I rest in my selfishness

9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.
10 But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.
11 When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I
thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
12 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

I’ve remained subconsciously latched to blind belief in authority from childhood. When I run up against realities of their fallibility and wide variance I don’t know what to do. I free myself from responsibility for authority. I don’t have beliefs, I have wanting to appease everyone. I want to validate, I don’t want to disappoint. I can’t know everything. - I continue doing this, even here using the bible as authority for how to live even though I have cognitive dissonance about much of it christian parents - wanting some kind of cultural role to fill that feels like it fits so as to not disappoint anyone. I’m still driven by fear. I find little things that resonate with a part of me and I search for a cultural context ritual where I can do it for myself, but I can’t know what I want without seeing it in a cultural context already

13 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. 2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.

I feel utterly alone and loveless and incapable in both directions

I have not love but fear, fear and fear and pleasingness. I have no love that could go beyond and on. I have things that hold onto me like chains that cover me in barricades that only allow me to walk in one way. But i do not love, i am not carried by myself. Agape does not find me. Since I was a child, I’ve waited for a feeling of active love to surge in me. For my family, for a friend, for romance, but it never came until she was dead. Only in loss, in grief could I feel a longing, a desire for love. And the active love still doesn’t come and I feel subhuman. And i have it so relatively easy compared to the extremity of people suffering as societal outcasts. People who have been destroyed by this infernal earth and need to feel love most of all.

/yet perhaps i do feel it as defined as longing. When I have been away from Nick or Daniel for a long time, I really desire to be with them again. Being with them can sometimes be a comfort in the way I’ve envisioned true love without eros. It’s just that often I’m not in comfort with them. I unfortunately can’t find myself in longing or comfort with my father outside of necessity, i feel shameful for this. Do I long for physical intimacy (even just a hug) from any specific person or just in general? (hungry for rice or anything) Do I not want to with those specific people or because I don’t think me (as an object) should be touched.

3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.

And so i am wicked in my selfishness whether for charity or for indifference for i have no agape, no love

I decide that saints destroy themselves in their extremity and I do nothing at all. I infer by feelings of shame and pity and so on that I should be giving everything I have to those suffering, what starts as emotional ends as indifferent, logical. The feelings drive me to find a way to not give myself to sainthood

And in the context of christianity for what i use for this cultural context , if I do not have Tolstoy’s agape for god then to give myself over to charity (charity) does not matter and indeed is done for the wrong reasons. But if I do it from an inner sense of preference for health for all humans then I have to construct a feeling of human selfishness to free me from the guilt of doing anything but giving all of myself to those who need it more.

That's why I'm selfish! Because it's always what will hurt me immediately and devastatingly like sleep, disease or poverty when in viscerally aware of it

no use of knowledge, could be my favorite song in the world but if im not in the mood it's painful to listen to, the mood comes very rarely I don't feel unfulfilled in my 'underachieving' epicurean life, i feel very comfortable, not like i'm missing something, i only fear social ostracization? I don't feel (because whenever I do I don't) that any kind of achievement or great joy that requires strife is not worth it because great joy or achievement is not that good, not better than relaxation. Very rarely I get a sense of something, ++The semi religious things Shadow of the Erdtree Reading Music -Art When I look at the world, it fills me with sorrow