wouldn’t you know? the phone rings at midnight. now i am pop-eyed. heh. so ok, surf the crystal wave a time and wait for sleepy to return.
i’m sitting here thinking about how ego messes one up. oh. and pride. the two are just a hopeless trainwreck in any iteration of presence.
i had been feeling really good about making progress in some areas lately. but tonight, i sit here and feel very foolish and more than a little ignorant.
why?
because i realize that the feeling good was just ego and pride. and the progress, if present at all, is such a tiny, miniscule sliver as to be shameful rather than something to be pleased with… must i always be so miserly in these areas?
i get annoyed with myself. mostly when i find or meet others who remind me of all the ways i’m not compassionate enough. or i am too prideful. or i am too intolerant. or i am too quick to anger. or i am too fast to distrust. or i am too… everything.
isn’t it funny how the ego works so hard to minimize your faults while inflating your abilities?
in truth, what abilities i have are often hampered by my faults. there’s a sorry and pitiful thought. not in a ‘oh gee, i feel so sorry for myself’ way… more like a ‘how can i ever hope to be a better person’ way.
hah. ego whispers from the corner, ‘you’re not that bad.’
yeah. right. tell it to h. tell it to m. tell it to c. tell it to that short list of people i know of who would be very happy indeed to tell you at length that i am.
tell it to the numerous strangers i never know that, finding me in a moment when i was being human, simply wrote me off.
or to the people to whom i did the same.
i find it interesting that these thoughts so frequently arrive at night. or after interrupted sleep. or in dreams. i kind of wish i could record what my mind does at night. really get in there and know what happens.
but i suspect its best that i do not know.
sometimes, i think i am a good and productive person in the world. then i meet someone or read about someone that does so much more, usually with less time or more variables to juggle.
i smile to see it. but i also cry. i want to be like that. i want to help like that.
and i never quite feel as if i manage it. always missing the mark. or overshooting it. or obliterating it in my eagerness to touch it at all.
as odd as it sounds, that’s the thing that really bothers me. even when i can point at something and know i ‘got it right’, i always feel it could have been ‘righter’. i always feel like no matter how hard i try or how much i do, i can never really do it properly.
and that, of course, pushes me toward not doing anything for fear of making things worse.
it often feels like a catch-22.
sometimes, i manage to convince myself that the universe sees to filling the gaps. but sometimes, that just seems like a convenient sleight of ego.
ah well. i guess it is safe to say the feeling of being inbetween/middle has passed. back to being human for a while. walking on eggshells and hoping my faults somehow manage to remain under the thumb of my aspirations.