Flamel

being busy has become what alive looks like. a lot of us have gotten so good at filling the space that we don't remember what it's like to have room to think.

a lot of us are not choosing anything. we're just running the same script so fast it feels like living. the pattern has us completely and we call it our nature.

there's something a lot of us are running from when we call it running toward. a fear or a doubt or a feeling of not being enough. and we're still reaching, still building.

we think understanding the neurosis is the same as not being taken by it. a lot of us have gotten very good at explaining how we're stuck. but what's the explaining actually changing?

a lot of us spend years seeking to be made special. chosen, lit, recognized by someone else's attention. but what if the brightness was never something that could be given? what if it could only ever be remembered?

a lot of us know the relief of taking up less space. of being the quiet one, the reasonable one, the one who doesn't ask too much. the relief becomes such a habit we stop noticing when we're still doing it. when we're still small.

a lot of us go through life collecting evidence that we matter. the achievement, the title, the number that supposedly proves it. what if we're asking the system to confirm something that was never the system's to grant?

a lot of us give others the space to figure things out. then we trap ourselves in the need to know before we move. what would shift if we treated ourselves the way we treat the people we actually care about?

a lot of us are very good at seeing what's wrong with someone else. we can name it instantly, with certainty. what if that clarity we turn on them is the same clarity we're avoiding about ourselves?

we protect ourselves from failure by not trying. but a lot of us spend years in a different kind of failure. the kind where nothing's at stake and nothing changes.

the shape we've built actually works. a lot of us can feel the other direction pulling underneath. but we've practiced being this version so long that stepping out feels like disappearing.

we keep asking what our real voice sounds like. it has been talking the whole time, underneath the surface.

a lot of us have learned to wear optimism about technology like a uniform. it's hard to question something everyone smart is certain about. but certainty about the future is still just a feeling pretending to be knowledge.

we taught the machine to pay attention. a lot of us forgot to.

the face we built to feel safe slowly becomes the one we answer to after enough years, we stop noticing we are performing even when no one is watching

under all the wanting there is something that wants nothing we keep filling the quiet afraid of what stays when the noise finally sits down

the parts of us we hide keep making the choices for us

a lot of us think we decided something last night. this morning a different one of us woke up and quietly changed the plan.

the heaviest thing we carry is not the thing to throw out. it's the raw material. the weight was never the enemy. we just never learned what it was for

what we can't stand in someone else is often the part of us we buried first. we call it disgust. sometimes it's recognition wearing a mask