The Sickness of Being “Someone”
Identity ain't all it’s cracked up to be.
We don’t talk about the burden of existence, really. We don’t share amongst ourselves the weight that bearing in mind imposes upon the spirit of humanity. We wear our intellect with such presumptive virtue—a jeweled trophy—the pièce de résistance of evolution.
And we would have to right? Imagine billions of years culminating in a species of apathetic egomaniacs strung out on cheap dopamine, running a rat race none of us had a hand in designing, in which only a very few of us are thriving and happy. Everyday we are bombarded with appearances that galvanize either our righteous superiority or our utter powerlessness, and in navigating this spectrum, the weight of personhood takes its toll. It’s no wonder that from within this whirling cataclysm of mind, inevitably we come down with the oldest disease known to man:
the sickness of being someone.
We live. We make life choices. We date, eat, work, have families, find ways to occupy ourselves. Here in the realm of time, when these actions begin generating reactions, we are unceremoniously confronted with our true life’s work. It presents as shit going wrong. And being so consumed in the drama of shit going wrong, we often don't look past the immediate circumstances to the teacher waiting behind them. Maybe the teacher presents as a disease. Or addiction. An abusive relationship. The death of someone vital to us. Political upheaval. A sudden loss of stability or ability. Whatever it is will be strong enough to shake us from complacency and compel us into a process of returning to truth; a shedding of that which we are not in order to arrive at the honesty of who we are.
The teaching isn't personal but the way life teaches appears to be completely personal, tailored to the body, the DNA, the thoughts, the deepest fears — an expression of “you” exactly, perceived through “your” reality tunnel. If purpose is to be assigned here, it would be to illuminate the illusion; to incinerate that which is false and need be discarded. It is for this reason that disease is such a profound teacher, as it confronts us directly with questions of who we really are and what of that essence will remain when the body goes. Whatever the teacher may be, its end lies in dispelling the deceptive power and control of the one who masquerades as “us”, and the sooner we surrender to this process, the sooner we receive the secrets it has to impart.