When I think about life and all the things that I want to accomplish, I realize that there are many barriers that hold me back. No matter how I look at myself and everything in between, there’s an inescapable reality that comes to mind: “Somehow or another, if I look at any part of what I see, I can conclude it is probably my fault.”
Whether this is true or not, it’s the feeling that I carry into life. If I didn’t do something, then I think it is my fault. If I did do something and it went wrong, it is also my fault. Almost everything that happens in this lifetime and to me is my fault.
It’s a strange, liberating but also potentially harsh way of looking at the world – this idea that somehow or another you are responsible for everything that you experience.
Trivially, this cannot be true for the simple reason that external affairs and things aren’t totally in control, But it’s definitely a liberating one. Like you, I am just another human being. I might have talked to certain people that you may find difficult to reach. I may do things that you may not expect, or otherwise consider conventional.
But like you, I am human and in many ways I am weak.
Across countless occasions, I can remember the ways I planned but did not execute, seek after things but did not cross the boundary as mistakes stretch out across time in the proof of time gone by, but things not done.
I look at all of that and I accept it.
This is all very different from what I experienced when I was a younger person. The idea of failure was unacceptable, and I would do everything in my power to fight against it. Now I’ve come to realize that the world is a lot messier and more complex, and that the standard that one should expect of oneself is a lot higher. In many ways, I need to step up my game.
Does reflecting in this way change anything that I would do and that I intend to do? I would like to think so – the alternative, I suppose, would simply be to just continue in old patterns even as a metamorphosis proceeds, a skin sheds and something new comes from within.
What it yields though is a separate matter. I write this at the dawn of new beginnings in world history with many new friends, memories, reflections, and bonds that I can call genuine now compared to the last year, but with many more things that I realize I need to do.
It remains to be seen whether they will be done, but I will try to do them all in a timely manner and look forward to showing you what is to come!