The World As I See It

It is Friday, April 11, 2025.
After years of heartbreak and disillusionment, one truth remains:
I still want to live.

Not because the world, as it stands, inspires me.
Not because the systems deserve my loyalty.
They don’t.

The systems are broken—
built for survival, not life.

Every thread of innocence woven into our being
has been pressed down,
repurposed,
or silenced in the name of productivity.

We’ve inherited a workhorse mentality.
Taught to equate exhaustion with virtue.
Praised for our reliability, willingness to sacrifice, and the resolve to hustle.
We are expected to carry the weight of a world
that rarely stops to ask how we are doing in it.

And then we fight.

We fight each other.
We fight cancer, hunger, poverty—and the quiet urge to sleep in.

But isn’t that the worst?
That we’ve been taught to fight with our Self…

Dreamers are told to stop.
Artists are taught to hustle.
Mothers are forced to go to work.
And fathers are told they’ll never be enough.

And what about the children?

Do they play? Do they dance?
Do they build imaginary cities of cake and ice cream?
Do they write poems, tell stories,
sing, or strum instruments just for fun?

Because I see children walking home with heads down.
Dejected by an institution that never truly saw them.
Returning to homes
parents too tired, too poor, too busy
to encourage their passions.

Not all of them.
But far too many.

And then to fix things…
Each generation loudly blames the next for the ills of a broken society.

What?
Does that even make sense?

How can innocence be blamed
for a pattern it was never allowed to question?

A reality it was never allowed to form.

I am not blaming any generation.
These patterns were in place long before any of us
were alive.

But they are patterns.
And if we see through them
these patterns can be changed.

Why is it?
Good children are called good when they ignore
every instinct their bodies beg them to follow.
Bad children are called bad when they refuse
to give away that primal joy burning inside.

I was a good child.
And I have suffered mightily for it.

Perhaps the meaning of good and bad
is something vastly different
than what we have been told.

Reclaiming the Self

For the sake of self-less good
I have surrendered every deeply burning desire I’ve ever had.
For the sake of earning it
I have given away everything precious.
For the sake of understanding others at the cost my Self
I have denied every truth I felt.

For peace, I accepted harm.
For worth, I abandoned joy.
For coexistence, I silenced my voice.
For love, I let my Self not matter.

And after giving all I could,
when I had nothing more to give
who came to my rescue?

Me.
My Self.
I did.

Because unless we are willing to play within a broken system—
and follow the rules set by some old gods,
we are abandoned.

Or at least, I was.

I know you can speak for your Self.
Because you know how the current system treats you.
Does it feel good?
Because if not… there is something we can do.

Individually and together.

But it’s radical
and it’s wild
and goes against everything we’ve ever been taught.
It won’t make us popular—at least not at first.
And we’ll be called selfish
just because we decided to feel good.
To feel good for our so-called selfish little Self.

But eventually,
oh eventually…
we’ll be free to enjoy what never could be controlled.
(Are you in?)
(Shhh… don’t tell.)
(Because we can learn how to become
Selfish through kindness.)

Hahaha! I get it.

Selfish. Desire. Anything with Self in it—
It sounds dangerous, doesn’t it?
Like we’re doing something wrong…

It’s because the Self has been expressed in distorted ways—
twisted by systems built for profit,
designed to suppress,
extract, and deplete.

But I’m not talking about that.

I’m talking about—
nurses who dance between bedsides,
engineers who design bridges with musical resonance,
chefs who write songs for each course,
scientists who allow intuition to guide the next question.

A world full of people
living in the intersections.
Never choosing just one dream…
because we are always meant for more.
Not being one thing,
but becoming everything we love,
stitched into one breathtaking,
honest,
and whole heart beating life.

Real desire
the kind that rises from a whole Self?
Is not chaotic.
It’s clarifying.
It doesn’t consume.
It creates.
Because it doesn’t fight creation.
It moves with it.

And we can live, love, and have what we want—
without hurting anyone.

When we give from our best Self,
we don’t give less.
We give more.

Because we give with the energy of happiness.
Not lack,
not “now you owe me,”
not “where’s my thank you?”

No.

We give from a place so full
that even one unexpected smile
genuine, and soft
feels like creation is smiling with us.

It’s simple.
It’s elegant.
And it’s possible.
Not just someday.

Here.
In this world.
In this life time.

Maybe not today.
Maybe not next year.
But soon.

Because humanity, at its core, is good.
We keep finding new ways to save lives.
To heal each other.
To rise for one another.
To restore the balance wherever it’s been broken.

And so… what if the next step isn’t fixing?
What if it has nothing to do with action?
What if it begins in the silence of listening—
really listening
to the signals from within our bodies.
The ones that say

“Yes, this naturally feels good. I want to do this.”

So here it is.
Not a command nor a demand.
Just an invitation.
A simple opportunity
to trust you.

Trust you.

Even when it feels unfamiliar.
And especially when
everything else says No.

We have a choice.

We can stop waiting to be chosen,
waiting to be fixed,
waiting for someone else to tell us
who we are.

But this choice means little
until it rises from a place we trust.
Until we know our Self well enough to say:

“This is mine. I choose this.”

And suddenly
the choice matters.
Because you matter.

Selfish kindness.
Kindness to our Self.
It’s radical.
It’s wild.
and goes against everything we’ve ever been taught.

But perhaps,
just perhaps,
this is how we begin to live—
and change
the world as I see it.

This is written for my 19-year-old Self.
I didn’t trust you then.
But I came back to listen.
Now I hear you.
You spoke of truth all along—
and today... I give you back your voice.