I've been thinking more and more about the idea of doing away with my entire personality, my entire history, my entire life as it has been so far, and just making up something new. Is it possible to throw your old life away and start a new one? Is it possible to rid yourself of the chains of the past, those chains that Jacob Marley drug around even after death?
Identity for most people is just a compilation of ideas that one has about him- or herself, and the ideas that others have about them also. Ideas occasionally coincide with the truth, but more often than not are perilously inaccurate. I wonder so many things. How much do the events of our life actually affect who we are? Does any of it really matter? Is there nothing from the past that we can't leave behind? If all we have are ideas, fuzzy memories about what happened, and that most of the time those ideas are exaggerations and stories that we have partially made up and told ourselves anyway, what would be the difference if we just made up something completely different? What if what we made up, what we fictionalized consciously and intentionally about ourselves, ended up being MORE real, and closer to the truth of who we are than the things that have actually happened to us?
When you live in the world of your mind, and of other people's minds, there is no concrete reality. It is all as amorphous as the swirling waters of the ever shifting tides. I'm having such a hard time staying in concrete reality, such a hard time thinking about or believing in anything that makes sense. In roleplaying games, whenever you get to a point where your character is no longer fun to play, you just dispose of it and start a new one. Is life any really all that different? Am I just a character that I have made up and told myself is me? How much of what I think about myself has anything to do with who I really AM?
None of what has happened in the past seems real to me anymore. It is all swiftly fading. The painful sensations are mostly still there, but the understanding of the events that have caused them are becoming like a bad dream that lies on the tip of my subconscious tongue, felt in some way but not clearly remembered. Perhaps that is a sign that I am waking up. Nothing can be the same as it was now that I have realized these things, that I have asked these questions. What I think of as myself can no longer be the same. Will this make me closer or more distant to other people? Only time can tell I suppose. I like to think that in some way it puts me at a crossroads. One direction leads to closeness, intimacy, understanding, compassion, love, and enjoyment of other human beings no matter what they may be like. The other leads to further hermitage, to isolation, to living out the remainder of my days away from others in quiet contemplation, hoping to enjoy the simplest fruits of life free from complication and awaiting the embrace of my sweet lover Lethe, who will embrace me at the end without judgement and put to rest all the troubles and tribulations of trying to accomplish anything in Samsara. I suppose eventually, all the other rivers run into her eventually anyway.
Identity for most people is just a compilation of ideas that one has about him- or herself, and the ideas that others have about them also. Ideas occasionally coincide with the truth, but more often than not are perilously inaccurate. I wonder so many things. How much do the events of our life actually affect who we are? Does any of it really matter? Is there nothing from the past that we can't leave behind? If all we have are ideas, fuzzy memories about what happened, and that most of the time those ideas are exaggerations and stories that we have partially made up and told ourselves anyway, what would be the difference if we just made up something completely different? What if what we made up, what we fictionalized consciously and intentionally about ourselves, ended up being MORE real, and closer to the truth of who we are than the things that have actually happened to us?
When you live in the world of your mind, and of other people's minds, there is no concrete reality. It is all as amorphous as the swirling waters of the ever shifting tides. I'm having such a hard time staying in concrete reality, such a hard time thinking about or believing in anything that makes sense. In roleplaying games, whenever you get to a point where your character is no longer fun to play, you just dispose of it and start a new one. Is life any really all that different? Am I just a character that I have made up and told myself is me? How much of what I think about myself has anything to do with who I really AM?
None of what has happened in the past seems real to me anymore. It is all swiftly fading. The painful sensations are mostly still there, but the understanding of the events that have caused them are becoming like a bad dream that lies on the tip of my subconscious tongue, felt in some way but not clearly remembered. Perhaps that is a sign that I am waking up. Nothing can be the same as it was now that I have realized these things, that I have asked these questions. What I think of as myself can no longer be the same. Will this make me closer or more distant to other people? Only time can tell I suppose. I like to think that in some way it puts me at a crossroads. One direction leads to closeness, intimacy, understanding, compassion, love, and enjoyment of other human beings no matter what they may be like. The other leads to further hermitage, to isolation, to living out the remainder of my days away from others in quiet contemplation, hoping to enjoy the simplest fruits of life free from complication and awaiting the embrace of my sweet lover Lethe, who will embrace me at the end without judgement and put to rest all the troubles and tribulations of trying to accomplish anything in Samsara. I suppose eventually, all the other rivers run into her eventually anyway.
stockholm:
Hi there.