What I see as our great tragedy is that none of us are fully occupied
Not in the sense that our arms are not full
Not in the sense that we’re not busy enough
Or that our attention spans aren’t pushed to the brink
But that we are all capable of so much more than we ever manage to achieve
We are held back by our beliefs in ourselves
Restricted by years of schooling in which we could never get perfect scores
We are held back by our peers
None of us wanting to sustain that pain of standing out for more than a moment
We are held back by our masters
Employed only in that capacity for which we have proven ourselves to be trustworthy
And we are held back by our dependents
Careful to never risk their stability for our dreams
Everyone I know decided, at one point, subconscious,
That being their whole true self was too hard, too painful, too confusing, too free
And chose for ourselves the image in the mirror
“Oh, she thinks I’m funny. Am I funny? I guess so.”
Standing on stage night after night searching for confirmation that we are who we were once seen to be
“Oh, he thought I wrote that well. Could I be a writer? I’ll never know if I don’t try.”
Bleeding for hours at the typewriter to prove ourselves worthy of that first hint of a solid self
“People like me. I guess I’m popular. I know what people want. Maybe politics?”
“Dad always said I was worthless, look at me now, can’t even hold a job, addicted, pathetic.”
“I just want to make things, to help people, to finally squeeze my inner truth out into music.”
All our selves wrapped endlessly together in neurons and flesh
Divided and defined by those moments where we caught a glimpse of a life simpler than flight
Comfortable on the ground without even one more glance in the third dimension
Flattening our possibilities into one flat plane where all the points can be counted
And validation is drawn out along neat little lines
And graphed, time vs. attention, vs renown, vs. wealth
It hurts too much to float too long in free space
It hurts too much to just let ourselves be
It hurts too much to watch where our planes intersect
With the billions of others around us
But it hurts too much to be alone,
So we find one line where our plane meets another
Tie ours to theirs and hold on for dear life with our eyes closed
None of us are trapped on the ground by anything but choice
None of us are blind to each other by anything but will
None of us are chained to our chosen source of validation by anything but the discomfort of looking for another
But all of us remain
This is life
This is living
This is reality