Strange Gifts – Selfishness

Dear Me,

There’s a question which people sometimes ask:

If you could tell your younger self something, write and send them a letter, a message to the past from the future, what would you say to yourself?

This is often used as a writing prompt, or a method of self healing…

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excerpt from: The Pen Company | Why and how to write a letter to your past self

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I have to confess that I usually think that this is a stupid idea.

Sentimental, nostalgic nonsense.

But that’s not really what I think about it.

That’s a fearful reaction – What am I afraid of?

A defensive measure – What am I protecting myself from?

Old programming kicking in – Did I program myself to do this or did someone else program me to do this?

I have many superficial reasons which I give myself, and will offer to others if they question me, to back up the equally superficial thought that writing a letter to yourself is stupid, sentimental, nostalgic nonsense.

The most regular reason I give myself and others is – My past self wouldn’t read the letter. And if they did they wouldn’t understand the message. Or if they did understand it they might see me as being the one who doesn’t understand, I’m in the future and have forgotten what it was like to be in the past, sure I think I remember but do I, do I really recall the 24/7 life I lived? Sure maybe I have vivid recall of a traumatic event, but it’s a snapshot of a moment, what about all the moments which led up to it and led away from it building up to the next traumatic event. Sure I recall some of those too, but I recall them from the safe distance of the future. My past self would most likely think I was full of shit and tell their future self to eff off. If they even believed that the letter was from their future self. Would they recognise themselves in me, the way I recognise them in me?

There’s also a part of me which quite likes being who I am today, and is concerned that by telling my past selves anything about their future it would set in motion a chain reaction whereby they would alter the past and this could ruin the present for me.

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excerpt from: Laws of Time Travel | Uncyclopedia

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The funny thing is that I often scoff at characters in Time Travel TV shows and films who worry about affecting the present by traveling to the past. I want to ask them – Why do you think the present would be affected negatively, what happens if it is affected positively?

What happens if slavery is abolished before it even starts – wouldn’t that be a positive? (this question was inspired by watching the TV series – Timeless)

What if not only is slavery abolished before it even starts but the concept itself never seeds itself in human consciousness?

Okay so maybe this would mean that many people who are alive in the present would cease to exist, but they wouldn’t know it, and maybe there’d be many new people alive whose ancestors were killed or never allowed to be born because of slavery. Maybe instead of something dire like the Nazis taking over the world, something beneficial would replace what we have now.

What if writing a letter to a past self changes my past for the better for all the past me’s after that? Am I really that attached to who I am now, to my life as it is now, that I would choose not to help them?

The thought of it…

Another funny thing which struck me is – All of my writing is a letter to myself, mostly I see it as being directed to my present self, but sometimes I can see that it’s for my past selves.

Thank you part of me which distracts me with funny thoughts when I’m on edge… on the edge of making a discovery which I know would probably release me from a burden but which…

The question now is which past self do I write to?

When did I learn to read?

Maybe I could send myself a voicemail… but I’m not good at those, too many pauses to remember what I was going to say…

And when did I first learn to listen?

That was probably before I learned to talk… wasn’t there some problem about that? Yes, but it wasn’t your problem and you can only remember hearing about it later when your ability to talk bothered and you would be reminded by your mother of when you didn’t talk and how that bothered too.

Depending on the moment of bothered on the bothered clock you were told that your first words were either “No.” or “It’s too complicated”. And that was either hilarious or extremely annoying, but always typical of you and your you-ness which was always bothersome.

STOP!

Pause…

…

Focus

in

on

what

is

bothering

you

who

is

bothering

you

when

where

did

it

start

?

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excerpt from: Mind Mastery | The Misanthrope as a Disappointed Idealist

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Dear You,

I don’t know if it started with you, but you’re the one who first noticed it, you’re the first one who did something about it – you’re the one who asked the question.

