Obsession

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace - Imagine by John Lennon

To be honest, I feel super tired right now. But I feel like I need to write this thing down just so I can sleep peacefully.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about my obsession for the “right thing.” I don’t know about you, but it kills me when I see people can’t have a good life, based on my standard. And a good life here can be defined in a lot of ways. In a broad sense, it might mean no inequality, no malice, or injustice.

In a glance, there’s nothing wrong with that, right? Afterall, almost everyone wants a perfect world. I mean, look at what John Lennon said above! Everybody can live their lives in peace must be nice, right?

However, for me, that feeling can manifest into naivety oftentimes. I will be startled when other people do harm to others. And after that, my mind will start thinking about what can I do to help them (the bad guy) to get back to the right course? Which of course (again), I modeled based on my standard. Or, how can I help the victim, if I may? And then life will slap me in the face because, in the end, there are tons of things that just can’t be fixed. My obsession to remedy the world is killing me in the end.

And if we look at it from a different angle, we could say that maybe I’m the bad guy here. Obsessing about the right way to live this life or to directly fixing other people’s life won’t automatically make me a good person. That merely means that I’m imposing my standard to other people. And maybe I’m just chasing credit as “a good person” unconsciously.

Say, for example, in my standard, everybody should be able to own a car. So, when somebody was denied credit for a car, I will start to feel like “maybe I need to help”. But well, maybe the bank was right. Maybe they don’t have the capacity to own a car just yet. Now that I think about it, interfering the natural order of the world feels like I’m playing God.

I remember someone told me that “the road to hell is paved by good intention.” So yes, maybe good intention can become toxic too in the end.

So today, I come up with a new concept that might be able to ease my obsession about the perfect world.

When people don’t explicitly ask for help, maybe they don’t need to be helped in the first place.

Does that mean that I will help everyone who reach out to me for help? Well, I will try, as much as I can. But I have to remind myself that I can’t fix the whole world even if I want to. That’s just the way life is. That’s just how the world works.

Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash