The irrepressible desire to warm one's own heart. Whether it be desires or hobbies, it all somehow finds it way back to companionship; relationships. As time slowly churns throughout life, no person can truly admit satisfaction without the proper relationships. Humans are designed to desire one another. Each person approaches this desire in different ways, but the ultimate goal remains the same: companionship. The more I expose myself to media, daily life, and simple observation, the more I realize that my entire focus is to bond with other people. The odd thing is that this is good. However, the good seems to vanish very quickly when I start to examine the fine print. The motives behind my desire for interpersonal relationships are selfish, to say the least. Reaching out to others is just a way to confirm existence and through that confirmation gain worth. Imagining my current life apart from others results in a painful headache. Although my life is about eighteen years and eleven and one-half months old, everything leading up to the present has been a pathetic attempt to gain credibility as a human being. The success rate has fluctuated consistently.
Most of my worries and concerns stem from the fact that I don't have consistent friendships among a diverse group of people. It all started with anime and puberty. Oh, and let's not forget the beginning of my homeschooling life. Over-exposure to unrealistic depictions of teenage life (anime), extraction of daily peer interaction (public school), and larva mode (puberty) all came at the worse time possible; the same time. As my mind was being jumbled by hormones, I developed Chuunibyou**. It wasn't anything extreme, eh, now that I sit hear typing away...it was an extreme case in a way. The first few years of homeschooling life was filled with nothing but crazy daydreams about fantasy and "what if" scenarios. "What if a girl all of a sudden fell for me? How would that play out?" At the time, anime and my own personal experience (experience = 0) were all I had to build the outside world. Making friends, how people react to situations, daily life, and even romance, it was all based off of preconceived ideas of a 12 year old reinforced by the onslaught of otaku pandering. Ah! What a tragedy!
I lived a life of arrogant ignorance till I started to mature into the latter years of adolescence. Re-examining my life during that time causes me to blush. How on earth could I have been foolish enough to have believed those obvious lies? Anime is supposed to be unrealistic and exciting. My life wasn't exciting (no one would argue that point) so I felt inadequate. Was I missing out on my youth? I felt like the homeschool life was sapping away my precious experiences. Making tons of new friends, having fun doing fun things, and even encountering the opposite sex were all foreign concepts. The only window into that world I peered through was stained with globs of moe*** lies, but at the the time I believed them to be true. I thought that a regular student should have at least 3-10 friends and have about 1-3 romantic prospects. Forget those lame expectations. Anime damaged my thought process when it came to people and social situations in general. It is hard to explain since I am not a great writer, but it made me think about people in an ungodly way. I thought friends were necessary for a fulfilled and happy life. I thought romance was painful, unpredictable, and wavering. All lies.
Friendship is not the culmination of life. It is a gift we share with one another. Living a life for friendships is simply not right. Anime always told me to discard everything in the name of friendship. The way friendships were so highly regarded in anime made me place it on a pedestal it didn't deserve. Yes, friendships are supremely important for a healthy social life, but it would be incorrect to strive towards friendship as a reason to live. Many animes even went so far as to say a life without friends is worthless. Although I may sound like I am downplaying friendships, please realize what I am trying to say. Friendships are amazing things to have, and we should always cherish them for as long as possible, but it is not necessary for a happy and fulfilling life. It would be very difficult to strive for a satisfactory life void of friendship, but if someone did find themselves struggling to find a decent friend they shouldn't quit on life. Friendships are something that must be earned through hard work and kindness. It isn't some trophy to display to gain some sort of worth. Real friends are few in number. I don't know many people who have more than two or three close friends, yet I somehow base my happiness off of how many people I have talked to and hung out with during the week. If I spent most of my time by myself, I was supposedly wasting my time. Perhaps I was. Anime told me what friends are and how essential they are to life. It had a few encouraging things to say about friendships, not all of it was bad. But the overall message was still false. In the end, I realized that real friends are there for support. Not for fun. Fun is just an added bonus to the friendship. It is okay to have only one or two (or even none) good friends in a lifetime. Everyone has or had a friendship(s) sometime in their life. How did they treat it? What was it to them? I answered these questions by anime standards. I always treated the few friends I had with overwhelming love and devotion. When a friendship ended, I was devastated. During my homeschooling years, I had virtually zero friends which caused me to hate my life. Friendships are everything, right? Wrong. They are important, but they aren't everything.
