Self

How do we define ourselves? What makes us individuals in all the mess of human drama and idea? Do our actions ring out, as we hope, or do they end meaningless?   I realize that my mind often thinks about this when I’m alone. I look into the mirror and wonder.  I have spent half of this life trying to figure out who and what I am and I’m sure that this will not stop. Who is that I see in the mirror and who is that I see is being reflected by the emotions of the people I talk to?

   I want to be many things. I want to be honest though, at times, I lie. I want to be just but sometimes I am selfish. I want to love but I rarely allow it. I give and I take. I am happier now then I’ve been in a long time and yet…I still have not found myself. Many things I have wanted to do I have done. I have seen some of the world though there is still so much to see. I have loved and lost and my heart still aches and will again, I’m sure.  My family is rooted so deep inside me that I will never let them go. And after all this, a list that could go on,  I am left wondering if there is something I am missing in my list that I have not discovered. There must be and there will be and I hope I will find it.

   So I sit and think and question myself in every action. Maybe there is one moment that is yet to come?  I worry that if I get a glimpse of what I could become that I will run away like a coward.  Will I take my chance if it comes?  Will my defining moment come and pass me by? I am afraid that if I wanted to change I won’t be able to and I will stand and question who I am without taking action. Sometimes there are people and I want to speak with them, to know who they are and what they think they are.  Maybe I’ll find my answers in them or see a shadow of what I could become.  

     Every life seems so beautiful that I forget how to see the beauty in my own. Sometimes there are moments when you look into someone’s eyes and you feel you know them. I am not speaking of what they did or how they do things but who they are. You see kindness or perhaps grief. You see trust or perhaps mistrust. But at these times you get a glimpse of what the person truly is and what defines them. I wish I could see this in myself and make sense of it all.

We live the unlived lives of our parents. We enter a world that they never saw, full of opportunities and failures.  We either surpass and impress or veer off the road. I’m now older than when my father had his first child. What does that say about me? When is it time to move on from their expectations or be what they always dreamed you could be? Are they my dreams? Am I something similar to a reincarnation of my father, trying once again to become something bigger than what I was? I see my eyes, my father’s eyes, and they watch me in every reflection.  

We search a world of facts for moments that resemble fiction. Magic is simply when the world defeats our expectations. A miracle is when, somehow, words bridge the gap between thought and reality. These times are rare but searched for like a lost world. We drench ourselves in the unexplainable moments that drive us into understanding.  I am comfortably uncomfortable with the questions life has made me wonder.