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The only real distinction between me and many of my friends is that I seek truth as a need, not as a pastime. I have spent most of my life trying to understand the world we live in, its physical reality, its existential questions, and its moral structure. what widens this distinction is that I do not treat understanding as an instrument for enjoyment or intellectual vanity. I seek it because I need it. I need it to make better decisions, and to quiet the confusion that once crowded my mind.
This writing might seem a bit negative or apathetic, and to be honest, I don’t like to show this part of me. People look at my bright eyes and don’t notice sometimes that it is just a performance. And it kills me when they don’t notice, because if I were actually impressed, I would have stayed, or given an honest opinion.
In the five unplanned hours I’ve spent on calls with Awab, he mentioned once that he had started a course kind of on self discovery, presented by the author of The Surrender Experiment. as I remember they were nine chapters, online. Awab said he moved through the first few quickly, impatiently, because the material was already familiar to him. and then he reached the end of chapter six, where the instructor said: in the next lecture, we’ll be talking about x. and Awab paused. he told me he knew, instinctively, that what came next was something he wasn’t ready to hear. so he stopped. and he stayed stopped.
Either at work or in daily life, car horns for no reason. someone dragging their feet without lifting them. cutting a public service queue. leaving clothes in the gym changing room instead of the locker. a bank agent typing five words per minute. an uber driver talking on the phone. someone playing a video on the metro without headphones.
Change is not only about will power. you can fight your inner conflicts . you can decide to improve . you can push yourself daily. but there is another factor that matters just as much: timing. some forms of change does not happen just because you want it to. it happens when life gives it space to grow. it happens when conditions are in favorable.
The Plates in The Chimney Flue
The moment I stopped running from what I was avoiding , I lost the ability to block it again .
Thoughts rushed in, not one by one, but in clusters. some arrived without me knowing, leaking through without me noticing. others appeared fully formed, things I never knew existed inside me, I started asking questions that felt almost foreign.
Are these my thoughts? Are these my beliefs? how did I ever believe some of these things, even subconsciously?, Where is this fear coming from. is it one source, or many ?