Real life Aesops: What are your most important life lessons?

[Vive]

I've always liked Aesops in stories. The lesson you're supposed to learn after finishing the a book or a film. Perhaps there are even Aesops in Scientific Literature. The 'Don't do this, but do that'. However, reading a book, article or looking movie is nice. Have you really learned your lesson, though?

While studying Neuropsychology (basically the study of psychology specifically oriented to those with (potential) brain damage/diseased) at university I once came across a theory about different levels of understanding relating to impairment. It's Crosson's Pyramid Model [1] and it proposes three levels of awareness: intellectual, emergent and anticipatory awareness.

• Intellectual awareness is mere being able to recognize your problems, in retrospect or in theory, but not when they actually occur
• Emergent awareness is being able to recognize problems and being aware of them and acting upon them while they form.
• Anticipatory awareness is having enough insight to prevent the problem from ever coming into being.

While stories and articles are great for learning, I would say they mostly provide us with mere intellectual awareness of problems and I think the real Emergent awareness and eventually anctipatory awareness mostly comes into being by actually experiencing your failures/mistakes, perhaps again and again, until you become aware of them.

Sometimes, though, when a story is gripping, realistic and/or relatable enough it might spark deeper reflection and result in budding emergent awareness. This is why I'm curious: what are your 'life lessons' that you've had to learn the hard way?

TL;DR -> What are the most important life lessons you've had to learn through personal experience?

P.S

[Vive]

Some lessons I've had to learn the hard way:

• A jack of all trades is a master of none

I've always been curious about many subjects and things. It has lead me to wanting to learn about too much at once, like trying to learn five languages at the same time. Not only is the amount of progress you make very minimal it is also quite taxing to keep doing that next to other responsibilities and tasks in life. Trading a lot of time and effort for minimal progress in multiple languages, or subjects or skills is not worth it in my opinion. You're much more effective when you focus on one thing, have more energy left and then you become able to properly and deeply dive into what you're doing and it enables growth towards being an expert.

• Not taking your own feelings into account will make them eventually burst/leak out in unexpected and mostly non-beneficial ways

I'm good at over-thinking and intellectualizing my problems and besides that I am not always good at asserting my own needs. Sometimes I over empathize with others and over-intellectualize my own needs. This has in the long-run let me to get into conflicts that I initially completely failed to understand. Friends saw my frustration, sadness and anger, while I saw nothing. I chose to take up responsibilities I never wanted in the first place (me leading a small society at university for example) all because I thought it the most logical thing to do to get some more experience with responsibilities. And while it certainly provided me with useful experience, I've felt miserable doing it, as I never wanted to in the first place, this again sparking annoyance in those around me. Even though feelings sometimes seem irrational, it is better to at least listen and make an informed decision that is not just based on logic or empathy.

• It's easy to be negative and complain, but it's much harder and more productive to work on a solution when you have the ability to at least change something.

Complaining/Venting can be a relief and it is wholly necessary at some points. However, I've found that just complaining or being negative about something often gets me to feel stuck. As long as I keep myself in that mindset nothing changes and I only grant myself more time to worry and be negative. If I, on the contrary, start to actually do something about the problem, even if it's only a little bit of action, it is much easier to keep myself going. Especially when the odds of something succeeding are not so great or if the work is difficult and tiring things can be hard, but at least I'm trying and that, in the long-term, makes feel happy with myself. At least I tried.

[Animal]

I love these! Thanks, you helped me figure out how to formulate a post. I've checked this thread so many times and couldn't figure out how to answer it so I'll just adopt your format.

Those are good lessons. I like how you focused on things you might encounter day in and day out, rather than some "huge epic" thing. You can really take these with you.

