becomes neutral and normal. I realized this after I read books about habit, Atomic habit, the power of Habit, and others. I simply do it without drama. Now I do exercise every morning and write articles every day. I don't see it as difficult, at least not as difficult as before. Just do it, no drama. I just need to find out what habit that will make me flourish in the future and just start doing it little by little every single day. Those people who work for fifteen hours a day, I believe they are not more miserable than those who do not work at all, or those who work for eight hours a day. People can get used to everything. They get used to seasons, climate changes, the turning of day and night, the growth from childhood to adulthood, everything. Those who go to the jail will get used to it and survive. If the state of war, people also get used to it. Cruel optimism maybe comes from bad faith. We choose the temptation because we do not really know the truth. We want to entertain ourselves with sugar, sex, entertainment, social validation, and all kinds of falsehood. Maybe without all of them we believe that we are less important, insignificant, and pointless. We dull our senses to lessen the pain, to forget the real problems. We are lack of love and attention. We fear and tremble to face the monster inside of our own mind. We don't want the monster to be seen. The monster is our true self. We put the monster in a cage and hide it in the darkest corner. Then we wear the mask of smile face. It’s a happy face or else people will think that we are unhappy and loser, which is true. Those who want to be beautiful are those who wants to be loved, accepted, and valued by others. If we accept the monster, we realize that we are ugly but powerful. We do not want to be accepted and loved, we want to conquer and power over our own life. External validation is not important anymore. We force the world to accept us as we are. We are free and powerful and happier. Power equals happiness. Beauty is short term power. It's fragile, must be handle with care. Knowledge is antifragile, more it's tested and tempered, it becomes stronger. Socrates said that there is only one good, knowledge, only one evil, ignorance. True power comes from understanding and knowledge. In this life, to be truly happy, people must aim to be antifragile, to acknowledge the monster. So far I'm fragile, I want to be beautiful, to be accepted, to be loved. I'm afraid of direct sunlight, I want beautiful skin, long life, and external validation. Now I feel that it's stupid. People don't really care, they are too busy with themselves, dealing with their doubt, fear, problems, as I do. To be antifragile is like Diogenes, live totally free life and doesn't care at all about others’ opinion. In eating, if I can only eat certain kind of foods, I'm fragile too, antifragile loves uncertainties, volatility, problems, obstacles, imbalance, and variability. I must aim at this. Do what I want because I am actually free. I'm not the victim and prisoner, I am the ugly strong monster who is free. If I behave well it's because I want it, nor fear of others or to be accepted, loved and respected by others.