Note to self

Dear Me, 

Why should you be such an important figure in my life? It seems like every time I go about trying to become passionate about something you get in the way by appealing to personal pride, or face or something else. You are the reason why I so often find it necessary to carefully craft and then flawlessly project an unrealistic of myself to those around me. Is it for fear that I will not be accepted that you force me into this shroud? Why am I so concerned with trying to protect your feelings when all you ever do is demand more of me? Is my view of the world so small that the problem you have with feeling like the most important person in the world becomes all that consumes my life?

If I were to for just one day forget about you, I might see that all around me there is joy, there is suffering, there is pleasure, there is pain. Achievement to be won and souls to be affected, success is mine to have, but you would have me just reject it? Why? Do you offer something better than putting my life into the service of something greater than you and receiving the satisfaction of actually making a difference somehow?

Upon reflection I find that you are too concerned with self-image to give any sort of thought to the bigger picture. It is not a window you are looking through, it is a mirror that shows you only what you want to see: your magnificent reflection. However, that reflection cannot always be so perfect. In a quiet moment, you find that there is no one to admire your beauty. In the middle of your triumph, you question whether any of the attention you receive is actually genuine. In the end, you know that living a lie can never produce the kind of fulfillment you are seeking; yet you cannot let me choose the alternative without seriously considering what it will do to your image.

Pfffsh, your image. This is my life, we’re talking about here. Image got me nothing and nowhere. In fact, by trying to submit to your ideas about what it takes to be happy, I had lost all sense of purpose whatsoever. For one can never find his own approval in his peers. There must be something else to support a man; some dream or vision that is grander and much more fulfilling than you are. The enjoyment of an image is like the vision of a flame, ever changing and completely untouchable. To willingly sacrifice you to achieve something of value – that is where true happiness is found.

Yes, there will be problems, but these are the building blocks to success. In reaction to my passion, some people will no longer wish to be my friends. However, this is the only way in which I can discover who is truly a friend. I will be required to give up my comfort and even some of the good things I like, but these are simply the enemies of that which is better. To every man a choice has been given: to spend his life serving you, or to spend you to achieve what can truly be called a life worth living.

So, here’s goodbye to pleasant roads, sweet dreams, and easy living. Farewell, to perfect image, plastered smiles, joyless pleasure, and mere survival. I choose to live; to sacrifice everything I have for something worth obtaining, to give up what you want for a cause of my own choosing; to exchange the image for the reality; to do what no one else has dared to do. So that mine will have been a life truly lived.