Addictions!

How are addictions different to needs?  We need food and water. We need shelter and warmth. We need companionship. We need to care for ourselves. We need respect from our family members - meaning they appreciate who we are.

How did we end up reading opinions that disregard us or worship others who, we are told, are special. 

I remember I was about ten when I thought I had an obligation to achieve something special. Later in life a friend of the family said I was good looking and I retorted that I am not stunningly beautiful. The friend scoffed at my response.

I see now how commercial television formed my views of worth I watched sitcoms of beautiful people acting out their roles. Assumed a revelation that you are either somebody or nobody. How to be popular was the topic of magazine articles.

We were mostly all swimming in that assumption. At least those who I met in the office and TV commercials.

Now, in my seventies, I see how destructive it was. Billions of people walking around attempting to be somebody while they feel like nobody. All the pageantry that goes into being somebody, all the ways I had projected my self-contempt onto others. How ugly I made myself trying desperately to be stunningly beautiful.  How easily manipulated I was, and still am, by evil geniuses until I think twice.

Now I see that vanities must be swept aside in order to deal with real threats like climate change, war and poverty.

Now I see my life depends on the well-being of everyone and everything around me. Particularly my family and friends, and those I depend on like first responders, healers, writers and artists.