How Do I Love People More Than Ideas

[Roise]

Hi,

I am very much an idealist who loves ideas and ideals. It has come to the point that I become very cynical of the world because many things are not my ideal. I know that nothing is perfect but as a perfectionist, I just unconsciously have this habit of having expectations and developing ideals. For example, when I make friends, I find it meaningless when people desire to form bonds based on materialist factors. I want to make friends who are willing to see beyond my education, which schools I came from, my family background and how many followers I have on social media. I want friends who accept me for purely who I am, friends who love and appreciate my personality instead of the amount of wealth I may have. I want friends who understands me rather than form judgement based on the society's standards. And I hardly find these kind of friends around. Everyone seem to be obsessed with what society wants us to desire and pursue. Everyone is chasing for wealth, fame/popularity and status. This tires me and I am really glad to chance upon Leo's videos and subsequently, this community while I was mindlessly browsing on youtube. Recently, I realise that in some of my relationship, I love the idea of a person more than a person itself. It may be because I just want to fill this void that I dont have much people in my life that connects with me on another level, a new level that the world doesnt seem to understand. Sometimes I feel like I dont belong anywhere because its reallt hard to find like minded people. Sometimes I am on the verge of giving up and just settling for solitude and independence. It seems like I dont fit into the society today because my ideas are very different from theirs and I cant bring myself to accept theirs. Whats the poin of entering this rat race where people are largely superficial? I mean there are days I feel like migrating to a place and a peaceful life all by myself. People does frustrates me. Or perhaps there are like minded and wonderful people around, just that I dont get the opportunity to meet them. Have any of you have similar experience? Do you have any suggestions for me? Thank you for reading and have a great day ahead (:

Edited June 1, 2016 by Jess

[Mal]

@Jess

Hey there...

I want to direct you to an earlier post which I believe sums up the essence of what we're trying to achieve. 

Love is beyond symbols and ideas. Ideas are crucial for development, however I am very glad you noticed that ideas are not the complete picture:

 

[vizual]

If your idealism prevents you from seeing reality and being in the now, it's pure ego, simple. 

It's funny because this reminds me. I only eat vegan and I sense that a lot of vegans I meet don't eat vegans out of love for the animals and the environment, but I have the sense they do it because they secretly hate and loathe humanity. There's a lot of anger in them, you can see these people in the internetz also, lol.

All your ideals and ideas are worthless if they just live as delusions in your head. And, on the other side of the coin, it can be plain dangerous if you try to bend reality just to fit your own delusional ideas(see religious terrorists). The best thing you can do is to strife to live truthfully with love in your heart, reality has a tendency to figure out where to go on its own.

You can start by looking where your ideals come from, ideals are always tainted by some subjective experience in the past. By trying to enforce these ideals in your life you are only trying to run away from pain you have experienced one day in your life. The same goes for perfectionism, people become perfectionists because they were hurt in the past because they did not live up to someone else's standards. If you want to fix these things you gotta embrace the pain. And it's not that hard really when you see through the illusion. Pain is perfectly neutral, it's all the thoughts and images that go with it that can make it sufferable.