[Animal]

I've learned the sorts of lessons that destroyed everything I was, and could have killed me. I took those lessons into my body physically, and I'm lucky to be alive. No, I'm not talking about the illness. The illness taught me lessons, but I don't blame myself for being sick. I know in my heart that I've done everything in my power to get better. Everyone could always do more, and there's always some remedy you haven't tried yet.... but I believe I've achieved a good balance between living my life, sustaining a sense of purpose and working hard on it; and doing the pragmatic things I was able to do to stay as healthy as possible. I don't blame myself for this at all - on the contrary, I believe I handled myself the absolute best I could, whether others believe that or not. They haven't lived in my body. They don't understand what it takes for me to feel there's a reason to live. It's crucial for me to balance this passion and purpose with a sheer will to survive - and I must say I've done a damn good job.

The lessons I took on myself were of a different nature. After I lost my voice, my hair, my IQ points, my ability to walk (which I got back), my financial and physical autonomy -- I wanted to control something. At this point I could walk and move just fine, but still suffered other symptoms and remained stuck on IV medication. My career, vision and passion left with my voice, taking my innocence along with them. But the illness also left me 20 pounds thinner! I'd gotten some training to learn to walk again, and now I knew how to lift weights without bringing back my muscle pains and arthritis. I maintained a routine at the gym, sometimes every day; at the very least, every other day. I ate very little. Sometimes just a few string beans in a day. I dyed my hair pink to express the loss of my pipeline to Earth, the descent into a shadow of my old (blood-red) self.

My body was my first project.

I couldn't sing, but I could express my passion and pain in art, still. I took LSD and tried different mediums. I set up controlled experiments on my own mind, such as limiting myself to just one medium for the duration of a trip (which for me, lasted up to 20 hours). I would wake up at some hour... sometimes 2am, sometimes 4pm, whatever suited the experiment - and I would plug myself in to some machines to discover my new medium. Sometimes my medium was a diary, and I would bring it to the top of a mountain at night by myself. Other times it was a keyboard, plugged into recording devices ahead of time. Other times a computer, or a camera.

Habitually, I sneaked into the dark room after hours. There was a window I kept open and I had the key because I worked there. I would blast my emotional music mixes which were set up to bring me to catharsis through a story that went from beginning to middle to climax to end - release. In the meantime I would develop photos. My body was the canvas upon which I expressed the emptiness, lust, rage and anguish within.

I mourned what I had left behind, but my wings were more powerful than ever. I fell from the heavens and became something so much more than I ever dreamed I could be.

I was their worst nightmare. I was death, the end of all hope that they feared to see in the mirror. I was the unbridled desire in everyone. The fire that would burn them alive - but I had survived. I made a deal with the devil and I never had to repay him because he fucking crumbled at my knees and became my servant. I mean this more literally than you might imagine, but I won't go into the concrete details lest I reveal too much about the humans who I lusted and longed for, who later fell under my spell.



This was magic I never realized I had. I was on a power trip. It wasn't a fantasy. When I was alone I was all to aware of my losses, hunger and pain. I knew that if my angel, my obsession - would reject me - I would crumble to nothing. I was at his mercy, feeding on the memory of his innocence for dear life.



When I looked at my reflection, all I saw was my desire for him. I wasn't good enough for him - but did my idea of him even exist? He was a phantasm.

Layers upon layers upon layers of past selves, current selves, future selves. Losses. My home planet. My obsession who was but a ghost, and I knew it; yet I talked to him and he said he loved me. Me. No one could love me. I could not love. I could not possibly tell him how I felt. We could write songs for each other and post them in various places for each other to find, even before internet was known to others. It was our secret world sometimes; other times it was a public dance. He was across the country... across the universe. He might as well have been John Lennon.




I cannot describe the world I descended into. There is a description of it online, which of course, doesn't cover all of it.... it's an interactive series of pictures that someone can click through, as if making their way through a dream.

My trips to Earth were more desperate. Blood lust. Desperate to feel something. But feeling would destroy me. Telling him how I felt would be ripping my heart out and leaving it in the sun to scathe.

I had already lost my heart, along with my voice, and that was in the past. My first love, he had loved me so, but he left me. Love was not enough to save us from ourselves. Nothing was. He traveled around the country hopping freight trains, and consumed. And he showed me what I was. Or perhaps, made me what I was. Anaeia. Animal.



