In Seeking Identity
I get so angry in the most volatile way, when I contemplate what I am. That is to say, what am I deep down at the barest essential. And my answer to myself, has come back as thus: I am a scared little boy, not more than 9, wanting to know, desperately, if I will survive. Zooming in so close, as close as necessary, to come to this begrudged reality, I have no choice but to recognize truth for what it is--painful--, and that it is more unforgiving than the harshest judge's gavel.
So much has been going on the past lifetime,that I never took those wise words a nameless man told me to heart, or to practice. So I remembered them the other night, in meditation before sleep. His words were: "Don't spend an eternity trying to find out who everyone else is, because it is useless information if you don't know who you are. You must meditate, briefly if you have only that time, every day, upon who you really are and what you are doing with this precious gift of life." Then I saw only a glimmer of the wisdom that is in the statement, because the difference in practice makes tenfold the difference that of what I would be without it.
Those times I've been so frustrated and angry, that I wanted to scream from on high, "Who am I, and who are you to make me live through this hell that is knowing!" But of course, even Hemingway thought that intelligent people are seldom happy people. There is a beautiful irony in that, knowing his fate. Throughout it all I must confess, there is no excuse for me to settle upon being a mere malcontent. That bitterness spreads throughout all the people I touch, and like a plague effects them too. I cannot in realization of that, be willing to harm others in such a way. I just want to know what it is, not who it is as I know that it is myself, that keeps me from being deep-down content to live in a world of passing moments.
xip