We court ourselves our entire lives. We are hardly getting to know ourselves and we disappear. The reality of that should hit home, but it doesn’t. It never does. We wonder at ourselves. Pity ourselves and are let down by ourselves far more often than we would like to mention. But it’s ok. We are only human. Whatever that is. 

And so, the mystery continues. We are never quite where we think we are when we look to try and find ourselves. And we are always the same. But somehow different. We can sit and stare all day and yet never really be there. We can be lost. Even to ourselves. Only to realise we were meant to be thinking about nothing and not be lost in something. 

Shadows dance across the periphery and bring smiles to our faces. And sometimes pain. But those versions of ourselves we remember but it is not quite us. It’s not quite who we recognise as the image we have painted in our minds. Bad or good it makes no difference. But it is seldom what we see in the mirror and recognise when we truly know who we really are. 

And so, we project out. Because it’s easier. It is easier than doing the work and finding the answers. We can palm it off on the other guy and let him feel its retribution, so be it. In our disregard for human existence. We disregard our own. And yet we know it and we do it anyway because we are just too damn hard on ourselves. we didn’t ask for this. It’s not our doing. We’re just trying to survive the game. Until we expire. 

So, we know so little by its end that we read it aloud. We search for meaning in the meaningless and pay over the odds for it. And it’s mediocre at best. Back of the postcard semiprecious platitudes make up for a lack of any discernible integrity. But yet we buy into it because we’ve got to find something to take the edge off. We need to find meaning. 

They say that as you get older you start to settle into yourself. And it’s true. But you also look back at the older, or younger, versions of yourself and somehow you are unrecognisable, even to you And yet a grain of you was there all along. Which should be enlightening but it leaves you asking, “well if it wasn’t me there all along who was it and where have they gone?” And you are right to ask. 

Photo by Pixabay: https://www.pexels.com/photo/macro-photography-of-brown-and-black-lost-cat-signage-on-black-bare-tree-159868/