You are a Writer, and This is Why You’re Here
There are two types of us…which one are you? And what will you do to get it?
It’s old.
This thing inside me.
I’m not sure what it’s trying to tell me most days. Or what it expects, from me or my time here.
The language it speaks is almost too eloquent for me to understand, and its wisdom too bold for me to grasp. My predecessors and modern heroes have emboldened its volume and forced me to look upon it.
But it’s what this thing has done to me emotionally that bothers me more. It tests my convictions and shakes my fortitude.
Its impatience provokes me and its age mocks the dismissal of my supposedly profound ambitions for life. It holds my guilt right in front of me and demands for me to soak in my frivolousness.
Whatever I am today is somehow attached to something older. This thing that has come to exist, this self-made unconscious creation.
An energy beyond me.
Before me.
…
Something is happening. But, also something that has happened. What I am now is somehow older than I am.
I don’t know how to describe my evolving self, as a person or a contributor to society.
I’m not from here, this mental space I call my world. Not anymore it seems. When I chose to change my life for the better, there was an opening of sorts. A new world…but an old new world.
I opened up a past, not a future.
…
What I am…
I sometimes feel is only meant for the past.
With Da Vinci or Michelangelo.
Maybe even at the time of Miyamoto Musashi or Sun Tzu.
My mind, my heart, my soul; it all seems to hail not to the frenzied impulsive present, but a patient philosophical past.
It feels as if I’m hemorrhaging something unrelatable to most.
So, what do I do with it?
Do I stop its flow?
Or allow it to carve its way through me, my authentic expression, drying up only by the end to leave a canyon open to interpretation beyond my own?
Whatever it is, it feels too overwhelming to stop it now.
The current is taking me, whether I like it or not.
…
Who you are Reader, is a summary of what you know. What you will know tomorrow and what you will learn to know from yesterday.
And what you know and have known unlocks the potential of what you could know…
There’s a world beyond the one you may live in now. Something new. Something unfathomable, stunted by your assumptive limitations, that keep you from finding it by action.
But there’s a choice.
This decision that we have to make.
An insanely large decision made up of tiny repeated decisions hundreds of times a day. Decisions that separate us from who we are and what we can become.
A work of art built only by ten thousand intentional strokes.
But beware.
There’s also a tipping point.
A place of no return.
A door with a window that becomes locked after you’ve passed through it, with only a clear window pane to look back into the grey of what no longer suits you.
What no longer is you.
…
There’s this thing I’m starting to articulate.
This… self-actuated exile that I must choose, that we all must choose in change.
It’s no wonder many don’t choose it. Because it doesn’t look like success or glory or the right decision.
It looks like darkness, alienation, and silence. It separates you from what makes you happy and content.
It demands that you look ahead. That you step forward. That you take the blow.
It requires you to reach for life while you also taunt it to break you.
…
That’s your job as a writer.
That’s the life of any actor, artist, or innovator.
I just…was…so confused.
Over and over I had been told that I was okay as I was. That who I was was good enough. That I worked hard and should be proud. Regardless of having an empty soul, dismissed by those too uncomfortable to discuss it.
But something didn’t feel right in being “good enough”.
It felt too passive, too compliant.
So, what was it that was speaking to me?
What was this eagerness?
What was this discontent with contentedness?
It was something I couldn’t describe to anyone.
My visions and vivid discussions of what I wanted life to be were white noise to them.
And even then, as I turned away from those who did not hear me, and looked to those whom I looked to model after, I was fooled again. Being told that, “it was all about passion,” “Love of the art,” and that “doing what you love,” would lead the way.
But what if we find nothing that we love? What if our childhood was so bland or so controlled that overwhelming love of anything didn’t exist?
What if it was too deep to uncover in one lifetime? Or what if there had never been a seed?
What then?
Not all of us get that.
I see that now.
…
There’s love, and then there’s something else.
Some are burdened by that overwhelming love of something that they must will into creation. The inability to ignore the one true light of the soul. To live a life surrounded by those who cannot and will not understand what you must live for.
That’s love that leads to happiness.
But there is a second burden.
Others, like me, carry the burden of exhaustive curiosity.
It’s not love, it’s exposure.
A quest to uncover something.
Its annoyance. It’s impatient frustration. It’s blinding perpetual processing.
You can’t get away from it.
It demands you to find answers, the same way it demands lovers to create.
That is curiosity that leads to happiness.
I see that now.
I’m beginning to allow it.
To embrace it.
To see that because it’s not love, doesn’t mean it’s not purposeful. I’m starting to see that my path forward is by taking on the burden of my curiosity. That the irritating demand is my calling.
The burden is what makes it the same.
The responsibility to your own soul and the obligation to the world of human experience.
…
I do this myself as an amateur philosopher and writer. As a conversationalist and behavioralist.
I can’t turn it off.
And I turned myself into this. Even if I didn’t choose it, I chose to explore. To read and question. To become a skeptic and a provocateur.
The thing is…
That after we learn so much about the world and ourselves, our minds mutate into something of an esoteric, organic machine. We find a map with no end and nothing can pull us from the quest.
We demand adventure.
And there’s no going back.
To go back means to ignore the uncovered corners of the map. It means to become less.
So, stop feeling bad or wrong about your curiosity.
Our mind has entered a new world. One we may not have asked for. One we thought looked very different; more noble, more predictable, more flawless.
And it’s not.
It wasn’t meant to be and we shouldn’t expect it.
You see it too, don’t you?
But are you willing to accept it?
This is me telling you that love is not the only way…
It truly doesn’t matter whether you’re the burdened lover or the burdened explorer.
It only matters that you take responsibility for the fate that you brought upon yourself. That you decide to face it.
To say goodbye to people and comforts and social acceptance, because this matters more.
Because your evolution matters more.
Seek the few things that will make you who you set out to be. The art or curiosity itself. The fellow artists and skeptics. The right questions and the right actions.
This is what it takes.
This is why you’re here.
Why I’m here.
Truth and Love, Reader.
Let’s talk!
I would love it if you left a comment or question. To interact, to hear the voices of my readers, and the wisdom of those beyond my reach.
Thank you for being a part of my tiny world!