Self
Losing and finding yourself
At some point you were handed a role. The responsible one. The quiet one. The one who is fine. You played it so well you forgot it was a part.
This room is for the person underneath. The one who feels everything and shows almost none of it, who never quite fit, who learned early to take up less space. There was never anything wrong with you. The room was too small.
You noticed the shift in her voice before she did. You clocked the one person at the party standing by the plants. You read the whole mood of a room in the first three seconds and spent the rest of the evening managing it. People have been telling you to turn it down since you were small. Too sensitive. Overthinking. It is not that deep. It is that deep, and you cannot turn it down, and you should stop trying. What you have is not a flaw. It is a wider antenna. Most people get three channels. You get all of them, including the static. The trick is not to feel less. It is to find the two or three people who can hear the same channels, and stop auditioning for the ones who think the static is you.
Somewhere along the way you got a label. The responsible one. The difficult one. The one who does not need anything. The funny one, which meant you were not allowed to be sad in public. Some of them fit for a while. Most of them were just convenient for whoever handed them out. None of them were chosen. You can give them back. Not with a speech, not with a fight. Just, the next time one of them plays in your head in someone else's voice, notice whose voice it is. Then ask what you would call yourself, if it were up to you. It is up to you.
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue.
I am a cage, in search of a bird.
The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.
Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.
The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it, basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them.
Become who you are.
One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.
Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave.
Solitude isn't about being away from people. It's about being away from the wrong ones.
They are not my flaws. They are my fingerprint.
When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.
You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself.
No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.