Anime didn't just distort my view on friendships, but the way a boy should perceive a girl. Many (all?) anime shows portray women as beautiful sexual objects for men or at least depict beautiful girls in dire need for the main character to save them from some dire circumstance. Notice how I describe them as beautiful? Ugly girls don't exist in anime. As a pubescent teen, I was bombarded with female characters with "ideal" body features that every boy dreams about. Big boobs, perfect curves, perfect skin, perfect smile, everything about female anime characters scream plastic surgery. My view on women was fake and unrealistic, to say the least. Whenever I looked at a girl I always compared her to some anime girl. Do they ever measure up to my anime standards? Never. Because they are fake. It was either perfection or nothing. It wasn't just the unrealistic bodies. The personality of the girl has to be juuust like the girls in anime: always drooling over the main character, falling for him as soon as he helped them weed a garden (not even joking about that one), helpless and hopeless without a male presence. Yeah, like a chick is going to fall for me if I tell them they look pretty (quite the opposite, actually). Presently, I know better than to think of women as mere objects or helpless damsels in distress. They are human beings who are created and loved by the same Maker who made me. Let's just not forget how easily a young boy's mind can be corrupted by puberty-driven character design.
Romantic relationships are an entirely different can of worms. Anime has taught me two terrible things concerning romance: 1) women will fall in love with you if you do particular things, and 2) romantic relationships reach their climax after each person reciprocates their feelings for one another. In other words, the relationship will end in success after they become a couple. There is nothing wrong with a good romcom now and again. It is fine to have shallow relationships and character development in film (look at me getting into proper film making again), but it is not fine when you start to adopt these ideals for your own life. Dear Reader, you must realize that I have watched dozens of animes that portray these deceitful one-dimensional relationships. I have come to the realization that women don't think that way. 99.99% (.....errr, maybe more like 90%) of women will not fall in love with me if I give them some kindness and attention. Women aren't shallow, one-dimensional creatures. Romantic relationships aren't just about the physical. In fact, I have come to the conclusion that romantic relationships are purely based on the emotional level. One could argue for a spiritual side, and you would be correct. But a relationship between a man and women can only work if they are both emotionally compatible and physically attracted to one another. Romantic relationships aren't based purely on how spiritually in-sync two people happen to be.
The last, but probably most damaging, affect anime has had on me as a growing boy would have to be how anime portrays men. Stoic, muscular, a strong sense of justice, and overwhelming compassion. Sure, those are great adjectives for a great man. Again, bring this back to reality. No man is like that... All men are sinners and strive for themselves, not others. It was good to admire the men of anime as role models, but remember, I took these standards as general standards of life. Deceit and selfishness are very real things that every man will fight against. Lust is an attribute that every dude in anime has. I knew since day one of puberty that men crave a women's body, but anime told me to embrace that lust, not rule it. So I allowed my lust to consume my mind. Lust is a part of life, there is no escaping it. But willingly feeding it is not what the Maker desires. To feed lust is to feed my sinful nature. I must die to that lust daily. Ah, so manly and holy. Let's be honest, Dear Readers. You and I both lose to our vices, daily. Doesn't that make the Savior all the more beautiful? Another post for another time!
