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| You don't want to save the world unless there's something wrong with yours. We live in basically three worlds: the one inside our heads, the one made up of our immediate family and friends and the one which makes up the rest of the world. Each of these worlds has a function in our lives. Many people overlook the significance of their intermediate world pertaining to the people closest to them. This world acts as a buffer between ourselves and the rest of the world which can seem very big sometimes. Without a buffer, life can be overwhelming. If their intermediate world does not serve its purpose properly, a person may have to develop ways, less than ideal ways, of coping with reality by themselves. They may want to retreat from the external world in a variety of different ways or they may try to control the world around them by not letting anyone who they cannot control into it. Or if they're crazy enough, they may try to change the whole world. My immediate world did a good job of keeping me fed and clothed while growing up, but regarding anything beyond these basics, it didn't exactly prepare me for having a healthy relationship with the greater world. As a result, I developed a lot of self-reliance techniques and high standards to live by to address everything I saw wrong with the world while, also, seeking a lot of solace in the natural world (which is another world that we will discuss in a later chapter) and animals. Eventually, I realized that saving the world was more about me than it was about the world. Anyone can look at this crazy world and point their finger at all the things that are wrong with it, but this isn't an excuse to let it allow us to become negative and affect our inner world. We've already discussed what this is called. Although, it was helpful for me to understand that I didn't have much of an intermediate world thus causing habits to compensate for this, it didn't mean that fixing my situation was going to be easy. In my case, the loyalty one usually develops towards their immediate family I definitely possessed, but this closeness wasn't desired by the rest of my family so, as a result, I developed a strong connection with the natural world, my heart, my instincts and my relationship with something greater than myself. It wasn't that I didn't love my immediate family. Of course, I did. They just didn't want or need the same type of relationship with me. Unable to break down the walls that separate many of us, it makes perfect sense that I, or anyone, would gravitate towards the natural world and animals because they have no barriers. Unfortunately, some people who do not have as much access to the natural as I did as a child look for other things to help them cope with life and how they feel including drugs and alcohol. We are naturally loyal to those we are closest to. The loyalty and bond that I formed with the natural world is unbreakable and non-negotiable and it has resulted in two things, 1. it has made me an incredibly happy person because it forced me to shed the lies I was taught by the artificial world and 2. it has, unfortunately, created a very poor person who refuses to earn money at the expense of the natural world by destroying it, wasting it or polluting it. Regarding my immediate world, the best I can understand is that because my father lost his father when he was 10 years old, for reasons of survival, he learned to shut out his feelings and emotions, them not being very useful in a mind-made world where a person needs to make money in order to survive. Unfortunately, still being human and not having anyone like a father to rely on, he relied on alcohol to get him through a lot of life. As it turns out, he was really good at this. I don't believe he ever missed a day of work in his life. Kept the same job for 40 years, but he, also, lived with a lot of internal fear and insecurity though he'd never admit it. As a result, he chose a woman who was, also, very good at shutting out her feelings and emotions for reasons she never really talked about, big surprise. Neither of them had any close friends nor were they close with their families. Sadly, I didn't want to be like my parents, but even though I chose to live differently then they had, I still carried a lot of their unhappiness with me for the first half of my life. Thank God, I never got married and started a family during this time or I would have passed on this same unhappiness to my children. In my opinion, a person has no business becoming a parent if they do not know how to be truly happy. Some people, men or women, actually believe that having children will make them happy, but this is not fair to the children. Becoming a parent should not be about what you want, but rather what you have to give. I believe we are born happy and we learn unhappiness from this artificial world we are taught to live in. As a result, it takes a lot of work to unlearn all these beliefs and behaviors. I somehow found my way back to our default happiness by learning from the natural world and listening to something more knowing than myself. I have done the work it required of me and I will continue to do so. Anything I create with my life will be built on these truths. The pain and unhappiness I inherited from my parents and that they inherited from their parents and so on ends with me. This is all anyone of us can do. Whether I get to pass on the true happiness I have found remains to be seen, but this is how you save the world one healthy person at a time.
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