The struggles of living up to your own Ideals.

  "Belief isn't simply a thing for fair times and bright days...What is belief - what is faith - if you don't continue in it after failure?...Anyone can believe in someone, or something that always succeeds...But failure...ah, now, that is hard to believe in, certainly and truly. Difficult enough to have value. Sometimes we just have to wait long enough...then we find out why exactly it was that we kept believing..."

                                                                                                                                                   -Sazed

'Why do I do this?' I find myself asking more and more often these days. Tired, exhausted from the constant struggle to live up to these standards I set for myself. It feels like I'm drowning in a sea of expectations, and I can't catch my breath. The pressure is suffocating. I want to run away from it all, to break free from the burden of these ideals that were supposed to make me a better person.

There's this strong desire to throw it all away. The principles, the moral high ground. Maybe it's just easier to live without these ideals feeling like shackles, from which I can't escape. To give an example, I'm a vegetarian by choice. 80 percent of the world isn't. Why am I missing out on a variety of  delicious food? Especially when I'm further handicapped by the fact that I can't eat most milk based products. I'm probably not making any significant difference on the world or on any animals by choosing to be a vegetarian. So why do I do it? Do these 'rules' make any difference at all or am I just pretending that it does? Is it worth following these 'rules' if I can't see the results? Is it worth following them if I know that in all probability it makes no difference? 

There's a part of me that craves the freedom to make mistakes, to live without the constant weight of judgement and self-imposed righteousness. But the consequences... There are always consequences. Call it cowardice or prudence, I am scared of the consequences. I am scared of what will happen if I mess up. The fierce desire to follow my responsibilities and do the right thing but realising I am incompetent in doing so can be crushing. The feeling of guilt knowing I am not where I want to be partly due to lack of effort on my end and partly because I am not good enough. 

So why do I do this? Because these rules are more than a set of principles, it's a declaration of who I am and what I stand for. These are the rules which I have set myself believing them to be right and it's the bare minimum I can do to keep myself going knowing that everything else is falling apart. I live with the knowledge that I am doing what I believe to be right even if I am incompetent in a lot of aspects and far from my idea of perfect. It's proof that I can be resilient as well and won't give up. That's what resolve is all about. Finding strength in the midst of chaos. So, here I am, navigating through the complexities of life with the hope that, just maybe, one day things will fall into place. One day it'll all make sense as to why I followed all these things. Until then, it's one step, one breath, one day at a time.