I bring up this topic because I find myself slinking back into this old mindset. Thankfully, I am wise enough to catch myself before it is too late. Now that I am fully enjoying Summer, my homeschool lifestyle is catching up to me. I don't interact with people daily anymore, and free time is abundant. Both of these factors have resulted in me jumping back into the otaku world. Over the past month I have delved into anime like a demented scuba diver, exposing myself to these terrible falsehoods about masculinity, relationships, and women again. I noticed my depression started to creep up once I started to watch animes that grossly over value friendship. It made me look at my current circumstances in disdain. It made me feel like I didn't have any real friends because I don't see them five times and week and talk to them about everything. I don't have seven friends to do fun things with. I don't have romance! Good Lord. Suffice it to say, I laughed and started to resent myself when I realized what was happening. I was measuring myself to anime standards yet again. Not only that, I was beginning to view women as objects yet again. Why is it so easy to overshadow truth with convenient lies?
I came across this music video called ME!ME!ME!**** It is a grotesque and sexually explicit music video about an otaku. The music video basically depicts the life of a man who has become addicted to anime porn and the otaku lifestyle. He neglects his girlfriend and later realizes the pain he caused to her and tries to fight his addiction. Sadly, he loses to his addiction and remains a slave to it. But the video is purely based upon individual interpretation. My interpretation of it is this:
Addiction, in this case the otaku lifestyle (relevant to my life), is a very very dangerous problem. If a person over exposes himself to anime, it warps his view on life (hence the crap ton of writing above). It resonated with me since I was just thinking about those particular things when I found this video. Of course, my thoughts above do not only apply to just anime. Anime was simply one of the many forms of deceit I took part in. Books and real life situations can also easily distort reality.
My view on life and people change depending on my current situation. They shouldn't, yet they are. It is strange how humans judge by their feelings. Feelings are too sporadic, too unpredictable to be considered a correct way to judge one's life. I know the correct standards, and I know the right way to think. Unfortunately, I am human. My emotions will distort my expectations. One of the many flaws of mankind is the need for consistent accountability. As soon as something constant is left out of the equation, all that is left is wavering spontaneity. I don't want uncertainty to rule my life, yet I allow it to be so at every turn.
My parents have warned me throughout my childhood (and even to this day) that anything and everything that I expose myself to will affect me. Whether it be positive or negative, it will affect my person. I always dismissed this warning since I believed myself to be of a strong and healthy mind. Oh, my mind is healthy (right?), but it sure isn't strong. The influence is subtle, ever so subtle. Frighteningly subtle. It took two months of this subtle influence to sprout its ugly head from the ground once Summer started. I recognize its sinister grin. I kept it company for long enough during the pubescent stage of my life. I warn my Dear Readers to self-evaluate your standards. I can rant and rave about the perfect standard we have in the Maker, but I wont. The standard of the Maker is the standard for life. Just as the sky is blue when the sun is shining, so is perfection for the standard of the Maker.
Here I am with another bout of depression. Anime life looks so amazing! The fantasy! The romance! The friendships! It all looks so much better than my current life. A lot of things look better than my current life. Am I doing something wrong? Yes and no. I can't possibly live the perfect life, but I can try. Measuring oneself to standards not based on the Maker's Word is wrong. That is clear. Therefore, may I not look at others (whether they be real or fake anime characters) with envy. I am satisfied with the relationship I share with the Maker, but that is another post for another rant for another time.
Take care Dear Readers!
* Otaku - A lifestyle of over-indulgence in anime, manga, and video games
*** Moe - Basically a term used to refer to anime-related elements i.e. shy, overtly cute, feisty, etc. fake and unrealistic attributes usually tacked onto female characters in animes
**** Please don't watch this video if you don't watch anime and are offended by explicit gore, nudity, and sensuality.
DISCLAIMER: If you believe any of this, then I am not sorry....because it is just too obvious that this is just plain, ignorant, and foolish rambling. Thanks for putting up with me Dear Readers. On to the next topic!
.......just a side on on this post....
ReplyDeleteHAPPY last day in the wonderful world of 18........
I expect riotous living tomorrow in the form of cake eating, balloon popping, ice cream stuffing and other expressiveness....
your big sister wishes you happy birthday....