slow down….i’m losing myself. and what of it? i have been slowly redefining my image of “self”, or it feels like something along those lines. trying to remove my ego from all of this and look at myself as my environment. it’s strange at first but then just feels comfortable to me, i don’t know why. thinking about it objectively makes me feel like i’m giving it up, surrendering. but that’s only the objective thought, the subjective interpretation feels more like accepting a truth i’ve always denied to myself, but at the same time, i am unsure what that truth is.

when i look at myself as my environment, it makes me realize the tasks that occur in this environment aren’t what are important, it’s more about what populates it. i’ve done a pretty good job of keeping the riff-raff out, and surrounding myself with things i enjoy and people i appreciate, but still leaving a semi-permeable membrane around it, so it’s not completely static. but at this point in my life, it’s pretty much hit homeostasis, which is something most unconscious things strive for without being aware of it. i am aware of this homeostasis i have achieved, but am also aware that things could be pushed and prodded to try and make it a better homeostasis, or worse, but just different in general. as a single being, i am not unsure of how i could go about making myself a better life but am just more unsure if i want to.

i’m having trouble phrasing this in a way that doesn’t make me sound defeated, because i don’t feel that way at all. in a way, i feel like i looked around at the environment i have created, took a breath, and then exhaled. i noticed that i had taken part of myself, and had thrown it into the collective whole, and realized i don’t have to fight anything at all, because that is the type of person i’ve always been. fighting isn’t pointless, but so is not fighting. these lines of ideas and truth are so vague and blurry, that it doesn’t even matter if it makes sense or not. existing in the moment is about all i can do, and be appreciative to have even that. this environment i have created is so large and abstract that i couldn’t begin to break it down into parts, it just is, just like it’s always been.

i feel like i am starting to look at truths and ideas, look beneath their exterior and see them for the mostly unsubstantial things that they are, the things that i have assigned meaning and value to. i assigned them, but not really. my environment did. all the parts of me that i snake out to everyone and everything in the space and time i exist. these things are as much me as everything that is contained in this body, in this mind.

it’s not really mine, and it never was. none of this belongs to anyone. i just appropriate it for now, and invariably end up passing it on, but that depends if someone else finds it useful. but anything can be useful or a hindrance. i can have anything, or deny anything, but within a certain construct. i already have rights in this life that have been mostly established on majority rule. it’s not perfect, but it doesn’t need to be. emotions can be experienced individually, but generally stem from the environment existed in. i remove the self from my emotions and look at them. the power i have over my environment is my ability to shift the focus of my perspective wherever i want. but my focus isn’t just dictated by me, it is pushed subtly or not-so-subtly by my environment, and whatever reaction i have seems calculated and planned, on the surface. but i’d rather not spend time calculating and planning, and even when i feel like i’m scheming for some better end, i am just adjudicating such matters to whatever it is deep inside of me that has come this far, and feels a need to keep making decisions like it always has. in tune with my environment, that which i surround and connect the singularity of “myself” to.

i think that deep down, this self of mine has always been trying to find a justification for its existence. that if i couldn’t justify it to others, i could at least do it for myself. but there is no me here, just a large string of ideas and muddled truths. i always felt like i never had to really justify my existence to others, but was too dense to apply the same principles to myself. the justification of my existence is my existence, and the things i do with this existence are largely inconsequential, yet it is also all that there is. and it makes me smile to think that.

all i can think about now is this line from Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf where in a dream, Goethe says to the main character “In eternity there is no time, only an instant long enough for a joke.”

i giggle a little, smile serenely to myself, and get back to my life.

what a fascinating place this is.