If you want to walk through hell and come out on the other side to save yourself and others, then you need to have something, anything that you believe in and will hold against resistance from others. It can be a petty hill, but make it your hill.
What do you care about? What matters to you? What drives you to motion? If the answer is “nothing”, think again. If the answer comes from people pleasing, think again. You are more than what other people think you should be.
Be the guy that really likes spiders, even around people that squish every spider they see. Be the person who thinks socks and sandals are good, actually, even when someone ridicules you for it. Pick an opinion and continue to hold it when people disagree with you.
Why?
I’m asking you to get out of the corner and fight for a life worth living.
Get up. Do something.
Find out who you are.
You have walked a thousand meters on your knees, dragged yourself across the dirt on your belly, and for what? There are shapes that would drive you to kill. If asked to choose between your madness and a dagger, you would choose the madness without a second thought. Name it.
Give names to that which drives you ever forwards, that which keeps you breathing. Find what you’ve spent your life walking towards and let it spill out of your lips. There is an egg somewhere inside you waiting to be warmed, a seed waiting for water. What would they grow into? What’s at your center? When all else falls away, when there are no more lies to tell yourself, when there is nothing left but what you’ve spent decades searching for- what remains? What would fill the holes within?
Self-authored, 2024, How to Be Yourself