I had a beautiful dream after a nightmare. The dream lasted a few seconds and made me cry.

@SinlessOnslaught the only way to help people is doing it despite your struggles.

@Miram And you know you make sacrifices. Time, health, all those things you named in your other post.

The dream essentially depicted you enduring something prolonged and stressful. Something you know has harmed you. Still, you committed to preserving a precious thing.

Then, you didn't show up to some grand kingdom of safety and celebration. A lot of people would have dreamt that. Not you. You showed up to a refugee camp. A place where you're an equal, and your struggle and exhaustion still exist along with that of all the other people.

The children weren't judging you or warning you. They also weren't directly praising you. They were admiring what you had brought to them.

You existed here not as someone who was being explicitly rewarded or recognized, nor as someone whose hardships were over, but as someone who coexisted with the less fortunate.

This is all a sign of your character, Mimi. You don't ask for rewards for your good deeds other than knowing others are happy and okay.

And this is also your subconscious telling you that what you've done with your time in life is all worth it. You've protected the good even when you yourself were hurt, you didn't become evil, and you never asked for anything in return.

Listen to this dream. It may have been short but it was also important.

Even if you don't see these good things in yourself, I do, and your own brain does. Listen to us.

I love you.

@SinlessOnslaught

What I truly want and wish for can't be given to me. It's essentially why I am such a difficult person. I can't be bought, can't be fulfilled either. It is both a good and a horrible thing. So yes, I don't really care for rewards no matter their nature. It is not necessarily a good thing. If you can't build a rapport of fairness, some sort of a contract, some sort of a trust bond..there is a type of deep insatiable instability lurking beneath which will always keep you detached and even dangerous.

I know what I am doing is worth it for me, but I also know the sort of a creature I can, and sometimes have to be, to make sure that worth isn't squandered for instance.

While I don't actively seek out outside validation for much of what I do, I get plenty of it from you and from many others. I am priviliged in many ways. And I am grateful for that. Sometimes we aren't capable of recognizing what we need. Need and wants are radically different.

@Miram I know that what you wish for can't be given to you. You're right to relate that to your personality, and to call it both good and bad.

Bad for obvious reasons.

Good because the knowledge that it's unattainable, makes it harder for people to exploit you. It filters them out before they have a chance to do damage.

But you're not a difficult person. Not inherently. The difficulty arises when other people's values and incentives clash with yours. It is difficult for them because they don't have the same priorities as you.

But I like yours better. Yours are tied to compassion. Other people's are tied to less wholesome things, usually related to material value or status or something else superficial.

Those people are difficult. Difficult in an astoundingly simple way.

Not you. You're complex in a good way. The majority consensus won't understand it. That is not your fault.

Not to argue with you too much but the things you do in this world are not just worth it for you. They're objectively valuable for you and others. That is what this dream was trying to tell you.

The things you do tangibly improve people’s lives, even when you don’t frame them that way or take credit for them. You don’t trace good outcomes back to yourself. You don’t worship results or build an identity around them. You just recognize them, protect them, and nurture them because it’s in your nature to do so.

You live this way so naturally that it feels standard to you. But it isn’t. If it were, everyone would live this way. You already know that.