What are we? Or perhaps I should ask why are we the way we are?
Are we the body we live in? Are we the products of our environment?
Are we two kids who aged but never grew up?
I wonder.
Are we more than just living breathing things that walk and talk or think and feel?
I hope we are.
Is this a dream? If this is a dream, is there a way that we can change the plot?
Can we make a change to see something different or something new?
I think that would be nice.
I have listened to different people talk about themselves. I have had long discussions with people about their identities. To learn more, I have sat down and spoken with people who were hurting and had no idea who they are or what they wanted for themselves.
I can relate.
At the same time, I know exactly what I want. I know who I want to be. I know how I want to live. However, this requires effort. Effort means work and more important than anything else, this means I have to address the way I think or believe because life without belief is hopeless.
To be honest with you, I’ve been hopeless before.
I don’t want to belong to that identity anymore.
I remember the first time I listened to a lecture by the great Ram Dass. He talked about us as people and the great spacesuit that we wear.
This is our body. This is our physical identity.
Then he talked about the people we meet and the people who influence us.
I listened to this with my own takeaway. So, please, and with all of my humility, allow me to paraphrase or to explain my own take on this.
I do not claim to be anything like this man.
He was great. Well, he still is.
But as a man, he just exists differently now.
Okay?
Dass talked about the people we meet in life and how we look at one another. He talked about how we see a person of influence and how we look to assume someone else’s identity.
We see things that impress us or look good. So, we try this on for ourselves to see if this decorates or makes our so-called spacesuit look a little better or more appealing.
I am simple. I am complex. I am no different from most. At the same time, I am a person in search and I am someone on a journey. But who isn’t?
Yes, I want to know who I am.
I want to be fine in my so-called spacesuit. I want to realize my own beauty without comparing myself to others. I want to find my sense of inner peace without allowing myself to be the wearer of something false or unfitting. I don’t want to be the next version of someone else.
I want to be the first and next best version of me.
It is fine to be inspired and great to be motivated. Even better, it is imperative to be awakened by the people in our life. We have to learn from them to grow, and without judgment, it is important that we learn from the people in our lives without having to decipher between good or bad.
Safe to say some of my best or most important lessons have come from the so-called bad things or the hard times in my life. Some of my toughest lessons came from some of my greatest loves.
But, so?
We tend to hold the untouchable and irretrievable and then we suffer because of the life we cannot (or do not) have. We tend to live in our losses instead of gains, as if this is who we are.
But none of this is so.
We are not a series of losses or gains. No, these are merely symptoms of life.
Life happens. Loss happens. And, too, love happens.
Great things appear to us every day. Yet it is simple to cling to losses rather than count our blessings. It is easy to see the ugliness over the birth of seeing someone new.
Look at the news or the media and how this focuses on loss or war or conspiracy.
One could look at this and believe nothing more than we live in an unsafe and ugly world.
I am far from new to the idea of how important it is to reshape the way I think.
I am even further from being new to this world. At the same time, I am new to my surroundings and new to this next chapter in my life. Thus, I am nothing more than a growing child.
I am always learning, always growing, and always encountering brand new things. I suppose it would be life-altering if I learned to hold this fact with more excitement rather than associate the newness of something with the ideas of an impeding doom.
If I am to be free or to allow myself the benefit of freedom, then I cannot be free as long as I allow myself to be held as a prisoner of my thinking.
I cannot feel better if I cannot think better. Therefore, in the efforts to stop, drop, and let it go, I can say that I can either be as sick as my secrets, or I can be as well as I dream.
I am who I believe. My future, my personal wealth and my wellbeing are all subject to either the prison of my mind or the freedom of my better thinking.
I have to choose one.
We have a tendency to manifest the worst. We assume the downfall and we eat this and feed the bellies of our self-fulfilled prophecies. But to what avail?
In the end, we result in our so-called failures, and we say things like, “see? I told you this would never work!” Thus, we fall like prey to our own doubt and stay caught in the underbelly of our own personal beast.
