YOU ARE WHO YOU WANT TO BE

Are you going through a season were life is slowly but surely passing you by? Every happening around you seems to be nothing more than a recorded tape played over and over again. You see yourself as a bystander, an observer, with little or nothing to contribute to the happenings around you. Your passivity is sometimes so acute that you dread the thought of being invited into anything akin to reality. You are just content to watch. Now, I know that activity may sound to you like, the “hard stuff”, but that is not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the little things that make up our daily existence as social beings. Mundane things such as a simple “hello”, good morning”, “how do you do”, can all of a sudden become herculean and altogether demanding, exhausting your last drop of energy.

You just want to lock yourself up in a sound proof, transparent bubble, from where you can clearly see your world without encountering the risk of participation.

As you gradually sink into this system of living, you become content with being alone, and you also become your worst critic. Your reasoning ability is gradually reduced to solving daily problems such as waking up, brushing your teeth, taking a shower and getting dressed. Soon, you begin to drift and to lose sight of your dreams. Your dreams now seem so far, far away; if you remember them at all. Now you begin to confuse what you want, with what the rest of the world wants. Now you are nothing more than a drifter. People’s ideas stick to you like a magnet. Your insensitive brain begins to tell you, “Every idea is a good idea”. Soon, you become a pursuer of other people’s dreams. Yours is fuzzy now. Lost in the distant land of depression, self-pity and discouragement.

You want to wake up, shake yourself up and live again, but you can’t.  People look at you and you smile back at them. You seem to them as one who knows what he is doing. But you know deep down inside that you don’t. You want to scream for help. You want to matter, to be relevant. But none is patient enough to see the emptiness inside you. Everyone is busy. And besides, you are doing okay; aren’t you? Sometimes, you are lucky to make a new acquaintance who is “interested” in you. You are hopeful again. Maybe, just maybe, he will be my savior. But alas, he is just a passerby, looking for someone with something to offer. Someone who can help him advance his cause. Your articulate exterior attracts him at the beginning. Then he sees you as you really are, weak and “helpless” as he is. He disappears. You are disappointed again, perhaps more than the last time.

And then you realize, nobody is coming to save you. The truth dawns on you slowly but surely, like the gradual peeling away of scales from your eyes. It’s disheartening. It’s heart breaking. But it’s also liberating, because you also realize that if no one will save you, then you must save yourself. All of a sudden, a strength you never knew existed comes on you. You are hopeful again. All of a sudden you are strong!

And now you can teach anyone the lesson you have learnt, that everyone is carrying a cross. No man can bear another’s cross. To each his own. Therefore, you must be strong for yourself!