When do we stop and realize what we want? How does it stop us? The mundane becomes flooded with warm, vibrant color. The lukewarm days finally have substance to them, sustenance for living, eating when hungry. I sat down to write and I lost all rhyme or reason. My words escaped my mind and sat on the page, sounding unlike myself, two paragraphs written by a disguise of my mind. Yet, I feel like there is nothing more fitting than that. Is not finding yourself, trying on different masks? I reread those sentences before deleting them and thought, “no, this is not who I want to be today, let us try again.” A charade that seems harmless, but when everything you do becomes this game, all joy is voided. The frustration of finding yourself is the overthinking, the comparison, the self-inflicted pressure. By now I thought I would have ‘made it big’; million dollar mansion, a million dollars a day. Instead I make $15.75 at a job I’d rather not say, living at home, sheltered within the comforts of my past. And my best attempt at escaping is to turn over again in my bed and scroll through other people ‘making it big’. Who prance around their beige rooms with beige minds and beige ideas. And yet I yearn for this! The pedestal of my imagination has them high, high up, and I am low, low down, pitiful with my big dreams and no actions. How frustrating. How frustrating!
And this is not a victimless crime, as I myself act as perpetrator and the wounded. The facade of social media is just fuel to the fire of my internal back-and-forth. The ‘get ready with me’s’ and ‘day in my life’s’ stare back at me, grinning and giggling. So I give it a try, because of course why not? Everyone else is doing it. The trick to finding yourself is most obviously trying to be like everyone else. And in turn, staring back at me are my 247 likes, grinning and giggling. Then I give in and give up. But even now it’s silly to think that a get ready with me video would have a colossal impact on my self-identity, that it would shine a light upon the yellow brick road to lead me back to myself. And the facade drones on and on and on, and I only act a little upset that I’m not tied to a few thousand followers because it seems like that opens the most doors these days.
So again, I’m back to the drawing board of frustrations. Shallow and unkempt.What a waste of time I think. So instead of taking any more action, I sit and I brainstorm for a few more weeks, making promises to myself that my new plan starts tomorrow, the one that is guaranteed to drum up the most amount of success in half of the time. Wake up early, read a chapter, write a page, go to work, meditate, take a walk, drink a gallon of water, no phone after 9pm, apply to new jobs, try something new, don’t be afraid, watch a documentary. Because surely a self prescribed to-do list is the answer to the humdrum of my woes. Finding yourself through a robot routine, each movement generating a check mark of a to-do list. Always stuck in the purgatory of planning, because I never reach the day after tomorrow. And so what if I forgot to take my vitamins today? This cycle is a surefire way to look back a year from now and think, “wow I really need to find myself.” And then a new list is drafted and another year, I stop and think, “wow I really need to find myself.” And then I ultimately become flustered because I have done nothing but stay within the tunnel vision of my perfect routines, and decide to find myself… again.
These days no more I have declared. The platter of life is all too exciting to be fastened down to a check list. Not to say routines aren’t a good foundation, but we are not machines, and too much can be missed seeking perfect, similar experiences. Perhaps finding yourself is not finding anything at all.
There is no need to trap myself in a self prescribed game plan that feels so unlike me and so clinical. It’s only natural to now turn my mind to the complexity of simplicity. I should not dare think that all of my attempts at joy or success are merely a waste when I am still learning and experiencing so much regardless. I am at a dinner party and I tried an hors d’oeuvre that I didn’t like. Nobody is going to force feed me the rest and I won’t let my taste buds be jaded by one bad thing. It is self-indulgence. Spoiling oneself with taste tests only gets you closer to knowing and discovering what feels good and what doesn’t. And if something leaves a sour taste in your mouth, nourish with something sweet. The dichotomy of finding yourself can not stand without the things that are ill-fitting.
So perhaps I’ll give everything another go. There cannot be true discovery without confusion. And I will learn to love that I get lost in myself, to crumble in perplexity and tape together the old pieces of me to become something new. To complete this over and over. This is the persistence of patience. Persistence of authenticity. To listen when things become difficult. To look at the fragments of frustration, the farce of a facade and accept it all as a journey. That this will be my reality time and time again. My parting words come from Fight club, by Chuck Palahunik, “A moment was the most you could ever expect out of perfection.” And as I fight the urge to create my perfect new game plan to find myself this year, I’ll remember that she has been sitting right next to me all along, imperfections and all.
until we meet again
natalie <3
