Not even Superman is immune from flaw. We all have our kryptonites, a source of weakness that strips us bare and leaves us vulnerable. Mine is that I live in my own world for long periods at a time and I’m scared to go out. It’s a hard thing to say, but it’s true. The truth is I’m scared because I don’t ever want to be vulnerable, ever again.
What made me like this? I would ask. “Why?” I would ask. I would try to get to the root of the problem. How do I stop nurturing its poisonous growth? How do I get away from its grasp? How do I become free from its parasitic existence and become…myself?
I want to live in a perfect world where everything is perfect. Where I fix things by going “inside”. For many people, that’s the hard thing to do. The tendency is to try to move on, but no, not me. I have to get to the bottom of it. For many years it’s worked–it’s my way of coping with stress, anxiety, pain, and negative feelings. That show I cope.
I was reading Part One of this post. It’s been a whole month since I wrote it. Now I think it’s quite pretentious of me to say that “it’s my primary way of existence”. I made it sound so grand, so cosmic, so elevated. That’s when it occurred to me that…I might still be coping.
I claim to be spiritual, but maybe I’m not as spiritual as I’d like to think. Maybe I have a tendency to dramatize things. After all, digging in deeper has worked before. It helped me get through tough relationships and self-doubt. Maybe I just need something to cure. Maybe that way, I don’t have to feel the emptiness inside. Maybe I don’t know how to feel that void. Maybe what’s worked before no longer works for me. Why do I keep getting dragged down that rabbit hole? Gosh. Maybe I need to take it easy on myself.
Maybe I just need to go out more, to experience new things, new people, new relationships–redefine and know myself through experience. Healing myself by doing something, and not just thinking stuff to myself.
Somehow the road towards liberation is never easy. There is always somebody I want to be. There is always someone I am not. There is always something I need to fix. This perfectionism is driving me crazy. On one hand, I want to move on, but I also know that you can’t leave your feeling unretreated. You ignore them, they haunt you.
Maybe it’s unrealistic to want to be free from insecurity, from self-doubt. Life can’t be a constant stream of perfect. Is it too much to ask for a peaceful state of mind at all times? Am I aspiring towards some kind of unattainable spiritual and emotional utopia that only exists in fiction and sacred texts?
I can’t live my life away from my life. An important part of spiritual path is the internal journey, the journey of the soul. But what can I do? As I am writing this post and reaching this very sentence, it occurred to me that maybe it isn’t a matter of “what can I do?” or “what do I do?”…it’s a matter of “what can I give?”
What can I give to the world to make it richer? When I enrich the world, I am no longer empty. I fill myself with what I give away. Instead of a spiritual implosion, what can I give? How am I able to expand, outwards? To become–bigger?
Because if I can give it away, that means I already have it. If I shed light and joy and positivity to others around me, if I make someone laugh, if I help someone in need, if I perform a random act of kindness, if I express myself creativity and share it with a friend…that means I am already happy and filled with light to be able to give it. That means I have an infinite storage of laughter because I am able to give it. If I empower someone, that means I already have the power because I am able to give it.
I can’t believe the answer is as simple as that.
And for some reason, the phrase “larger than life” flashed across my mind just now. I realize that people who are larger than life is not because they are bigger by size, by reputation, by status. They are larger than life because of how much they are able and willing to give.
What can I do?
No.
What can I give?
