I am trying to be a different person; I am not yet who I want to be. Some people tell me to cut myself some slack, to take life as it comes. But I don’t think they understand what I mean when I say I am not who I want to be.
I am not yet who I want to be because the person I am right now is not my best possible, not even anywhere close to it. This has nothing to do with career fulfillment or wealth or success or love. If I was looking for all of that, I would be saying I am not where I want to be.
I’ve had my fair share of success. I’ve lived all my life chasing after my dreams – first class degrees, the best jobs and internships, job security, name them. And when I get them, what do I do? I throw them to the wind and start looking for something else. Because my life is somewhat of a complex thing, and I’m trying really hard to hold everything together.
There’s something about certainty that repels me. I have constantly turned away from anything that offers me certainty because I think that it comes with a huge price and not everyone is willing to pay that price. Not everyone can afford the price.
I have woken up and left jobs. I have acquired degrees and never used them. I have walked out of countless relationships. And these days, I seem not to care about anything. I let it all go.
Think about it: someone walks into your life promising you everlasting love and happiness, and you start rearranging your life to accommodate them, and one day their love does not feel enough anymore. This love, which once held an unquestionable promise, now has holes and is worn and restless.
Things are not as simple as they look. I have come from a place of absolute ignorance and naivety about the world to a place where everything around me feels familiar and one thing reminds me of another, a place where everything is connected, and things are just more complex than the eyes can see.
Life, itself, is not certain or straightforward or stable. Anyone who expects it to be anything else is delusional.
I once thought everything was either black or white. But that was when I was blind to primary and secondary colours, and to the millions of shades between any two colours. There are so many in-betweens. There’s always an alternate reality.
Growing up, I wanted to be a doctor. Then, I wanted to be a teacher. Then, I wanted to be an artist. Then, a journalist. A priest. A singer. A management executive. Now, a writer.
Yet, today, I want to be nothing.
All I want is to live and exist in my own time and space, on my own terms, in my own reality. I want to live my life fully and completely so that when I breathe my last, I will have nothing left inside me.
And I may have thrown away many years, I may have spent a lot of time doing things that did not matter, but every moment from now on has to count for something. No more time for living like a fake, in fear of myself, of people, of what people will say; like a visitor in my own body.
I dive deep now. I dive very deep.
Because I’m the wind, and I blow wherever I want.
THE MOON-CAVE BLOG 