Life has become pretty overwhelming lately. It's almost like a lot of us are living in a fog.

Not only do I feel this way for various reasons but I’ve been hearing this a lot from others especially in regard to all of the awful events going on lately. The natural disasters, the Las Vegas shooting, the seemingly never ending political turmoil, etc.

While all of these events are awful, I have a difficult time sharing the same feelings of grief that others have. Instead I feel an overwhelming feeling of grief by how disillusioned we have become. Of course it is absolutely heartbreaking if lives were really lost in the LV shooting regardless of who did it or why. And the amount of harm and destruction caused by recent hurricanes, earthquakes and fires throughout the world is devastating. But the amount of grief I feel for these events becomes even more paramount when you have no idea who or what to believe anymore.

Take food for example — if the most basic and natural thing on this planet has also become one of the most unnatural and fake things on this planet — then how can you know what’s real or not anymore? How can you believe what you hear? How can you feel even an ounce of confidence in politics, news or media? How can you even trust your own distractions?

Majority of human beings turn on the TV and believe what they are told instantly. We’ve stopped questioning a long time ago. Our iPhone chargers have basically becoming charging units to reenergize ourselves because we feel lost without the ability to click over to Instagram or Twitter for the most recent updates. We practically worship these social media platforms.

There is a constant obsession with always being in the know. We have to be aware of all the current events as much as possible so we stay plugged in like little robots. The NFL controversies. Kylie Jenner’s pregnancy. Donald Trump’s most recent tweets. Analyzing the f*** out of some random person named Stephen Paddock and his "mental health” to try and understand why this happened…(although not all but many of us here have already analyzed a lot of the bullshit being told in this story.)

My point is we’ve become more obsessed with analyzing the people and the world around us instead of analyzing ourselves.

We have become so distanced from ourselves that we cling onto particular groups or labels in order to feel like we are a part of something. Democrats. Republicans. Vegans. Fruitarians. Conservatives. Christian. Muslim. Buddhist. LGBT. Anarchist. And my personal favorite — our so-called ‘careers' have now become labels for our identity.

It’s almost like these have all become cool clubs to join where you get matching t-shirts and need a secret pass code to join. Instead of studying and dissecting these ideologies to formulate your own beliefs, you throw on your club t-shirt and believe what the group believes.

There’s so much talk of religion, ism’s, politics, and world events in society today. But after 25 years living on this planet I still don’t really get what these people truly believe or think or feel. Topics such as these have become so convoluted and misinformed over time that so much meaning has been lost. It feels like I’m walking on this earth amongst a group of people who care so deeply about certain views or events yet they are just merely distracted by these exact views or events.

It makes me wonder: Are we really that blindly distracted? Or are we purposefully distracting ourselves because we have a bitter taste from life?

I get it. Life can be ridiculously hard and sometimes you need to take your mind away from things in order to feel like the elephant sitting on your chest got a little lighter. Watching a TV show or scrolling through Instagram might be more pleasant than what’s going on in your head. And it’s not always an easy task to dissect yourself and your beliefs so if you can belong to a group that’s already done that for you, then life is a lot easier right?

We distract ourselves to try an escape any pain we have from life. And we all know that anything that can take pain away can also become super addicting. It’s dangerous to live in a mass distraction.

My main question with all of this is:

Why are we no longer distracted by ourselves? Or maybe I should say why aren’t we letting ourselves be our biggest distractions?

Once we look within ourselves and begin to commit to our own being we are one step closer to achieving a more tranquil state of mind. We should distract ourselves with things that help us get closer to ourselves. Even the ugly. If we don’t embrace the awful negative emotions within ourselves or this world then how can we ever understand them? We should nourish our hearts and minds with the things that help us understand our heart and mind more deeply. And never stop questioning the things that we distract ourselves with.

Our sole focus in life should be our soul.

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PS. Both photos are mine except the photo of the quote was found on Pinterest.