So I met my obsession. And it's only when I saw him that I felt human. I felt real. Yet he wasn't real. So I wasn't either. And yet my feelings, my desire, my passion - was more real than anything I'd ever imagined feeling. Deep as I was during childhood, this was something more. This was immortality. Power. BUT IT WASN'T ENOUGH. I wanted to feel love.


And thus my shadow ate me. And I looked damn good doing it.






I was the dream and the dreamer. The desired and the desirous. A beast of my own making. I could not love. The devil won after all. I consumed him. You are what you eat....


There's so much more I could say. So many real life details, concrete circumstances, names, dates, conquests and revelations. The bottom line is, I tasted love again. And it all came crashing down.

I am mortal.
I have a heart.
Just like everyone else
I am broken
Unlike anyone else
I am alive.

I barely talked to him for the whole three years. We were friends and lovers, not committed. His music reawakened mine. His innocence aroused the deepest shame I can possibly imagine. Looking into his eyes, I saw my beautiful destruction wouldn't impress him. He knew I was really in control. And he also knew I wasn't in control. Or maybe he didn't know a damn thing, but he just didn't care for my bullshit. He cared only for my soul.

And I couldn't give it to him.

I was too ashamed to show him what I had been. My brown hair had grown back. I had gained an acceptable amount of weight. My reputation as a conquerer preceded me, but I had slowed down. I could pass for human. His friends would buy it. But he would see right through that lie.

I hid my soul, my music, my past, my face. It's visible in any picture with him. Whatever power, immortality, beauty, magic and passion I possessed... gone. I was reduced to nothing.

I loved him, in the sense that I wanted him to succeed, even at the cost of leaving me behind. I wanted him desperately. But I was not in love with him, so to speak. I could not trust him with any information about myself. Not because he was rude or unaccepting, but because it would poison his ears. I could not do that to him. When I detached from him and he caught glimpses of my wild spirit, crossing the country on a whim and doing things that are unthinkable to most people ... he was impressed. Turned on. He was jealous and sad that he hadn't lived the way I had. He confessed that he loved me. Finally! And then I lost my spirit again. I could not sustain it in the face of feelingsmyself.

All of my lies had been shattered. Fucking sixes, showing me my humanity, not buying my bullshit, wanting me to have a heart. God damn them.

And I left him behind. A painful decision. But I could no longer objectify him as a symbol. I could be there for him as a friend and risk losing him to someone else.... I needed to work on myself. And I moved to the city and began my work. By some act of the Gods, I met a pregnant cat in my first week, and her kitten rescued me.

And this was the beginning of my life lesson - that my beautiful and passionate expression of my deepest self can be impressive, honest and seductive. It can bring me catharsis , make me compelling and make people love me. I can even glean tremendous joy from the process of producing art projects, sculpting myself into an art piece, expressing what's inside. But that's not the whole story.

There's also a regular human, a little girl crying her eyes out because "he doesn't want me." "I'm not good enough." I really am the bizarre creature that I seem like, but on some level beyond that, I am human just like everyone else. And there is beauty in that too.





This did not mean I had to give up my intensity, my passion, or my pursuit to express it in the arts. All that it meant is I could allow myself to be truly vulnerable - to real feelings, for humans who are my equals. I could love.

[Animal]

The post came out that way, and I don't want to ruin it by adding more and more thoughts. But I'll add it here. What this meant is that I had to learn to honor my heart, not just my image. My image can be confused for my 'heart' - as it tends to be an expression of what I feel. But this is really an expression of DESIRE. Not "heart." Heart is being present with others. Being in their world and letting them into mine. I don't think mythologizing people and giving them a place in Erosia is "bad," but it has to be balanced with real life honesty, accountability, and presence. For me this involves vulnerability, not an easy feat. And it also involves being... on Earth.

[Vive]

I think It's quite beautiful: first a fall from innocence, and then a climb back to power, but also bringing with it an impenetrability to vulnerability. Then in the end, the power still remains, but realizing that you're also still human and no matter what, also vulnerable.