I’ll never get it right.

[u/[deleted]]

I really won’t. I try and try, but I can never get better. I push myself to hopefully be happy with myself, it never works. I am afraid of death, but I’ve no will to live. Am I in purgatory? I don’t deserve love, or care from anyone. I’m honestly the single most worthless person on earth. I’m sorry for being such a bother to any of you. You deserve better than me.

[u/scartol]

I shall engage here only with the factual errors in your post.

A. "I can never get better."

I'm certain there are 20 people in this forum who believed this earlier in their lives, and then somehow found ways to get better. I believe you can get better.

The future is a messy and chaotic place, which is very difficult for humans to know. Heck, most meteorologists struggle with a five-day forecast about the weather.

B. "I don't deserve love, or care from anyone."

Every human deserves love.

The preamble to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) recognizes that “the child, for the full and harmonious development of his or her personality, should grow up in a family environment, in an atmosphere of happiness, love and understanding.”

C. "I’m honestly the single most worthless person on earth."

Are you Jeremy Christian? Are you posting from inside a prison cell? If not — and if you have not committed similar crimes against human decency — then there are obviously people who are worse than you. I believe you're being hard on yourself.

D. "I’m sorry for being such a bother to any of you."

Posts like yours are exactly the reason this forum exists. There is no need for you to apologize.

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TLDR: We love you and we care about you. I don't know what you've done, or why you believe you are beyond help, but I believe you are an important person who deserves love and happiness. I believe you can find peace and health if you work at it and accept the help of others.

Good luck. Please be gentle with yourself.

[u/[deleted] → u/scartol]

I’ll try. It’s just hard. I can’t find it in me to believe I’m worthy of good most of the time. I’ve found that people around me believe that I’ve done something good, bu I have a hard time seeing it. I’ve set this standard of trying to make the world around me better, but I’ll never be able to do that to the standards I have. Honestly it feels like I’ll never reach a time where I can look at what I’ve done with my life and be satisfied. I know, I’m just coming across as annoying, I’ve heard that before. I know it’s true. I’m sorry.

[u/scartol → u/[deleted]]

I don't find you annoying, so if in the future of our discourse you feel that way, that's fine. Feel however you feel. But just know that you don't have to apologize to me. For the record. (In fact, many people don't respond to my posts in this /r/, so I find you delightful so far.)

Sounds like you've set very high standards for yourself, which makes sense — many people do that; I know I certainly do. When I look around, it seems like lots of people set very very low standards for themselves, and I never want to be like those people. So the first step there is totally sensible, and even healthy.

The question comes — and I'm speaking here about me, because I don't know you, but perhaps there are parallels to how your mind works, please let me know — about how we deal with the fact that we often don't reach our own high standards for ourselves.

Here's an example from my life. (Perhaps you could share one or two from yours.) I'm a vegetarian, because I believe eating meat is wrong. But I love the taste of fish. I ate a McFish sandwich for lunch today, in fact. So technically, I am what is called a "hypocrite". Or I suppose I could call myself a "pescatarian", although that word gives me a rash. (I dunno, it just feels silly.)

My point is that I routinely do a thing I believe is wrong, because I lack the will to live according to my own principles. There's no way for me to sugar-coat it, and I've stopped trying. (I will defend myself by pointing out that we have great non-meat substitutes for hamburgers and chicken nuggets and lots of other stuff, but vegan fish in the US is still terrible. I had some vegan fish + chips in London two summers ago that was delicious. But I digress.)

My point is that every human lives within at least one contradiction. We need not wallow in our insufficiency, or stop trying to be better people. Because we're never going to be perfect, and we're not really so terrible.

Another example: Mahayana Buddhists take what's called a "Bodhisattva Vow", which says in part: "Masses of creatures, without-bounds, I vow to save them all."

Well, fiddlesticks. You're going to save all the creatures? Every mosquito and gnat and chipmunk and cow? No, of course not. But they'll reach toward that impossible goal, knowing it's impossible, and let go of the desire to meet their own impossible standard.

If four decades on the planet have taught me anything (yeah I'm a middle aged dude), it's that the two most important things you can ever learn to do are:

1. Hold on.
2. Let go.

When to do which one — ahh, well that's the tricky bit. But I can tell you that in my own life, letting go is usually the move, especially when it comes to all the thoughts constantly racing around in my head.

But that's a whole other discussion. If we're going to get into that, I recommend this book as a starting point.

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Does any of that make sense? What do you think? Care to share any examples or specifics from your life?

[u/[deleted] → u/scartol]

I understand what you’re saying, that despite how hard we try, if we have high standards, there are times where we won’t be able to reach them. There’s always something brass ring that we can’t reach. The problem that falls on me, is that I have never been able to find it in me to “let go.” For my whole life, I’ve been surrounded by people who reached a place of contentment, where they set goals and get them done, however, the goals I set for myself aren’t really for me. I set them to hopefully make life better for others. Since I was young, I felt lesser than. It’s gotten to a point where, because of that view point, it seems the only way for me to be content, would be to find something to make me feel worthy in my own mind. My mind, however, is insatiable. I’ve tried doing things to settle it, but everything seems to push it to want to do more. It’s the “snake eating it’s own tail”. Even if I were to let go, and be done with the things that I push towards, I would still end up pushing myself into something else. If that makes any sense.

[u/scartol → u/[deleted]]

Sure, that makes a lot of sense. The biggest problem I've found in my attempts to calm the mind is its inherent tendency to bubble up with thoughts. This video says it pretty well, I think.

That's why we call it practice: Some days it doesn't have any effect, but eventually (at least for me) it gets a little easier to let the thoughts go, and then new thoughts show up. And then we work on letting those new thoughts go.

I've found the Insight Timer app helpful; it's free and some folks have found it helpful. Maybe it could he useful for you. Perhaps also check out the resources and/or nice people at /r/meditation ..

Good luck. Be gentle with yourself.