Sometimes days come around when you don't like yourself very much. When you see faults written like tattoos all over your soul, and no matter how much you scrub, they never fade, never fall away. Faults like pride and fear and ignorance and jealousy and insensitivity. Things that make you ugly inside. Things that make you want to crawl out of your skin and into someone else's.
That desire to be different from who you are, a different person altogether, only comes at you once in a blue moon. You know deep down that you have it pretty good--besides freedom, democracy, and religion, you've got good health, enough intelligence to guide you through three college degrees, a dollop of creativity, a supportive husband, sweet children. What more could you ask for?
Still, you wish you were different. You wish you were more. You sometimes look around at the people you come in contact with and wish you could pluck bits and pieces of them and add these things to your personality. If you could put yourself together like a Mr. Potato Head with a body, a hat, a pair of feet, a nose, some angry eyes--you'd pick some different traits: spontaneity, strength, memory, courage, satisfaction, cheerfulness, confidence, and maybe a few extra inches of height, too.
If you could do this, maybe you could do something of real value instead of the nonsense that you do each day. But you can't pick your own character. You're stuck in your spiderweb, struggling to free yourself of one character trait, while at the same time trying to develop another. You're a package deal, a smorgasbord of insecurities and doubts.
Lucky you.
That desire to be different from who you are, a different person altogether, only comes at you once in a blue moon. You know deep down that you have it pretty good--besides freedom, democracy, and religion, you've got good health, enough intelligence to guide you through three college degrees, a dollop of creativity, a supportive husband, sweet children. What more could you ask for?
Still, you wish you were different. You wish you were more. You sometimes look around at the people you come in contact with and wish you could pluck bits and pieces of them and add these things to your personality. If you could put yourself together like a Mr. Potato Head with a body, a hat, a pair of feet, a nose, some angry eyes--you'd pick some different traits: spontaneity, strength, memory, courage, satisfaction, cheerfulness, confidence, and maybe a few extra inches of height, too.
If you could do this, maybe you could do something of real value instead of the nonsense that you do each day. But you can't pick your own character. You're stuck in your spiderweb, struggling to free yourself of one character trait, while at the same time trying to develop another. You're a package deal, a smorgasbord of insecurities and doubts.
Lucky you.
Comments
Post a Comment