Monday, May 5, 2014

The Idea of Me

I've written these words carefully. I want them to earn your attention, to stand out from whatever else it was you've just been scanning over. I've tried to make this piece have that "little bit more" about it. I'd like to make you think, to get you to see things from a different perspective. So says the idea of me. 

But I can't quite explain how terrified I am of coming across as pretentious. I would hate to think that you might consider me in such light. The idea of me says that my work should be more subtle. So subtle that you would never suspect my motivation of being something as fickle as self-advancement. 

I'm very attached to the idea of me. It's something I've invested a lot of mental, physical and emotional effort in. It's a habitual thought-pattern that's become the starting point for everything I do. And with much less consciousness then other mental processes, it relentlessly dissects, analyses and evaluates the happenings of my life. 

The idea of me wants, above all else, to reconcile the situation of my life with what it considers better. Quite predictably, it has a profound influence on my relations with other people. It prescribes an affable disposition, behind which its insidious ways remain undetected. But at times of vulnerability, it disregards concealment and manifests in guises of anger, frustration and melancholy. 

So how is it doing? Is there evidence to suggest that the idea of me exercises influence enough to cause satisfaction, happiness and fulfillment? Not really. Many times the idea of me has found itself undermined. But it has escaped outright falsification by adapting to ever-changing circumstances. This it does by alluringly promising a future brighter than the past. Some might call it hope. The idea of me calls it expectation. "I'm still not complete. Life still hasn't started." That kind of thing. 

The idea of me exists because of a strange discomfort with the reality of me. Diverting attention away from existence as it happens, it traps my mind in the quagmire of past only to overstretch itself into the uncertainty of future.

Before, I would have referred to it as an inevitable facet of human nature. But lately I've begun to look at it as an inhibitor of nature itself. After all, the idea of me has consumed most of my life.