So often we live in a world that only we can see, a world that is wholly ours and in becoming aware of both others and Other, we seek to project ourselves into and upon it in order to make sense of their existence when in reality they exist for the exact same reason you do, just because. There is not fault in this, there is no one way to view it, it simply is. It is hard to make room for people in your life when one already has the whole world crowding in, stooping over like a vulture that is just waiting for you to die so it can feed upon the carcass of your remains, of what is left when you give up. The thing is that when we decide to give up, when we tire of trying, we seek to place the blame on someone else, we seek to shift the responsibility to another, to someone outside of ourselves, to Other.
We blame family, friends, loved ones, 'God', all the while never truly realising that we are the ones who have made the decision to let go, to stop fighting, to give up, to become carrion for the vultures, this weight can never be placed upon the shoulders of another, as hard as we may wish it could be so, it cannot be and when we try to force it we only ever hurt those who are only trying their hardest to be there for us, to help us, to love us.
Life is hard and living is even harder, but in realising that some will only try and cover it up makes it even worse. I have realised that we see the worst in others because we possess that within ourselves and when we chose not to realise that we are the ones projecting, transferring these darknesses onto those we have in our lives is when we attack them for being what is essentially ourselves.
There is a bible quote that I find to be apt for this subject and it goes "So why do you see the piece of sawdust in another believer's eye and not notice the wooden beam in your own eye?" and it is because rather than attacking ourselves for a specific unwanted behaviour we would rather attack someone else for it, it's like fighting a battle with yourself but using another person to fight it out, in the end however nothing is resolved and we only wind up hurting others in the process.
I have always found so much truth to the words inscribed above the entrance of the Delphi Oracle, where it says "Know Thyself", we have all read these words repeated in so many books of wisdom, spoken by teachers since ancient times, and yet how many of us truly know what they mean? I cannot say I truly know but I do have my own ideas and here I will share with you those ideas, it seems that so often we forget ourselves in relation to a world that is just as diverse as the thoughts in our heads, we wish to know and yet we take no time to acquaint ourselves with the knower, the seer, the watcher, the I inside, in seeking to obtain knowledge of the world and ourselves we seek outside of ourselves, taking what we find and applying it to ourselves rather than finding ourselves and applying it to the world, this can lay a difficult path before us as we then desire to become what the world wants, no, expects of us, rather then taking the world and making it ours.
We each are dealt a specific set of cards and we don't always end up with a good hand and many of us opt out rather than playing the game to the end, I can only gather that is a personal choice and one that we each must make as we play the game of life. But who really loses? The one who sticks it out even though they know they might not win or the one who gives up before all the cards have been played? I know this analogy has been spoken of before but perhaps people have never really thought about it as too many give up before the game is over.
I cannot and could not ever speak for everyone but I can speak for myself and I know that I am guilty of projecting my faults onto others, of attacking others for things I myself cannot deal with, does this make me a loser, does this make me a fool, does this make me a bad person? No. It makes me human. The human being is an enigmatic figure and one that I feel will ever be so, but does this mean that in the process we shouldn't strive to learn as much about ourselves as possible? I think it is our responsibility to discover as much as we can about ourselves, especially if we ever expect to hold a respectful and desireable relation to another. If we are constantly trying to outrun ourselves by projecting all of our faults, self-hatred, unfulfilled desires, sadness and failings onto others, onto Other, we miss out on half of lifes lessons. It is not easy to admit ones own faults, ones own shortcomings, but if we can muster just half the courage to admit that just half of what befalls us is of our own doing we open the door to the possibility to becoming so much more.
We so often attack others out of this need to place blame, to seek a release from the shadows that grip us and hold tight to us, when in truth the shadows are but the smaller parts of the light that surrounds us, we all get lost from time to time but I remember something that a great man once said " it is in straying that I found the path direct". We all lose our way from time to time, we all try so hard to become something other than exactly what we are meant to be and this is okay, at least we are trying, pushing ourselves, working on becoming more ourselves than we wish to be, we just need to be mindful and careful of whom we hurt in the process. No one is entirely happy with life, that's how it is, we either deal with it or we don't. But by giving up we lose that which is most precious, ourselves.
It is true when they say "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" but this is true of so much, not just beauty. For in the end the world we see is the world we behold via our own vision, it is as we are, not the other way around.
Shadow by Steven Kenny
