Obsessed
People who respect themselves are willing to accept the risk that the Indians will be hostile, that the venture will go bankrupt, that the liaison may not turn out to be one in which every day is a holiday because you’re married to me. They are willing to invest something of themselves; they may not play at all, but when they do play, they know the odds.— Joan Didion, On Self-Respect
The people who denigrate you for being obsessed are the ones whose lives are dictated by their family and the people around them. These are the same people who are obsessed with their work and studies, and the things that are socially acceptable. They have personalities as bland as boiled chicken. Their lives look good on paper but if given an option, most people would not choose to be them.
A lot of nonchalance is pretending not to care, and by trying to be "effortlessly cool", people end up being inauthentic. Not responding to messages immediately may work at the beginning, but over-time, it creates a domino effect: you start holding back other parts of yourself just so you'll be palatable to others. I'm not saying you should show extreme enthusiasm from the get-go, but what I'm saying is this: if you start off any connection withholding a lot of yourself, don't be surprised when people don't like you for who you actually are.
I think this ties into why online dating doesn't work for the majority, and why friendships are dying and people are becoming lonelier. Instead of cracking jokes to mask our vulnerabilities and acting nonchalant about what we want, we should just state our desires honestly and unabashedly. And if you think about it, the people who've gotten what they want were never nonchalant about it.
You're so afraid of looking like a loser that you will never be a winner in the domain that you really care about. And if you ever end up being a winner at something, that lack of passion you have for that thing will make you resent yourself because you know that deep down, that energy and effort could have been spent on something you really care about.
Go and be obsessed over something, but make sure it brings value to your life. If it wasn't for the obsessed, we wouldn't have the technology we have today, if it wasn't for the obsessed you wouldn't be able to be the person you are today. The privilege we have today is apathy and mediocrity, and everyone views it as the norm. The moment someone strives for something that doesn't have society's stamp of approval, they are labelled as obsessed. Why is it acceptable for PhD students when they are obsessed with their studies? Why is it acceptable when sportsmen are obsessed with their diet, sleep, and overall stamina? This reminds me of what Schopenhauer once said in The World as Will and Idea about how things that are once looked down upon are later accepted and then viewed as a no-brainer,
... a brief triumph is allotted between the two long periods in which it is condemned as paradoxical or disparaged as trivial.
Being obsessed about something looks so uncool, so desperate, but on the other side is someone who cares for nothing, not because they really don't but because they've built an internal barrier to protect themselves from the comments of others. And now they can't answer the question of what they're passionate and excited about, because those desires are buried somewhere so deep that it would take a lot of introspection to uncover them.
I think it's time we bring back passion, obsession, and a little compassion for the parts of ourselves that yearn and strive for more. Not because it's cool, but because it's the only way we can stay alive in this world that wants us digitised and robotised. People are being condemned for seeking help from AI, inadvertently making them think and write the same. But really, who can blame them?
The same people who heavily condemn heavy AI users are forgetting something: expressing our humanity has become so uncool that we've resorted to the one thing that will produce immediate responses and never turn us away. Individuals who cannot hold space for themselves and others are the prime contributors to this AI economy. So the next time you condemn others and bewail the damage it brings to the environment, ask yourself: do you hold space for others to be messy, to be human? Or do you count the minutes 'till you can run from their presence and "keep your peace"? Because like how your AI buddy would phrase it in typical formulaic AI-speak, "peace without humans isn't peace, it's me".