How Am I Doing?

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