Reading Crime and Punishment again after many years. This time around I realize that I am the destitute. I am the poor. I am the scoundrel. I am the one who pawns my loved one's stockings to get drunk. I am the one who forces someone's daughter to prostitute herself so that my kids can eat bread. I am the one who doesn't fight to support my daughter so that she doesn't have to do this. I am not the youth and good looks and maverick of Raskolnikov, but rather the hatred inside him.
The past decade I've created for myself a narrative where I don't care about money. I didn't have to get a job like other 'suckers' because I didn't need to buy 'useless' things. This story has long been a stone castle until recently. Finally I've been feeling it's foundations cracking. It's not only because I'm reading this... but reading this has caused an intense earthquake to finally happen so that I can watch my constructed narrative collapse in real-time.
I can now feel my hatred for money and everyone near me who has it. This is a feeling I've been running from, covering up, for so long it has become a part of my identity. But as I've spent more years in the adult section, and witnessed more what it can allow people to do, I've grown distant from a lot of the people who were once close to me. I had feelings I couldn't come to terms with, so I instead made up other reasons for this distance. I just didn't want to see these people for other reasons. I was busy, stuff like that.
But re-reading
Crime and Punishment
... I'm not even past the second chapter of part 1 yet, and I finally realize how I've become unable to stand being around my friends working and making a living. The story I play in my head is that they are making money and making jokes about investing into stupid gimmicks like all these alt-coins or buying expensive furniture and going on frivolous trips. In my story i constructed, depending on how I am feeling, I don't care for the things they care about. Either that or I think that people can do whatever the hell they want with their money. They earned it.
This has caused me to hold a bizarre barbell perspective on money and people. When I hear criticisms of people like
Jeff Bezos
I immediately think that he can do whatever the hell he wants. Anyone complaining about him should just try to make money themselves so they can use it however they want.
But then in my personal life, someone makes a regular salary, slaving away their time for it and I am immediately flooded with selfish thoughts like they shouldn't be buying expensive things with that. They shouldn't upgrade their house. Why don't they help their friend who is struggling -- I don't think of myself usually in this case, instead I'm usually thinking of somebody in their life. I look down on them for not sending money their way. But double-secretly I'm thinking deep down that I should be one of those people.
I secretly plot in my head... I will one day make a ton of money. I will share it with as many people in my life as I can. And I will make them feel sorry for not having thought of such a thing. For being selfish.
These are imaginations of a child. Of a complainer. Someone who wants cake but is unwilling to bake. Someone who wants to feast but is unwilling to farm or hunt.
Writing it down like this is scary. It made the thoughts and feelings all more real. But also it made me able to finally present myself with a fork in the road. Which path do I take? The route towards redemption and ascension... where I face the music and stop maintaining a false narrative that wedges me away from people? A path where I ask what can I do for the world to improve it and thus improve my situation. Or do I choose the path of hatred and selfishness? The path of how can the world change for me? What can the people around me do for me?
I guess I need to read Crime and Punishment to understand the context for your thoughts. Yes, my college-prep, honors English courses in high school somehow missed this assignment. I think part of the journey of life is breaking free from the idea of who you are supposed to be and becoming the person you are meant to be.
I have not read Crime and Punishment but I have heard of it. Reading your post made me think that the book may depress me if I read it.
I think you are very hard on yourself. You have done this in past posts where you reveal how you used to think and how it was wrong. Though I am an absolute fan of introspections and retrospectives, I think in your case you tend to be very hard on yourself. I like the fact that you want to change towards an Abe that will not have such conflicts but maybe do it one step at a time.
I think the past 6+ months, I see you working harder than you usually do. You are more deliberate and consistent with your actions. You have created this planform almost overnight so we have a chance to share our thoughts - that's my definition of changing the world for the better. So I think you have already made your choice of the two paths.. You are doing what you are meant to be doing.
therealbrandonwilson it's less about the novel itself and more about my life so if you were to read it you would get your own perceptions and it would probably be detached from mine. My interpretations today is drastically different than when I read it years earlier because i'm such a different person now.
Care to share more about what 'person meant to be' means to you?
keni I can tell by your comment that you imagine I'm in some type of dire pain or depression but that's not what this is. I think most people if they talk about themselves this way it means that, but I think most of society is too dishonest with themselves. As in they'll tell you good things about themselves and only when they feel down will they view the negative aspects of themselves.
Here I'm viewing negative aspects of myself with a level head. And it has less to do with productivity and more about my relationships to money and friends.
I think you are very hard on yourself. You have done this in past posts where you reveal how you used to think and how it was wrong. Though I am an absolute fan of introspections and retrospectives, I think in your case you tend to be very hard on yourself. I like the fact that you want to change towards an Abe that will not have such conflicts but maybe do it one step at a time.
I think the past 6+ months, I see you working harder than you usually do. You are more deliberate and consistent with your actions. You have created this planform almost overnight so we have a chance to share our thoughts - that's my definition of changing the world for the better. So I think you have already made your choice of the two paths.. You are doing what you are meant to be doing.
Care to share more about what 'person meant to be' means to you?
Here I'm viewing negative aspects of myself with a level head. And it has less to do with productivity and more about my relationships to money and friends.