Are We Really Ourselves?

---

One must simply write as one has felt.

When does our real life begin?

At first we are plunged from the cradle of the womb into the harsh, bright world where humans breathe, build, learn, mothers and fathers, and becoming; then long cries, the nursing, the diaper changes, closeness, stability, blankets, songs, teething torture; then crawling, standing, first steps, bruises, and wonder; then stories, fairytales, kids’ books, then harder books, and times of adult reads.

The modern child has all of this, but in the shadows of their puerile existences.

The ruling force of their attention, and that of their parents, and the attention of the world is pulled away by the siren song of the screen.

At first a distraction while mommy shops, then a distraction while mommy detaches from reality, from work, the laundry, the pile of untamed dishes in the sink, the dusting, vacuuming, and adult life. Then mommy takes the phone, and it distracts from the wriggling babe.

TikTok videos telling her how bad her life is while showing how great theirs are.

At first a distraction, then a way of life.

We learn that life is a show of what I ate for breakfast, my boyfriend hurt my feelings so we’re breaking up, I saved a cat (that didn’t need saving), and the barrage of clips scrolls on in continuum, a death by a thousand videos.

What if there is more to live for than the doomscroll that we have come to accept as the norm of everyday living?

Our bloodstream is envy, the seeing and not having, but craving because someone else has it, coursing like an insipid poison, killing slowly.

Our parents taught us, like the screen taught them, that life was out there for the taking, that there was nothing you could not do, that you could not be.

While true, we are consumed by dreams of greatness, ease over effort, holding our lives against the reflection of the internet gurus.

We are all men and women wearing masks in the eternal masquerade of life.

Life stands before us like an unending corridor, doors of opportunity, doors of disaster, love, hate, hope, and despair.

I love people I have never known, I miss people I have never met, and the world spins on, sucked into a black hole, joining all the dead planets and stars in the unfathomable graveyards in the heavens.

I am burdened by the lives I have dreamed, the expectations of those around me. My parents, my elders, my siblings, my friends, and the way strangers look at me as I walk the street.

I am a muddle of the hopes and dreams of those who have gone before, and I feel like I stand in the shade of the greats who I love, admire, and whose good opinion I desire.

I stare out the window into the night, the silhouette of the pool and the cottage where my grandfather lived out his final days, the only things visible in the dancing moonlight.

The call of freedom looks like ever so many opportunities and choices, a buffet of lives to live and try in order to find happiness, and ultimately yourself.

These choices, these endless choices and possibilities, lay out before us like a field of dandelions that we can wish and blow on and watch everything come to us.

Freedom like this is the sick addiction that goes on, day after day, draining us like so many leeches, dying long before we are dead.

Perhaps we suffer not from dreaming too much, but from not having committed at all.

Perhaps life is not about trying to open all the doors in the corridor. Maybe not every job, entrepreneurial enterprise, marriage, children, cars, and houses has a brighter version we need to try like ever so many ice creams.

I don’t want to love things loosely, but love them long and deeply, and be loved long and deeply back.

Believe me, I want to have better and become better, but I want to stay long enough to spread my roots, to bud, to blossom and grow, even if it is not perfect, always happy, or always feels worth it.

I am my father and mother’s son, my adopted family’s child. I am a brother, a friend, someone’s nephew, one of the millions of random souls that live on this earth.

I am everything that they have put into me, the good and the bad.

But I wonder, am I myself?

Are we ever ourselves?

I stare hard at my reflection in the window, and it stares back.

Are my dreams and goals and aspirations really mine? Or are they the fructification of the hopes and dreams of the people that poured into me?

Where did the root of my desires come from? I don’t recognize myself in the tangle of life. I see a human, getting up, going about his life, but ultimately unfulfilled.

The distortion of life has found him even on the farm, in the middle of nowhere, where happiness surrounds him but leaves a bitter aftertaste.

Perhaps the hunt for more, for the next best thing, is hunting us, and we never realize it.

I see my past, a cemetery of burning ships that I jumped overboard for a brighter, shinier one.

Three decades have passed, and I have seen pain, and caused myself even more. I don’t want to keep seeking for the fantastical treasure beyond the rainbow’s end, or give way to the Substack scroll. Think how many little moments have been missed, how many little treasures are buried in the life we don’t see because we build castles over them that the next wave will wash away.

We all have planted gardens that bear fruit long after we left them behind. Fruit borne, that we will never see.

We peer over the wall and want the luxurious gardens of our neighbors, a literal grass is greener on the other side.

We have dug ourselves so deeply into the chasm of our lives needing to be the exception. Of being 1% better every day, that life must be this sprint rather than a marathon.

We have somehow swallowed the idea that we have to be seen. Admired. Getting likes and comments out the ears, or life, human life, our life is meaningless.

What if it was really about just coming home, loving your family, eating a home-cooked meal, and sleeping in a world of your own making?

All the things we pursue are castles of sand that the tide will wash away. If not in your time, at least in some future day.

Will all your careers, all your trophies ever be enough? No applause will thunder loud enough to fill the human void.

We all are seeking contentment, but discontented with what it means.

Perhaps we only find our life when we live what is ours, and not try to keep up with the Kardashians.

And perhaps when we are no longer striving and moving, we will hear ourselves most clearly.

Sobbing over the lives we have tried to be, a life of shallow graves, of empty promises, and forlorn hopes dashed like a ship on the rocks.

Perhaps the sand slips through your fingers. Not the money, not the cars, the houses, the fat bank accounts.

But your parents. Your siblings. Your spouse. Your children.

In your heart of hearts, you only want them. You only wanted them to be happy. You only wanted them to never want.

But you were too busy and missed the point.

They only wanted you.

Having you was enough.

Put down the shovel. You have dug a chasm of regrets deep enough for the next thousand generations.

Look about you before it’s too late.

Sit still and find solace in being still.

The sands of time are falling, and God will not care if you didn’t get the life that was never yours.

I have written as I have felt.

What did you do with the life that was yours?

Thank you for reading.

---

---