My main limitation is my emotions (or lack thereof except fo..

My main limitation is my emotions (or lack thereof except for sadness and feelings of inadequacy). My emotional limitations, in the sense that they are tied almost inextricably to whether I can rationally justify them. It’s difficult for me to feel “happy” if there are no “happy circumstances” (or a circumstance that rationally warrants happiness such as winning a lot of money or an academic achievement) in which I can attribute that emotion to. I do feel a lot of sadness and depression, which I, unfortunately, tell myself is justified because of the decisions that got me to this point (choosing the wrong field - philosophy), not choosing a career that would have actually granted me the much needed independence in my life, and simply not being “good enough” to have prevented that mistake. I suppose, the insecurity of not “being enough” is the biggest limitation in my life. With my mention of philosophy: I am in awe at the philosophers I study and have studied under — such as Kripke, Fitting, Freeman, Devitt, etc. They are brilliant, original, and have contributed groundbreaking work in the field. I don’t think my mind was fit to study logic and maths. It was actually very difficult for me to get through the higher level maths, even though I enjoyed it very much. I couldn’t finish my minor and had to take my minor in French, instead. I felt that by pursuing philosophy, I was, indeed, “following my dreams”, but at what cost? I wasn’t being realistic — I didn’t think concretely about my future and how much money I would have to fork out for this graduate degree — or how it is nearly impossible to gain tenure in my case, how many “original” publications you have to push out into prestigious academic journals a year, how little time you have between research, writing, teaching, and the fact that I am socially inept which should have been a sign that I wouldn’t have made a great teacher in the first place. I never considered myself to be intellectually gifted; I always felt that most of my academic and intellectual merits resulted from me working extraordinarily hard to appease my parents who have come to hold low standards for me, relative to my sister (who they expect big things from). I think about this a lot, actually. With a career, my main problem is that I feel limited by what I believe to be realistic and rational (such as my belief that I shouldn’t pursue certain things because I’m not good enough). I don’t want to be guided by my “deceptive emotions” — but that thought itself isn’t rational. To escape this limiting belief, I must acknowledge that my motivations, desires, belief systems, basically: the framework in which I perceive myself as an individual tied to a variety of identities (group affiliation, roles I play under various conditions) and relationships are the result of u n.c o n s c i o u s mental processes, many that are not easily accessible to the so-called “rational mind”. In the end, my belief that I’m not good enough to be a philosopher: I “rationally” believe that I should be realistic with what I am capable of, what my talents are, and I should be honest with who I am. (for example, I have hand tremors so there is no way I can be a surgeon of any kind or work with my hands — that would be unrealistic — anyone who would support me if that was my “passion” or “dream” would be lying and doing me a disservice because I have physical restraints). I want to know I am not pursuing something based off raw passion, and that I actually excel in this field. To be true to myself, is to 1) be honest about your intellectual and physical limitations (people are good at different things, people have limitations that prevent them from doing what they truly want to do — like I said, I have tremors that makes me physically incapable of doing certain things with my hands. It would be disingenuous for me to choose a career path that warrants absolute precision) 2) this is what I fail at: to be honest about what you ARE capable of, to understand that one instance of failure (er few instances of failures) is not sufficient evidence for you to neglect your would-be potential and cease trying altogether. I view this as a precarious balance between being realistic to what you know (which includes what you do not know such as your own potential) and the acknowledgement that you do not have an objective or all encompassing perspective of yourself and the world — our view of the world and our role in it is inevitably filtered by insecurities, biases, inexplicable beliefs and thoughts that ultimately guide our underlying brain processes (which as I said previously, is not rational).