A Dollop of Idealism, Please.

To everyone aversed to the idealistic.

"The wise man, knowing how to enjoy achieved results without having constantly to replace them with others, finds in them an attachment to life in the hour of difficulty. But the man who has always pinned all his hopes on the future and lived with his eyes fixed upon it, has nothing in the past as a comfort against the present's afflictions, for the past was nothing to him but a series of hastily experienced stages. What blinded him to himself was his expectation always to find further on the happiness he had so far missed. Now he is stopped in his tracks; from now on nothing remains behind or ahead of him to fix his gaze upon."
-Emile Durkheim (Sociologist/Writer/Thinker)
 

"You're too idealistic."

Ever been told that? Well that's the story of my life - and that line is on repeat to continuously remind me of the lack of faith others have in my decisions. However, when you've been desensitized to a statement, there's a reason you reach that point, and the process leading to that point involved ALOT of self-reflection.

I always wondered what it was with people and their generosity when it came to throwing around one-liners to summarize ones entire outlook - mental schema if you will. Yes, mental schema, which is defined as "the mental structure we use to organize and simplify our knowledge of the world around us. We have schemas about ourselves, other people, mechanical devices, food, and in fact almost everything." Our minds are intricate and detailed, WE choose to simplify, mould, reorganize, deny, so how does someone have the right to saunter up to me and discount my mental process with three words - could it be insecurity?

Which is exactly what i'm coming to. Think about it, being idealistic about things has a negative association for most people - its just a word branched out from others such as being naive, childish, visionary, romantic, even unrealistic. But I always wonder, is striving for the ideal an antonym for reality? We all eagerly participate in the art of complaining - complaining about our "s****y" careers, our frail and terrible relationships, our lack of optimism, and with all of this we will seek numerous self-help books to equip us with rules of do's and dont's. Take a look through these books, were they not things you already knew but you hadn't allowed yourself to act upon because you are no scholar, because your thoughts are deemed unworthy to the larger society unless you hold a piece of paper that brings with it a new found respect?

So then why, why when we understand something so simple do we continue to break spirits? It almost seems as though the envy of everyone is he/she who aspires to be more, who will unapologetically live within his/her own standards, rejecting the confines of society that create identical zombies out of all of us. Part of the reason I am drawn to children is their remarkable ability to live independent of everything else around them - its irrelevant. They are honest, unaffected, and "dreamers" - dreamers hoping to be firemen and astronauts and even ready to save the whole entire world from doom. Of course in return, we laugh at their absurdity, with good intentions, however with hostility because we allowed that part of us to die as we got older.

So is being "idealistic" half that bad? Well if wanting to change the world in some way or another is idealistic - then unfortunately my incessant idealistic ramble will probably never come to a halt.

Carpe diem, baby!