dreaife的休憩小栈

I realized that I’m actually suppressing myself.

I became aware of this when I was excited and impulsive in response to external stimuli. After noticing that I was being influenced like that, I would reflexively suppress the impulse that arose, keeping my emotions in a steady state.

I think this is influenced by an idea I had a long time ago: I believed I was still inside a cocoon. Back in school, I thought the environment of that place was harmful to me, so I chose to isolate the environment from interacting with my deeper self. Now I’ve come here, and I feel the surrounding environment is a bit better, and I can also choose my surroundings more freely—so I actually should loosen up more and allow myself to achieve real growth.

But it seems my previous life formed a habit in me: I feel afraid of contact with the outside world, and I’m afraid of my inner self breaking away from this artificial steady state. So I began, unconsciously and on my own, to maintain this quiet—so much so that the past year of my life could be described as a muddy, lifeless stillness.

Today, this place made me realize that I’m actually still staying inside the cocoon.

So what should I do? I’m somewhat aware of my current situation, but I can’t get out. I’ve always thought that only after deciding to reveal my real self would I have the confidence to face the outside world. But the real self—if I don’t keep engaging with various things and instead maintain this pool of dead silence—how could I ever discover it? This is probably my dilemma.

Indeed, the self that exists in the world does not exist from the start; rather, it is shaped into a form that can exist through mutual interaction with the world.

But the self I’m seeking is something more essential—my most fundamental impulse as myself. That’s what I want to find. Of course, I’m not saying that impulse only ever has one direction; the impulses that drive me forward won’t be just one either. But I think that since a person has a fate that points toward the future, the decisions I make that determine where that future impulse goes also determine my future. So perhaps I’m being weighed down by that possibility as well.

Choosing a direction itself means having to abandon some other possibilities. Of course, I also know that these directions don’t disappear just because I choose a different one, and I may still explore them again in the future. But the choice I take at this moment is a real change for me: it changes my brain and filters the directions of what I will experience in the future. So I’m probably afraid of this choice, afraid of the sense of losing other possible versions of myself.

But thinking about it this way, what I’m most afraid of is the responsibility of choosing a direction and moving forward—I’m afraid of the sense of responsibility that comes with this choice.

Then the answer is actually right in front of me.