101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think

have a healthy 
SOCIAL 
SENSITIVITY
In a world that seems to assume that extroversion is the norm and
introverts exist within a counter-culture that needs to be justified and
explained at every step and turn, it seems we’ve begun to overthink
what a normal, healthy amount of social sensitivity is.
Not liking everybody or desiring solitude or preferring one close
friend to a group of many is not social dysfunction. We’re
overgeneralizing what it means to be “antisocial” or “socially
anxious,” when those are extreme, if not clinical terms that we may
want to think twice before throwing around. Here, a few ways to
determine whether or not your social sensitivity is normal:
01. You experience a degree of social anxiety in unfamiliar
situations.
Social anxiety is usually having enough foresight to recognize
what people may be judging or assuming about you. If not
kept in check, it can paralyze rather than keep you self-
aware. It is normal, if not indicative of a high intelligence.
02. You desire solitude because being alone is emotionally
enriching.
You do not isolate yourself when you’d prefer to be with
others, simply because you’re afraid or feel unworthy of
keeping company.
03. You only enjoy the company of a few, select people.
You’re not supposed to like everybody. To say that you “like
everybody” would be to deny and reject the parts of you that
may not genuinely feel that way, and as we all know,
disassociation isn’t good. We’re only meant to really love and
enjoy a few people and tolerate a few more.

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04. You say “no” to plans when you want to say “no” to plans.
You do not go because you feel obligated or pressured. You
are able to say “no” to people who you don’t want to see, and
to doing things you don’t really want to do, when the cost
would be your mental or emotional well-being.
05. You analyze situations because your snap judgments may not
be well-informed, not because you’d like to reinforce your
anxiety or make yourself feel better through delusion.
You self-evaluate as a means of becoming aware of what
(may perhaps) be unconscious choices and habits. You do
not over-evaluate with the intention of arriving at a different,
made-up conclusion, or to create an alternative perspective
that supports an irrational idea: “He looked at me funny; I
knew he hated me.”
06. You worry that your social anxiety is abnormal.
Worrying about whether or not you have too much anxiety about
being in social situations is probably the most normal thing there is.
That’s not a product of “having a severe problem”; it’s a product of
wanting to be self-aware enough to handle it if there is.

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95
NOW
is
ALL
you
HAVE
From all the time I spend overanalyzing (an arbitrary act I can't be
the only one guilty of), I realize that I'm able to routinely trace all of
my issues back to the same core problem: I don't know how to be
uncomfortable. I don't know how to be able to feel the good things
without being completely deterred from the experience by the
inevitably bad. It's something I have to outgrow, because it's certainly
not something that is resolvable. It's just...life. And I think we live in a
world that's all but curated that mindset for us.
I have the issue of seeing parts of my life as just precursors of time
to facilitate getting to where I want to be next. And the sickening
reality of that is, given enough of those days, your entire life
becomes a waiting game. Now, I've been able to resolve a lot of that
nagging, lingering need to escape, but of course, it creeps up on me
now and again. So I can't help but be interested in it.
Because it comes from the idea that there will be a happily ever
after. You get through the pain and then you bask in having been
healed and reconciled and changed and made once again whole
and new. But there is no swift motion of starting in darkness and
moving toward the light indefinitely. There's a lot of in and out.
There's a lot of grey area. There are days you're so far back you
can't believe you let yourself get there, and then there are days you
forget you were ever miserable to begin with. Getting stunted by this
—being fearful of moving forward and more fearful of going back—is
the only guaranteed way that it will ruin you.
Because it's a succession of "nows" that will add up, lifting us from
awareness of one experience to another, that will be all we have in
the end. So what we see in the experience is what we have to
appreciate before we're lifted away from the monotonous routine,
because the alternative is that we cease to exist. We're done. And
we let things pass because the discomfort made us feel like we were

