dreaife的休憩小栈

I realized that I have actually been suppressing myself.

I became aware of this when external stimuli stirred excitement and impulses in me. Once I noticed their effect, I would reflexively suppress the impulses they produced, keeping my emotions in a steady state.

I think this may be the influence of an idea I had long ago: that I am still inside a cocoon. While I was at school, I felt that its environment was harmful to me, so I chose to isolate my deeper self from interacting with it. Now that I have come here, I feel that my surroundings are somewhat better, and I also have more freedom to choose them for myself. So perhaps I should open myself up more and allow myself to truly grow.

But my previous way of life seems to have become a habit. I am afraid of contact with the outside world, and afraid of letting my inner self break away from this artificial equilibrium. So I began unconsciously maintaining this silence on my own—to the point that the past year could be described as a mire-like stillness, devoid of life.

What happened here today made me realize that I am, in fact, still inside the cocoon.

So what should I do? I have become somewhat aware of my present situation, yet I cannot escape it. I have always believed that only after discovering who I truly am would I have the confidence to face the outside world. But how can I discover my true self if I do not continually engage with all kinds of things and instead remain in this stagnant silence? This is probably my predicament.

It is true, though, that the self which exists in the world is not there from the outset. Rather, its possible form is shaped through interaction with the world.

But the self I am searching for is something more fundamental: my most primal impulses as myself. That is what I want to find. Of course, I do not mean that impulse can point in only one direction, nor that there is only one kind of impulse capable of giving me the desire to move forward. But I think that, since human beings are destined toward the future, the decisions I make about where those future impulses will lead also determine my future.
So perhaps I have also been weighed down by this possibility.

Choosing one direction inherently means having to abandon certain other possibilities. Of course, I also know that those paths do not disappear simply because I choose another one; I may still explore them again in the future. Yet the choice I make at this moment brings about a real and tangible change in me. It changes my brain and narrows the course of my future experiences. Perhaps that is why I fear making this choice—the loss of other possible versions of myself.

But when I think about it this way, what I fear most is actually the responsibility of choosing a direction and moving forward. I am afraid of being responsible for that choice.

And so, the answer has actually been right in front of me all along.