"How am I not myself.
How am I not myself?"
I love hearing Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin in my head repeating this question. It makes the unfathomableness of the question condense into a little bit of joy that rises into a smile on my face.
How am I not myself?
I wish I knew. How I am not myself. I want to be something else. I want to feel something more. I want to be nothing at all.
When I younger I would sit and think about how absolutely blissful it would be for me to crack and dissipate into the atmosphere. I still carry that desire. And it is locked up in self-awareness and time.
As I get older, I have become more curious about what happens when this desire to transcend time and self has to push it's way out of a human being into reality. How does the world change? What effects are left behind?
I believe in the power of this effect. I believe in the potential of its beauty. I believe in the beauty of the desire to not be myself, but to reach outside of myself towards the calling of the world. I believe in the struggle and the pain that comes from tearing yourself open and living inside out.
Inside out.
What have we done to ourselves?
Inside out.
What have we done to each other?
How can we learn not to wear so much fear?
So much fear on the outside. So much need for warmth and love within?
But who has the time to untangle the knotted mess of chainlinks. How does the desire to not be ourselves stand a chance with a casing made of steal? And how safe is the world for those who live with their soft insides out when at every turn, every triumph, the soft insides are bruised and ripped open by the friction of steel and soft flesh?
Do not cause others to stumble, I think is the phrase. Do not cause others to struggle to live inside out by pressing your hard armor against their already traumatized being. Instead live with your insides out and reach with a warmth towards others to help them live outside of themselves with you.
