optical delusion of consciousness

i am impossible to love.

it is too difficult and painful to love me, and therefore it shall never be done. i fear greatly that my position in life mirrors that of jane austen herself. filled with love but unloveable. this shouldn't bother me so, but much to my misfortune, i am human- perhaps worse, a woman. a woman who carries with her this aching heart of emotions much like a business man his briefcase.

i am lucky though. very lucky. my heart no longer breaks for one person, but instead for all men. anyone is capable of destroying another, but it's much worse to destroy yourself. i am not sure where i am going with this. i hate watching films that are about love in its' own light. love is this all-consuming energy that somehow stands on its' own and i don't think it should be. but my thoughts don't matter in that sense.

do not get me wrong, i am not currently in love. and i do not mourn the loss of it either, rather i mourn the birth of it. i do not exactly mean this either, but its' overwhelming power exhausts me. i am quite happy to not be under its' spell at the moment or i would be even more tired.

my life is quite the confusing mess, sorted out bi-weekly it seems with a new blast of vitality. but i am starting to realise, or moreso acknowledge, that this trend is not of my own person but of humanity as a whole. the struggle i face is not unique to myself but is one shared by the masses.

Dr. Albert Einstein;
"A human being is part of a whole, called by us the 'Universe', a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest- a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

does this not destroy, in a large sense, the idea of the individual? does this concept of existence not tear down the walls of the Self?

"Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

this is something i have been taking in over the past few weeks. this new found mindset. i keep writing of it, but not nearly as frequently as it is in my thoughts. is the Self the prison einstein speaks of? because as my interpretation concludes, the Self is what restricts us from actual experience of life. so does this mean destruction of the Self is necessary? is this the plan behind such messages as those in fight club? i keep pondering the importance of the individual to society. i think it is absolutely true that we are confined by our own obsession with our Selves and that which is immediately before us, but i also believe that the development of the Self is necessary in order to be able to expand to something on a greater level. perhaps this is what einstein meant? perhaps he did not mean to be so anti-Individual as to call for an expansion from the quite significant core of the Self. it is true, however, that if one focuses too intensely on their own Self and not at all on the world around them, they will never reach the point in self-actualization where they are able to expand outwards. perhaps the idea of self-actualization in itself is mislabelled, and instead should be deemed human-actualization, or to take it further- simply actualization.