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backtracking away from that "light" state we're perpetually moving
toward. We made a bad life out of a few bad experiences because
we weren't able to check off the list of things we had in our minds as
prerequisites for feeling content, dare I even say...happy? But
happiness isn't a contrived mental process that you allow yourself in
when things are thought to be right. It's an experience, it is an
emotion, and all you have is right now to experience it.
And I see such patterns of thinking facilitated largely by our society.
Not only that there will be a happily ever after that we are all entitled
to after we've suffered enough, but that joy is in planning for
tomorrow. To be very, well, millennial about it (God, I can't believe I'm
using this as an example), it's like the Tumblr posts and Pinterest
boards that are all images of what we want, hope for, and are
inspired by. And it's lovely to look at those beautiful things and
decide you want them. But how many of us actually get up and get
them—even something as simple as a pretty coffee and book to read
by a windowsill? Not many. We get up to complain about not having
the lives we dream of and carry on, day after day, rinse and repeat.
Now is all we have, my friends. You have to choose now. You have
to live in the heartbreaking reality that is what you see and perceive
in this moment...the mess, the beautiful schisms that make for wars
and love and peacemaking and harmony and change. The rawness
of being so low some days that all you can muster up as your
purpose is just to keep breathing—and then realize that's all there is
either way. Maybe it is about diving into the deep end and letting now
be more than just enough. Realizing that things are only ever as
boring and mundane as we let them be. That there are mysteries
and experiences and fascinatingly foreign parts of life that we won't
see until we take a step out on the wild side, the side of us that isn't
concerned about tomorrow.

---

96
THE ART 
of
MINDLESSNESS
Many people have written beautiful pieces about the importance, and
their experience, with mindfulness: the ancient practice and
supposed modern anecdote to our perpetual dissatisfaction. Live in
the moment; be conscious of every sensation of your daily
experience. This kind of awareness, in my opinion, is more than just
a proposed solution to our human condition, it’s the final frontier, it’s
the place we will all find ourselves, at one point or another: either
embracing each moment as it comes, or letting them all wash by us
—mindlessly. So when I say that what we really have to work on is
mindlessness, I by no means am actually talking about not being
mindful; it’s just a play on the phrase. (I wanted to clarify in case
there was any confusion.)
We talk about the importance of mindfulness in the context of being
conscious and present, completely immersed in our experience. That
is crucial. But what is also crucial is realizing that much of that has to
do with how we can transcend the mind. We live in a culture, and a
period of human existence, that is far too concerned with what we
think about things. Though reason is crucial to our development, it
sometimes denies our instincts, desires, and pleasures in place of
expectation and “normalcy.” We can’t be surprised that when we try
to confine the fluid, natural, untamable reality of a human soul that
we end up suffering as we do.
We are a species disconnected. For all the technological
advancements we’ve made, our ability to connect on a human level
is miles away from its natural, primitive state. Our daily discussions
are so deeply imbued with value placed on manmade means, we are
focused so much on what man can do and not nearly enough on
what man is. We are steadily moving away from concepts of religion,
associating faith and trust with ignorance as opposed to spiritual
intelligence. We simply don’t value the reality of our human
existence, the part of us that is up for interpretation, partially

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because it’s unknown, and mostly because we can’t agree on
anything or know for certain, so we deny it rather than embrace its
unknownness.
What we think, we become. And if what we are becoming is any
indication, we are thinking far too much about the things that don’t
matter and not making room for uncertainty, for discomfort, for the
things that are indeed unknown but which yield the best outcomes.
The ones that are indeed larger than our mind’s comprehension.
In our incessant mindfulness (not in the meditative way, but just in
the fact that we process everything psychologically), we start
labeling, categorizing, and defining things. We become used to
what’s known and disregard what isn’t. This doesn’t leave room for
the acceptance of people and things that aren’t like us. We relinquish
responsibility by putting other people beneath us. We declare their
sentiments wrong and unjust, and therefore we are superior. We live
in a culture that makes means and commodity out of ripping each
other apart, and it functions healthfully because we buy into it. We
love to see how other people aren’t as good as we are, how we can
place them beneath us and find comfort in the knowing that we are
okay because we are better than them. But we end up caging
ourselves. We inevitably fall within what we once said was “wrong,”
because we’re human beings, and dangerous territory is the mind
that doesn’t leave room for the soul to falter.
We need to teach our children not to have screaming fits because it
makes us look bad as caretakers but because learning to process
negative emotions without being scolded and shamed for them is
important. We need to become actively, consciously aware of what
we are buying, clicking, associating with and inevitably supporting,
especially when it serves to do nothing but harm another person
(even if we don’t realize it at the time). We have to stop defining
people. We have to take our discomfort with the unknown and settle
into it firmly, because the fact that we will be uncertain is a certainty.
We have to realize that major change can only happen on a minor
scale. One individual at a time. We have to move on from our minds
and move into our hearts. What makes us the same is something our
minds may never be able to understand. We have to let go of trying
to understand everything else that’s collateral to suffice for it.

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97
THE DIFFERENCE