Why do we feel offended? When we are young, we have an exaggerated ideal version of ourselves. Something that no one is allowed to question because self-esteem is then destroyed at the same time. We use it because it makes us feel unique, separate and different from others, and not the same. It also makes us feel dirty because of what does not fit into how we want to be seen. But is still there as part of us. Unknowingly, we walk around with a perfectionist ideal that makes us impregnable to others and relate by window dressing. Something that of course becomes extremely irritating to those around us. Because everything that is not part of it makes us feel offended. Nothing can be as it is, and it makes others feel uncomfortable and inadequate, which in turn makes them feel offended by it. The most common way to break such a repetition is to compulsively and impulsively throw ourselves into things and become just as uncontrolled as everyone else, which gives us a bad conscience because we are violating the principles which constitute the ideal version of ourselves. As long as we share what makes us feel offended with everyone around us, and do not acknowledge it as something in ourselves as well, everything is just fine. But some of us can’t stand it. In the long run, it becomes unbearably one-sided. So the attitude cracks, which makes everything terribly confusing. We see it around us and are reminded of it all the time and try not to be drawn into it. If we do it anyway and lose our inner balance, then we know one thing, we have exposed others to the tension of the ideal version of ourselves we have. We have made ourselves something we are not and at the same time are offended by someone else questioning it just by being or expressing something different from the principles that govern how we are conditioned. If we want to change this, it is in our self-observation and in our impulsive relationship to our surroundings, we cannot just be an inhuman ideal full of unattainable life principles. Our lives become full of unsolvable contradictions. Others will be hurt and they will continually test our boundaries all the time, until we let go. That is what disarm us and releases that tension within us. We allow others to formulate the relationship with themselves on their own inner terms independent of us. When we are young, we deal with it in different ways. It was only later that I understood what it was that created this tension and its constant bad conscience. When the perfect versions of ourselves where we appear flawless, are violated in their limiting principles, then we get angry. We want to fight. Which will give us a bad conscience because we do not feel like real persons, true to our inner person. Our real person behind our made-up persona is the one who makes us feel genuine to others.
When I was young, I didn’t understand this kind of thing. I just didn’t understand why my parents and others around me suddenly at a certain age stopped treating me the way they had before, and loving me. I felt rejected, an outcast and alone in myself. Suddenly I became an orphan in an infinite emptiness. Everyone became theatrical masks without content. It was terrible. But I was lucky to have my grandparents. Now I see it differently and as something that happens to all of us at some point in our lives, and we encounter it in different ways. Which makes it also appear collectively. We transfer it onto our surroundings in our attempts to come to terms with it. Americans are offended in their ideal patriotism. Russians for their ideals and the Chinese people and their leadership for theirs. Which creates a dangerous climate in the world when they want to fight and defend their ideal versions of themselves regardless of the conflict it creates within them. It functions as a cover for their own inner human being in the great mass. Ultimately, we are only our own relationship to ourselves. Offended by our own ideals with the difficulties and conflicts they constantly provoke in others. It doesn’t matter how old we are. Without any self-observation whatsoever, we just do the same thing. We start fights and create war. But the war is within each of us. When we feel violated and inferior. Rejected and empty. In this sense, we are all children. Some of us never reach adolescence. A time of conscious psychological exploration and development. Some start over later and they take care of everyone else through an ever-present bad conscience. Something that in turn only perpetuates the struggle we have with our ideals through others. In this sense, our inner conflict leads to our downfall. To change but also to a constant escalation. The world becomes our stage and there is no limit to the horrors we expose each other to in our feeling that our ideal version of ourselves has been violated.