Living My Own Way

Whatever others may think of you, never forget who you truly are. Many people know you by many different faces. Your name might mean something different to each person. And that's fine. But through it all, you yourself know perfectly well who you really are. Inside every person lives another person who remains constant, always.

When you sit alone in your room, when you lie in bed gazing up at the night sky counting stars, when you soak up autumn sunlight sitting in the attic on a lazy afternoon, when no one is with you except yourself, then you remember exactly who you are. Then you realize that every day you must live by running and hiding. You feel utterly helpless before this compulsion.

You must present yourself in a form that people like to see. You must cloak your inner self behind garments that keep you socially and financially safe. Though we may speak differently, everyone must do this work. Those who don't know how to do it fall through the cracks quite badly.

Still, sometimes, you want to live as yourself. Then, to taste even that small portion of life, you must return to that 'I' whom we keep covered out of sheer necessity, reluctantly. If we don't maintain contact with that inner self from time to time, why would it answer when we call in our hour of need? So let the whole world be lost if it must, but never lose yourself. Those who haven't learned to speak with themselves haven't really learned to speak at all.