The Flowers Not Given

The flowers not needed.

If you look closely, you can see how you influence people and it is interesting to see. What is not interesting to see is how quickly people forget how much you've changed them. What's not interesting to see is how some of them aren't even conscious of your influence on them. Sun Tzu said the best teacher is the one who improves the student without the student even knowing how much they've been changed. I like to see myself as this kind of teacher.

Although, I also wish I'd get my flowers from someone I shared an idea or perspective with that made them better or happier. I don't keep score. I don't give people figures or data either. I only nudge people towards finding information or provide them with new perspectives and ideas. My mission statement, should I ever have one, would be: To set individuals on a knowledge-seeking path that's beneficial to self and community. My aim is not to get flowers. If I inspire you to become a reader and you go ahead and become a person who reads fifty books a year, I can't take credit as the person who made you read fifty books a year, can I? You could have been a person who reads three to five books a year or a person who reads a few articles a month. You became a serious reader on your own. I can't take credit for that. Or can I? How influential could my nudge have been? Perhaps it was that monumental. It is natural to, from time to time, feel like you deserve flowers for the efforts of others.

So I understand when my dad says people who wished for you to have something would sometimes become jealous of you for having it. That, he says, is only human. You mustn't dwell on their recent envy. Let go, for there was at least a time when they were rooting for you.

When people want you to have something and possessing it makes you better, it informs their judgment of things. I think this makes them unconsciously question why their vision worked for you and not themselves.

And you mustn't necessarily be better than them when you have it, your happiness with it only has to exceed their expectations.

People envy your happiness more than your possessions, I find. You envy celebrities more than boring rich people because celebrities exude comfort in being themselves and celebrity life seems to be a steady celebration of joy and happiness. Knowledge is something we all want. You admire your professors for knowing a lot but you don't envy them until they can show that that knowledge is making them happy.

Everything you acquire is with the assumption that it is a necessity towards your comfort and happiness. Some possessions, perhaps most, will fall short because you can't differentiate convenience from comfort. Convenience is your assumption of what your comfort is. Comfort is the basis of your happiness, so it is important that you get it right. Most of us are still hunting for basic survival things like food, shelter, and water and this makes it harder to understand your comfort and consequently your happiness. Understand yourself a little bit better by questioning your needs and wants and your comfort and convenience. Think harder about what makes you feel a type of way. Then know yourself some more and again and again. Sometimes you don't need a new house. You only need a new pillow. Sometimes you don't need to move, you just need to be a better neighbor.

As always, I am getting to know myself a little bit better. I am a silent influencer. This is how I intend it to be. The flowers are convenient, but this is comfortable. I'd be depressed in a pool of flowers I feel I deserve because then I'd question everything harshly and drown in existential despair.