The Observer

Sitting

Drinking, laying down like washed up men who fall asleep on dirty, grimy couches and wake up only to yell at you for changing the channel, ignoring the fact that they clearly weren’t watching their stupid game through their eyelids and obnoxious snores.  Walking nowhere in particular besides the next five feet in front of me, or how far my vision carries me, like a nomad, a loner, a drug addict caught in his own mindless fantasies in which no other is invited.  Slipping down, deep down, into my favorite reveries, those that give me hope for my ever dwindling creativity; creativity that attempts and wins and fails to fight through social interaction, impressions of their laughter and smiling faces, general laziness, gluttony, dark eyes judging onward, groping hands that touch my body with passionate distance.  All these things, my creativity must fight for attention, for my mind is split between many realms of thought.  There is the social butterfly.  The disgusting witty extrovert who smooths his way into the minds of others, particularly females.  There is the angry distant stranger, he who attempts to write, to open his soul, to find his muse, but is far too shaky and distracted, throwing shredded pieces of paper away from himself in a rage as if they were people.  Then, there is the brooder, the thinker, the poet.  The man who spies a leaf and notices its ridges as if they were a profound message from some other world of gods.  This man refuses promptly the life of sloth, the washed up man asleep on grimy couch cushions.  This man’s words pour straight from his soul.  This man loses track of time while his words continue; as the hours tick by, this man writes his life story, his feelings, his essence: into poetry, into prose, and into the actions of new characters and souls that he creates with a great many cross outs and smudges and black drips of enlightening ink.  This man is that mindset that I search for, that mindset that I lose in the midst of hundreds of voices, of friends and family, screaming my name.  I invite this man back into my mind, wondering if he will ever return, and praying he will.

The Observer.

Mystery

“A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.”

-Charles Dickens

Dear Reader,

If for nothing else, this is a reason for interaction.  Every human being is a mystery.  It’s difficult to escape the view of other human beings as being one conglomerated mass like a sea of people who have no purpose but to move like shadows in your own life.  Every person you see in passing, every person who is rude to you, who hurts you or brings you down in any way, every person who dies or can’t remember their own name is an individual.  Inside their mind, there are ideas that you may agree with, and beliefs you may denounce, but most important of all, there are thoughts.  There are secrets.  There’s a history of memories and experiences of every kind inside the minds of these people.  Why not learn from them?  A human being is like a book that opens to reveal trap doors and portals within its pages.  In traversing across the pages, exploring the codes, deciphering colors and pop up folds and fingering your way through the maze of words and sentences, you discover the thoughts, the secrets, the insight of another.  For many of us, there is such a strong desire to be the tortured soul who strays from the path commonly followed, the hermit who keeps to the shadows of his own consciousness, the blanketing verse of his books, his studies.  For many of us, there is fascination with solitude, for solitude begets insight into one’s own mind.  Solitude is mysterious and powerful.  In the individual who views himself as misunderstood, there is a sense of immortality, looking down at social creatures through the piercing eyes of a critic.  However, to truly enhance our minds, to make full use of them, we must view others as always having something within them that has the power to teach us, to enhance our thoughts and widen our view.  Despite the arrogance of my mind that keeps me from seeking help, I realize the need for companionship.  I realize the need to unravel the secret thoughts of others in order to learn more about myself.  I realize that the insight of my own mind is perhaps not enough to achieve contentedness or even true intelligence.  Take interest in other human beings as equals.  As teachers.

-The observer

Dear Reader

A wise mentor of mine told me today to resist the urge to see others as “stupid robotic inferiors” and to learn from them, to make a conscious attempt to view the world through different perspectives.

This is difficult for me to do.  I know that in some of my writings, I may come off as arrogant, encouraging you to put conscious thought above all else, urging you to resist becoming the unthinking human, the robot who follows and does not listen, the one who watches with blind eyes the happenings of the world but refuses to analyze them…

 These people that I urge you not to be are part of your journey, and you can learn from them.  After all, they are human, and as much as you may not like to admit it, so are you.  And so am I.  i can tell you, I don’t like to admit it.  Watch them.  Place yourself in a position where you can see the people around you through an enlightened perspective.  This is a place where you aren’t hurt easily; a place where you are armed with the knowledge of who you are.  In watching others, in observation, we can learn from them.  We can learn who not to be, we can learn new modes of thinking that may very well change our lives, we can learn more about our own minds, for there are things within our minds that we may not have discovered yet.

Many see my words and claim I urge you to be like me, but by no means am I a final product, or even something to model oneself after.  I want to stress to you that I’m in the same place you may be.  I struggle with myself.  I wage war inside my head, between different philosophies, between what is and is not my self.  I’m on a journey of discovery, just as many of you may be.  I’m discovering my mind as I go, creating new ideas, throwing out old ones to replace them with those sturdier, fortified with beliefs and truths I’ve come upon.  The mind is in a constant state of motion: changing, transforming, and hopefully becoming more and more beautiful, being closer to identifying its vessel.

Our lives are dependent on healthy self improvement, on making oneself all he or she can be.  To be completely distant, to avoid observing your fellow human beings, to avoid empathy and compassion for those who want it is dooming yourself to learn from only yourself.  With your own mind as the only source of knowledge, you will never reach your full potential.  It is only by observing the world around us that we are able to grow.  For upon realizing what we are not, we can come to the educated and enlightening conclusion of what we are.