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comment by goobster
goobster  ·  2814 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Ramblings because I can't sleep

I'd love to have this conversation with you again in 20 years.

Because I think there is something important in this about what phase of life you are in. From the other comments, I take it you are young and female, and therefore your life experience is limited.

The majority of my cohort are in their mid-to-late 40's, so we grew up finding this new shiny tool called The Internet, and adding it to our existing tool box of skills.

Recently - like, just in the last two years or so - a large number of my friends are turning away from the "social" aspects of the internet - because honestly it isn't actual "socializing", it is a simulacrum of it - and returning the internet to the toolbox. We still use YouTube to learn how to mount a shelf or tune a carburetor, and we still use email and respond to Evite invitations, but pretty much every single week another friend deletes Facebook, Instagram, etc, and falls off the internet as a uniquely identifiable person.

When I see these people in person (because now I seek them out to socialize with them) I find their lives richer and more interesting and more full of real stuff... they aren't worked up into a froth over the latest fabricated outrage, and they are handing me baskets of fresh-grown veggies, and eggs, and talking about how they went camping last weekend.

So what, goobster?

Well, I think as we age and become more "whole", and attuned to ourselves, and comfortable within our own bodies and environments, we settle into being who we are, and are care less about how others do "it", whatever it is. We don't seek answers to our problems from outside sources, we find them inside in our experiences.

So, as a young person, your internal well you are drinking from to gain insight and inspiration, is rather shallow. So you look outside for guidance and answers. Over time, your experience fills up your inner well, and you have more and more to drink from internal sources, than external ones. And the internal sources resonate deeper, since they are personal and first-hand.

So use the tools at your disposal: Papa Internet, friends, being a wallflower and watching how other deal with stuff... and by doing so, you fill your internal well with experience that you can draw on later. In short: It gets better.

Seriously though? Being in your 40's is fucking awesome.