The End of The World

Good evening ladies and gentleman

I think that as a species , we are very emotionally hysteric.

It’s as if everything is the end of the world. I am not speaking as someone who doesn’t suffer from this, forever fearful that my life, seemably held together by sellotape and bolts that have fallen off my car will fall apart at any moment. I wander through life, convinced I’m one step from some sort of disaster and when it does finally happen, i’m not going to know what to do. I’m scared of the End of the World- that never seems to come.

I suppose if not anything else, it makes me think about dreams. I should explain i’m not going to bang on about chasing dreams or some gleeful cliche, but it does make you think about what a dream is- a goal is.

What do you want from your life? Not what you are supposed to want, not what you aspire for because you’ve heard people talking about it, not even what would make you happy. We all have the capability to be happy right now, even me. Yet somehow i remain comfortably miserable for days on end, consumed by this idea that trying is folly because the result is inevitable. The world is rigged, the game I’m playing will come and smack me in the mouth and there i will be on the floor, a bloody lip and wandering why getting up is worth investing any effort in at all.

A dream isn’t something to make you happy. Far from it in fact, for i think if you or I were to place all of our ideals of happiness into a single dream we would be left bitterly disappointed.

So what is a dream for? What are goals for? How does one stave off this creeping feeling of the End of the World as I know it? A dream is an idea, a goal is a step to get to it.

A dream? The car from your childhood.

A goal? Find a way to make enough money to get that car

The goals are, in essence, your reason for living. They are why you get out of bed in the morning and what keeps you moving in the times you feel like the End of the World is nigh. When “what is the point?” is the thought rolling around your head, this is where the dream plays its role. The dream is keeping you motivated to achieve the goals and through this keeping your over active mind in check to make sure you get there.

This isn’t about being happy, its so, so much more than that. Happy is an idea and comes back to the issue that our society has been the creator of for sometime, the “easy” way, the instant satisfaction.

Why cook your food and feel the satisfaction of working your ingredient book you’ve used once for all its worth? Don’t need to, three clicks on my phone and the food will be here, i can sit and watch another episode of my favourite show that i’ve probably already watched 4 or 5 episodes of today. Why open yourself up to a relationship? All it’s going to do is create pain, the End of the World will feel so much closer when you can go on your laptop and “get it out of your system.” Nobody needs skills, because with the right amount of money i can sit on my ass and pay someone else to do it for me. Then we wander why life isn’t going anywhere and the dreams remain just that. Months or years could have passed you buy in a blurry, chicken tikka stained blur and you weren’t even paying attention. Daydreaming endlessly about something that is destined to be nothing more than a dream.

Throughout life, it isn’t the dream people want, even though i don’t think they realise it. I’ve said it before about the chase in a relationship, people dedicate so much of their mental and emotional time to this person, to this goal to the point where they are unable to think about anything else- so much so they cannot it makes see the bigger picture. You should have many dreams and many goals for life isn’t all about one thing. It’s not just about the money, or relationships or family or business, travelling or nice cars. It’s about about all of these things.

The issue with one thing and one thing alone is burnout. It doesn’t just come at you suddenly, it hits you like a fucking freight train.

Consistently with burnout, you never see it coming. Its like blowing out a candle- there one second lighting the path towards the next stage of your evolution and gone the next. Leaving you there, alone, in the dark, not sure what happened and not sure what went so wrong. The End of the World has finally caught up with you. I have tried to fight burnout, so many times. More times than i care to count. Push through and carry on. All that.

Truth is you just get tired in the end. Tired of living, tired of life. When you are hammering in a nail and it starts to bend to a right angle, you don’t keep hammering in the hope it will fix itself. It comes back to a principle i’ve championed for years:

“Listen to yourself. Make your voice so loud you can’t ignore it- and be a part of a Thinking Evolution.”

So what can I do to change it? What can you do?

Bring it on. Bring it all on.

The End of the World isn’t all of that phrase and giving the full sentence changes its meaning drastically. The full phrase is the End of the World Right Now. Let it happen. Stand there- head up, shoulders back. Wipe those tears away and stand tall. Be ready for what’s coming, it’s going to hurt. You may shed a tear, you will feel so broken you will never imagine being able to stand again. They are those moments where you see what you can do, you can show the world that you will not be broken, you will not be defeated. Burnout is a process- which means there is an end.

The world is strong but you are stronger still. You will power through the End of the World and still win. Listen to yourself and respond to your body and mind when they need you. It will feed your soul and your creativity. These parts of you are so important. The End of the World could come and go so many times. Let it happen. Again and again it will come, and you will overcome it.

Be ready.

Fight

Retreat where necessary

Come again

Overcome

Evolve.

The End of the World has got nothing on you .

Love, as always.

DR