Life As You Know It
A funny thing happens when you’ve lived long enough and have seen outside the nest of the place you grew up in. Eventually you return. It happens. There’s no sense in avoiding it. That’s not the funny thing, though. The funny thing is the perspective you gain. It’s literally like looking at the person you used to be, in entirety, from a different angle. Down a corridor. Through a different lens.
All those hopes and dreams and opinions and thoughts…so different. So small. Or at least that’s what it seems to me. If anything with the passing of time I have become more myself than ever. And no, that doesn’t mean I need to lay off the doughnuts. Though that probably wouldn’t hurt. No, it means that the person I am now is closer to the person I should be. If that makes sense.
When you’re young you stumble around in the dark. There is no light. You can’t even conceive the notion of light. It’s a foreign thing. But when you see it, when you get a little hint of it, well that’s a world altering event. Then you have a direction to travel in. A place to focus on. But how do you get to that place when you don’t know the right questions to ask? I mean, you can ask all the questions that come to mind, but a mind that cannot perceive beyond the limitations of its experience and physical senses can’t fathom the stuff that leads to the right questions.
This is an important maxim: Know Thyself.
But, you say, I already know myself. After all, I am me. Who could know me more than myself?
Well friend, here is the hard truth–the vast majority (we’re talking like 99.998%) do not know themselves. Cannot know themselves. They are lost and blind, drowning in an ocean of ego, desire and reaction. How can you know yourself when you can’t be honest with yourself? How can you know yourself when you’re afraid of what you might be? How can you know yourself when you are content living a falsehood?
You can’t. But you can sure-as-well fool yourself into thinking you can!
So now, here I am, perced on the edge of what has been and what will be. And I see the thing I once was, and the person I am destined to become. And I still do not know myself as much as I would like. But here’s the thing: it never ends. You are constantly changing, and so you must establish a growing relationship with yourself. Know new fears, know old scars and memories. Know that by facing these things you make yourself stronger. You make yourself more you than you’ve ever been.
So keep a look out, as see how well you know yourself. See how you see the world, and know that is is but one point of a multitude of points. And it will shift. And life is good.
B.
