August 15, 2005
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We are not who we think we are.
We say that we are quiet or strong or smart or clever or silly.
We talk about each other by telling tales to summarize the essence of
our nature. Remember that time so and so did such and such? That one is
so <this> or <that>. He is a hopeless romantic. She is a
natural leader. He was born to fight. She is driven by a need to help
others.We say what it is that we could be or who we could become. We wish for
each other and plan and plot for one another. We fear for each other
and dream of one another. We pretend that we know each other from
watching and listening and observing. By cataloguing the experiences we
share, filing them a way in our mind we presupose that these form the
shape of the lives of those we encounter. As if mere events make up all
or even most of who someone is. It is folly.We are something more; something elemental. When you strip away the
acts and pretenses, the defensive lies and false bravado, you find
something simpler. A mere whisper of persona: curiosity and wonder
sheathed in layers upon layers of terrible mortal fear. Somewhere in
there we are more real. True.Have you ever laughed without knowing why? Have you ever not laughed
and saw nothing humerous while those around you were cracking up? Do
you recall your first laugh, your first smile, your first frown, your
first shout of anger? How much was born of you in truth and how much
was immitation? How much did you make yourself akin to those around you
and how much did you bend your wishes to your fears and need to fit in?
Are you more or less than those choices? If you take them back and
return to the point before you made them, will you still be you? If you
roll back the clock and remove the influence of others, the struggles
to immitate or reimagine the actions of those around you to formulate
your own essence, what would you be? Perhaps not a natural anything.
Perhaps not sure to make any choice. Surely you’ve seen the very
kind erupt in rage, the bossy become meak, the boisterous be silent and
subdued, the happy go lucky be drowned in misery? Perhaps they are all
as likely a choice as any? OR perhaps they are all nothing at all, and
our true selves lie in a deeper space. We just have to let go and
embrace it.But can we persist there? We need our illusions. We wrap them around us
to give us shelter and bring us purpose. We use the illusions to fend
off the endless terror so we can see a little more with our wonder
filled eyes. We do this so that we may live rather than spend eternity
wondering whether we are more or less than a hair’s breathe above
nothing at all. In this way we build stories, or games, struggles, and
dreamlands in which we persist and hope they don’t turn to nightmares.
Or perhaps we hope that they do for that would add a sharper truism to
the illusoion we have wrought.Perhaps, though, we should wish for more. I do. I want to go back into
that bland self. I want to strive to grasp the inner me who has no
illusions surrounding him, no lies to prop him up, no benevolent half
truths to guide his paths. I want to dive into the raw current of
endless emotion and see who or what it is that is really there. I want
to find why it fears and face those fears so that I might grasp the
heart of true wonder and see the world with eyes unclouded. At least I
think I do. At least I say I do. At least I strive to want to. But is
that simply… my illusion? I know but one truth.I want to be real. Now I am just another shadow.
But I am not there yet.
