Crushing Words

It has been almost 8 years since I first saw this. I come back to your videos often because they helped me a lot in my youth, and now as an adult who struggles with mental disorders, when I don't understand a feeling, I come right back to these. Ze, you are my calming lamp. I miss you dearly and if you see this I just want you to know that because of you, I too spread love and understanding wherever I can.

I hope this guy has children that he can pass his wisdom and humor to. We need more people like him.

"So what are your plans?"  That crushes me every time. I don't make plans, things just happen, and I wish I had better control over it.

I think of this video all the time. I come back to it often. I can’t believe how many years it’s been. I know these kind of videos are not what this channel is for anymore, but I can’t overstate how cherished they are to me. Thanks Ze. ❤️

The moment where you looked down and murmured, "aw, fuck." That was the most raw emotional I've seen in a while.

Dear Ze, I want you to understand how amazing a human being you are. Only you can convey an incredible insight into humanity through ridiculous statements like "I hope you have a calming lamp, they work". Your wisdom will never be culturally irrelevant and your videos will forever enlighten 20 year old procrasinators like me. You inspire more than you think. Love.

I'm very stress prone and have anxiety and depression. Some days, all it takes is an 'are you okay?' An especially crushing thing that happened, though, was that I got an F in one of my studios. One of my projects for that studio, however, though, got a different grade than me. I asked what it was, and he said, "oh, that's confidential information." This was crushing because I realized, they're not training me to be a good architect. They're training me to be a good architecture STUDENT. They're willing to compromise the well-being and learning experience of the student and their ability to discover and apply themselves because the system is more important to them than the students in it. It was never about me being especially bright or talented, or how I need to dim my lights to let others shine because I can intimidate them (same conversation. I swear to god he told me this.), but it's because they don't, and have never, cared. How are they surprised that I don't give a shit about their conventions in return?

A great poet once wrote "We should all just come clean and relax". We should all resolve to be kinder to one another: Everyone has these crushing words moments.

My most crushing moment was this Christmas, 2015. I realized my father didn't know who I was. That he would die thinking his son was something he wasn't, through stubbornly refusing to access readily available information I would tell him if only he'd take the time to listen. I'm 20 years old. My father has colon cancer. I've not spoken to him for more than 20 minutes at a time for, I think, two years. My father never taught me anything, except the one abstract, esoteric lesson of how to completely fail at being a man. I learned to shoot, fish, run, jump, swim, speak, stand, charm, smoke, drink, eat, fight, and love from family members who love me and are invested in my development, or all alone out of necessity. I even learned to ride a bike from a neighbor man, who's name has long since left my memory. My dad was present for much of my life, however he was absent the entire time. In the past, I resented him. Silently, deeply, creating more pain in my heart than I was previously aware was able to be held by a single person. Now I'm here. My father, with Death reaching out the hand long overdue. And me, a stranger to him, knowing little more about him than he knows of me.

I had an odd crushing words moment during my apprenticeship. As a quite introvert person since the first day I can remember, I've never been one for socializing much, so as one can imagine, working as a doctor's assistant with all the patients and teamwork and stuff was something of a challenge. Don't ask me how I got this job anyway - strange thing between coincidence and the doctor offering me the apprenticeship out of the blue while I was actually there for an examination. But, as it turned out, all the patient caring and teamworking wasn't all that bad. I really connected to my coworkers and many patients praised me for my kindness and calmness. Long story short, never have I felt so welcomed and comfortable in any social group before. I rarely stayed with my coworkers during lunch break though - our kitchen was ridiculously small for 11 people, even though we split our lunch breaks into two shifts, and the thought of sitting with 3 other people on a 2-people-couch for an hour, the room for colonoscopies right the next door, having to prepare your meal the day before everyday, while living 10 calming walking minutes away from my parents home wasn't all that appealing. So ... I went home for lunch. And for one and a half year, everyone else was just fine with it. At least up to one day when a colleague of mine walks up to me 10 minutes before closing time and told me something about how everyone in the team knows each other so well, yet I'd be almost a stranger to them. And that ... hit me hard. I put a lot of effort into all that socializing and enhanced more than I could've imagined just a few years back; and then this. After that few words my colleague told me so casually to encourage me to stay with them for lunch, I didn't felt confident in the group anymore. The first thing I did on that evening was crying on my couch as soon as I was home, because I was so frustrated about my misbelief of having a social connection to anyone for the past year. And then I got even more frustrated about how easily I get frustrated about trivial things and I ended up in a pathetic downwards spiral of unsecurity. The next day at work I felt like all my coworkers were strangers to me and all the friendlyness and caring between us was nothing but a formality and they didn't actually liked me but pretended to do so. It felt like my whole view on life was false and a mere illusion, and that I never can be sure that the way I see something actually is the correct way. And then I imagined that everytime I go home for lunch, the others would talk about how strange and creepy and what-not I am. Few weeks later it turned out that only this one colleague was thinking like that, and the other nine were very understanding with me going home for lunch because they'd do the same if they could. I know, it sounds pathetic, crushed by the preference of where tu spend lunch time. Meh.

One of the most crushing moments of life was sitting and talking with one of my best friends and he looked at me and said "I'm happy"; he said it frankly with no subtext. In that moment I looked at him and the emotion seemed to emit from his eyes. I realized I have never felt that way, content or fulfilled with myself or my situation. I realized there 2 years ago that I am a person who is ruled by fear, and negative emotion. To this day imagining his face at that moment makes me feel so low and destroyed that it is hard to explain.

The most crushing words to me are always, "No, you can't do that." Especially when it's something I'm passionate about. I know that I can change the world, but I'm "only a high-schooler" and I need to "aim a bit lower because there are people that can change the world, but you're not one of them." Why don't people see that change is possible and necessary for us to continue on?

My crushing words: Shame on those who, during their puberty,  murdered the person they might have become.  —Jean Vigo I'm afraid that I let that happen. 

"make sure your personal life is sorted".... that's heavy.

My crushing moments come when I realize that I would give anything to live in a world in which I can mean something the way I want to, but will never be able to. 

When I was just turning 10, and my parents were breaking up, my mother moving to Ireland, and she said to me "If you don't come with me now you're abandoning me forever". That stuck. 

"This isn't working out." are some words that crush me. It doesn't matter if it's a project i'm working on or a relationship, it crushes me either way. The only thing that changes is the amount, like how much it crushes me. Also, I never thought I would ever share my personal feelings in a youtube comment section. You must be a wizard, zefrank. 

I'm in college, and over the past few years I've been realizing just how much of an impact my parents' divorce has had on me. I was only 4 and I don't even remember them being married. But just the fact that I never saw them together. I never saw how a good marriage was supposed to work. I never saw a man making sacrifices for his wife because he loved her, only a single mother making sacrifices for her kids because she loved them, and a single father making sacrifices for his kids because he loved them. I love my parents very much, but they don't know how painful it is. It's like a piece is missing from what would have been a great childhood. It wasn't a very big piece, but it was the most important one.

My crushing words are ones I said to myself, almost by mistake. "I'm all alone". The fact that I told myself that... it just brought reality down on my head. I hadn't cried in 10 years, but those 3 words, that one night... Fuck man...

crushing moment....the disappointed look on my dad's face every time I don't do good enough for him in my courses at university... especially when we both know that he worked so hard to pay for my education.