Why aren't you doing what you dreamed of?
becoming, changing and the elastic cuffs of life
Strings of elastic tied to my wrists.
I long for changes,
So why am I back here?
I remember what I was.
I believe what I could be.
But where do I go to become that?
Identities are fragile constructions. For some time, global culture has admired authenticity, as if there’s a level of sincerity behind a natural display of character. But it’s a well-practised routine. Even the authenticity of the regional trustworthy character is just the repeated rehearsal of something that doesn’t exist. Strip back the masks of anyone you meet, and you are met with the void.
I’ve stripped myself back before. Spirituality, sobriety, and psychedelics all get you to the same place. If decadence is the maximisation of where the ego can go and the characters we play, the reckless abandon of resources gets us to the polar opposite. When you’re there, we still have sensation, we do not part with our feelings and emotions; in fact, many times they exist at a greater amplitude. They continue to exist even though it becomes unclear if we do.
I once went through an intense breathwork practice, and on the other side, I had an interaction with something I could call god. Hoping for some divine wisdom, I tried to interact with it. I came back certain it’s not a man, and that I’m better when I don’t talk
“Silence is the language of god,
all else is a poor translation”.
-Rumi
When you cut back everything, there’s not much left. The peace of the silence can be scarier than the noise of reality. The spiritual equivalent of sleeping with the TV on. We find comfort in it. With nothing to gain purchase against, I began to see that everything I saw as myself was a projection against a surface that wasn’t there. The subspace of the mind is a circular track. Once inside, we’re offered the path to explore and begin our rejection of the idea of self and its attachments to the outer world, or play out here and accept that if there’s a higher power inside, neural or spiritual, then we are rightfully placed at the centre of our own world.
Out here, we require an idea of self. The outer world is a marketplace, and transaction volume is the only effective means of improving our shared reality. Without an idea of you or me, consensus reality collapses. As such, we must be defined by one another, defined by the attachment we have with everything we do. Material reality needs this tension. The tension is what stops us noticing we don’t exist. Consciousness clings to the next exchange of neurotransmitters, the next small return on environment, habit, or relationship. The ego is feeding itself. We become attached to what feeds it. That attachment is what we call identity.
The loss of it, that first day when you realise the magic has gone in your relationship, when their body hits yours, and you no longer feel the spark, that grey, empty feeling, the void reappearing out here.
The elastic around our wrists isn’t the prison for our ego; it’s the only thing that lets us know it exists.
Oh, to be seen, what a luxury for the mind, but the self can become intoxicated by it, and where to draw the line. Today, I sat at my desk at 10 am, and I told myself I would write. By 8 pm, I had yet to start. I have called four people, eaten 12 biscuits, been outside for a coffee twice, and gone for a long walk. I watched myself perform the old routines. I’m probably tired - coffee? Maybe it’s my circumstances, I should get some advice. Craving the small pleasure of being understood as someone with reasons for not achieving their dreams. I watched it happen and couldn’t didn’t stop it. Until I did, it is now 21:21 (nice number), and I believe this is my last draft. The elastic isn’t all metaphorical; it has a length. The different versions of ourself all pulling us in different directions. All are pulling us towards what the different facets of ourselves want.
In a complex environment, we require multiple ideas of self. the friend, the manager, the boss, the mentee, the lover, the wife, the mentor, the creative, the diligent. All ego ideas that have formed around our core masks to keep us from looking too far into the abyss, and all with their own spider webs of elastic pulling us around as we explore.
We can change any of it with enough force. To make the change permanent, the new version has to resist the pull from everything in our environment, habits, and relationships that benefit from where we currently are.
The friends who like us when we’re depressed. The parent who only knows how to love the version of you that is reliant on them. The version of ourselves that gets sympathy for what was done to us, rather than the responsibility for what comes next. They all lose something when you move, including ourselves, and that’s the payment.
Only we are responsible for who we want to become.
The narratives of despair that justified the losses so far. The excuses are held in reserve in case we don’t make it. Gender, race, wealth, opportunity. Wouldn’t it be easier if else? But it isn’t. And it never will.
What we remember is what we become. Our relationship to our memories. To what we said we would do.
You can remember your future; everyone else can’t. When they realise this, they’ll tell you.
The person I will be has already remembered this moment. They are waiting to see if I make them real. They remember writing days. They remember the elastic on their wrists. They remember which lines I choose to cut. They are watching, from inside a memory I have not yet earned, and the only way to reach them is to become the person whose past this was.
There have been long nights. There will be more. I hope it doesn’t rain so much. But what I want to remember is the sunshine. And when the sun goes down again, I will remember how it comes back, long before the world around me pulls on my wrists and makes me forget that what I’m waiting for is sunrise.
Poets Corner
what would it be
the foolish route of twenty years back
and a chewed up child spat to the slab
taking in the scenery
good times wasting on being forgotten
bad times blooming to fill in the gap
of all there is to see
in the pestled past
what else would i do without this wander
and what would it be without me
- Thomas MayFinal words
If you’re trying to change anything in your life right now,
I hope you’re able to identify the things that are holding you back
and let them go.
Love you loads,
- r x