For the first 18 years of my life I had a typical Sri Lankan Buddhist upbringing. Once every few weeks the family would go to temple and I would sit under the Bo tree and chant like clockwork. Since my family spoke english at home, I never really understood most sermons (bhana) and chanting ghattas became more of a memorization exercise. My mom would try and interject, point out whenever she could the meanings of verses and tried her best to make me religious. I felt like I practiced the tenets to the best of my abilities but I never understood the meaning of attachment mostly because I was a kid without much interest in materialistic things or social activities beyond the norm.
Fast forward 8 years later to today. I have since moved to the US where things are much different. I don't know if my perspective is a function of age or whether it would have been different if I lived in Sri Lanka. I just eat, breathe, sleep worry/anxiety. Anxiety that my research won't work out. Anxiety that my parents are back home and I won't see them. Anxiety that I am not successful when I see my peers or if I am not living my "best" life... and now today, I see the whole r/wallstreetbets thing. I see my friends post about it and I keep beating myself with envy of how rich I could have become. I reminisce on the poor decisions I have made when it comes to the stock market. If it were only a day or two earlier or if I held to some stocks longer I would have been rich. If I bought bitcoin back in 2013 when I wrote an essay about how it was booming, I would have had a couple of hundred thousand dollars to my name. In reality, I'm living paycheck to paycheck.
Thinking the above made me really sad. I don't think too much about Buddhism especially when I'm out of SL as there isn't a Buddhist community here but for some reason, the current events triggered these thoughts. I wish things were simpler, longing for less commitments and less worry. The more attached I get, the more it causes despair. It took me 26 years to understand what it means to be a Buddhist and I wish I could have conditioned my mind better to tackle these hurdles.
Sorry for the rant. Just felt like I needed to get this out of my chest and didn't know of another outlet.
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