It’s funny, the ways we all see the world. How we travel around in little packs or by ourselves, claiming independence. How are we all so different? You would assume, with the vast number of people you’ll run across in your life, you’ll eventually find someone who overlaps with you in all the same ways: someone who drinks as much tea as you do, or who organizes their dishwasher the same way, or who would rather be by themself or be quiet or play a game or who is just the same as you. Someone who is a slob six days out of the week before panicking and disinfecting everything in sight. Someone who loved surprising people but hated being surprised. Someone who didn’t know how to deal with their life all the time and so hid behind smiles and nice thoughts and all the distractions the world can possibly dish up. You’d think another person just like you would exist, because wouldn’t that be nice? I think it would be nice or reassuring or something to know that someone else works in the same way. Because when you’re in your head being your own person, sometimes it’s a lot easier to see all the similarities that other people have that you’re left out of and feel very, very by yourself all alone lonely. And it might help things make a lot of sense if someone could say, “No, I understand why you do these things, why you make the choices you make, and say the words you speak, and go the places you walk at the pace you pace,” and someone who it would just be ok to be you with. Because none of us are right or wrong, but it would be so nice to not have to keep that reminder in your head all the time, not having to compare things, just to be able to be; that would be so nice. But we’re here and we’re people and not really sure who we are and the only thing we have to sort of check in on ourselves is the people around us and trying to keep track of what’s going on through the lens of comparison. And that’s the worst. Ugh. I don’t want to be wrong or right anymore. Those things aren’t important. I just want to be me and have that be enough. I don’t want to be competing with anyone anymore. That’s as clearly as I can say it. Because this competition is exhausting and there’s no gain at the end of it, either way. There are no victors or losers, just a bunch of very exhausted people who have come out on the other side of all this bickering and comparing and competing with an even greater lack of knowing who they are, doubting more and more what they’re supposed to do with their lives or who they are or what anything means any more.
We have to stop attacking ourselves. But no one has taught us how to live otherwise.
See? Right there, that’s the excuse that will kill us eventually. The moment of but I didn’t know any better, this is what everyone else was doing, and on. We see what’s wrong, maybe we even recognize that we need a solution or – bite your tongue – figure out what a solution might look like. But we won’t. Because that would mean acting against what we’ve been taught for our whole lives, since the dawn of man. We’re begging for survival at the cost of happiness or peace or internal stability. We have no idea what we’re missing, so we continue on, trudging up the hill, against all reason, because that’s the only thing we’ve ever been taught. Or even if we haven’t been taught it, that’s the only thing that we can see and so we cling to it, desperate to fit in, to be what the others are, because even if we’re all miserable, at least we’re miserable together. Because – who knows? – the alternative could be worse. And that’s something we’re not willing to risk, while we’re all clinging on to the cliff face with bleeding fingers and scratched-up faces, even when the smooth path, with handrails and informative signs, is only meters away. Because it could be worse. And if no one else is taking that path, it must be. Because who would choose pain and hardship and comparison and diminished self-worth when the alternative was so easy, so close this whole time, unless the alternative was actually a lie? Because we’ve all been lied to our entire lives. The truth doesn’t mean anything anymore. We’re all just telling stories, again and again and again, until the plots all run together and the characters sound the same, and the words get shorter and shorter. And you’d think eventually, two people would end up with the exact same story, when the words combined the same way. But we all have our little differences, and the letters don’t line up perfectly, like mismatched cups on the top rack of the dishwasher.
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