As for me or my spacesuit. I have learned that this is part of who I am.
Yes, this is part of me.
But this is only part of me.
I am not the assumption or the opinions of other people. I am not the combination of outside influences nor am I the sum or pastor to my worst fears.
I am as I believe I am.
I can most certainly can be the worst of my assumptions.
If I want to be.
But I am not.
I am not the sentence of my judges or the insults of my enemies.
What am I?
I say I am a man. I am a person.
I am frightened. I am often confused.
I am someone who is experiencing loss.
I have bumps and bruises and scars that are unseen by the eye.
I know what pain is and I know all too much about heartache.
I know the depths or the despair of unwanted loneliness.
I know what I like, and I know what I love.
I know where, how, and who I want to be.
I know that my list of important things have changed.
I know that I have changed too.
I am complicated and simple and to keep this as simple as possible; I am my own self, as in me and no one else.
Same as you are you, I am a person who lies, loves, laughs, and I learn and grow at my own pace.
I have my own ways of interpretation.
I might not see things the same as you or anyone else.
But I have my own depths of perception.
I have my own taste.
And this is important for me to say.
No, wait.
This is brave for me to say.
Therefore, I admit there was a time in my life when I wanted to be fit, or more fitting to the masses and accepted.
I assumed to like, want, or chose to enjoy the same common things as other people.
But none of this fit for me. I followed the basic and common blueprints of happiness, but none of this was happy or fulfilling for me.
I have my own flavor.
I have my own scent and my own sound.
I have my own touch and feel.
I have my own desires.
I have my own version of beauty which is not perfect or airbrushed or commercialized like a picture in a magazine. No.
But I can say that I have seen what beauty is to me. She is not flawless or scarless.
But, yes, she is beautiful.
I swear.
I have desire.
I have my own special views and levels of intimate secrets.
And from this day forward, these are only to be shared with someone deserving.
I am on a mission.
And I know that I am not the only one.
We all have our own search.
We all have sights to see and levels and goals to reach.
We all have wants, dreams, desires, and aspirations.
However, all of mine are unreachable if I do nothing but limit myself and hold the unwanted lessons that hurt my soul.
I am a boy who wants to play.
I am a kid who wants to laugh and be silly.
I am a young man who wants to know where I belong and which way to go.
I want to walk the beach . . .
I am this, me, a body in a spacesuit.
But I am more.
As I progress or take my next step, I want to be more like the newborn sun as it bursts from the palm of our horizon. Only, I don’t need to be seen by the masses.
No, just by one person.
I want to be bright and beautiful. I don’t want to lie or look for attention or seek approval.
Not anymore.
I don’t want to try and impress anyone in fear that I am too ordinary or unimpressive at best.
I have tried to fit in places and to fit with people who are both beautiful and lovely.
But I did not fit.
However, it is evident to me that due to my thinking, and as a direct result to the way I have lived or treated myself or them, I am on a new road.
I am fixed with a new plan.
So, I have to relearn how to relive my life.
Time to reset myself and replant my feet.
It is time to look at the sunrise and think about the new chances that are bound to come my way.
And wait –
Before I close or go on about my day, I have to tell you this because this part is important to me.
I would have never humbled myself like this before. I would have never said that I am not who I was (or who I said I was). To be more honest, I would have doubted all of the above.
I always believed in the impending doom.
I would have spit at the ground and said, “Fuck it!”
Take the pain because life sucks and that’s all.
“It doesn’t matter” when nothing matters but survival.
I have survived decades.
But the question remains: Do I know what it means to live?
In my previous life, I’d have said that no one cares.
And maybe no one does.
Even if someone does care, what difference does it make?
Pain still hurts. Life is unfair or in my old ways of thinking, why wash away the blood if I‘m not done bleeding yet?
Stop. Drop.
And let this go.
I’m no guru.
I’m not better than anyone.
Then again, I’m not worse either.
I’m me.
You are you.
But on a personal note, and if you ask me, I have never seen anyone in this world more beautiful—
(than you).
The Written Addiction 