While I was writing the other day (and no, you did not grow up to be a writer, not the way you imagined, hoped, saw as a possible way out, but keep writing that book you’ve just started, it won’t get published because you’ll chicken out when the offer comes in – and boy did you chicken out spectacularly. You will never forget it, and it’ll haunt you, BOO-ing you at the most awkward times – you’ll get over it and be relieved about it eventually), it occurred to me that you had read similar kinds of writing after your quest began.

You scoured the words of others seeking answers during the decades of your search for understanding which began consciously when you were 16 years old…

Remember that day you sat down at the dining room table – that slab of wood painted black propped up on two silver metal sideways H’s – which swayed to and fro when you leaned your elbows upon it.

Elbows off the table! Sit up straight! You wouldn’t need to put your elbows on the table if you weren’t slouching! – remember that too?

That table troubled you in the same way that life troubled you. And you couldn’t figure out how to fix it, it wasn’t yours to fix, but you longed to fix it, to make it sturdy, steady as a good table should be… or at least that’s how you imagined a good table should be, because all the tables your mother bought were too fancy to ever be stable. Remember the oval marble one on wrought iron legs which constantly threatened to collapse and crush your legs, how you hated that table… and you’ve never been able to like marble since then even though you know it’s not marble’s fault.

I’m writing this to you on a very sturdy and steady table. You can stand on it, move around upon it, and it remains solidly firm. It is made of thick, unvarnished, unpainted, almost raw sanded wood. Remember how much you love wood – it is the table of your dreams. The table is in a room which is all yours – it’s not someone else’s walk-in closet, it’s not someone’s corridor to their walk-in closet, it’s not one you’ll have to vacate because someone else needs it. There’s a window in this room through which the sun pours in – it’s not on the dark side of the house, in permanent shadow. You get to control the room temperature – it’s not cold or damp. This room is in your own home – you finally get to have your own home. This home is a bit of a ramshackle mess but you’ll love it more because of that as the building suits the ramshackle mess that you are… that I am. The only thing missing is the floor to ceiling wall of books – that’s because you don’t need that kind of a wall anymore.

It took you a long time to get here – the journey you’re about to start is worth it!

On that day you had the flat in Paris all to yourself.

The children disguised as adults known as your parents were gone long enough for the dense smoke of drama to have dissipated. It clung to the walls in yellowing stains. It made the black carpet which hid the spillages stink. It blocked the drains. It made machines break down. It caused the lights to flicker. It was in every dust particle. In every breath you took. But the pollution levels were low compared to normal.

The weather was grey as it often was, that endless heavy blanket of la grisaille parisienne which made the city so philosophically damp, intellectually dreary, poutily despairing, ever shrugging to shift the weight of the world from its shoulders… you felt like the city on that day, you’d been feeling that way for what seemed like forever, but you couldn’t let it show, couldn’t say anything, so you wrote it down instead on a piece of white paper ripped from one of your drawing pads with a charcoal pencil.

WHY?

That’s all you wrote.

It covered the entire sheet.

It was all you could write.

You didn’t need to write any more than that, you knew what it meant, and it didn’t matter if anyone else didn’t know what it meant had they seen it. They wouldn’t see it. You did wish someone would see it, though, and would understand what it meant. Something inside of you desperately yearned for it to be seen. You wanted to take it out into the world and show it to people like a raggedy madman wearing an end of the world is nigh placard.

Did that urge come from you as you were then or did it come from an earlier you?

It didn’t come from 6 year old you. Not after that experience she had of her painting of a rainbow being used to get a pot of gold for the adults which they would never share with her. Remember how she boldly confronted that Art Dealer who intimidated the adults to inform them that they had not paid her what they had promised to pay her – one cent. A token gesture which the Art Dealer couldn’t follow through on because when you’re used to not giving people their due you just can’t break the habit, even for a child, even for one cent. That Art Dealer hated us after that – we were a brat, and there was no allegedly about it.

We were one tough little cookie – adults kept telling us that.

Sometimes it was a compliment – Well done, you didn’t cry when logically a person, especially a child-person, would normally cry.

Sometimes it was a criticism – Who do you think you are! How dare you resist my attempts to hurt you, I need you to feel my pain.

Sometimes it was said just before an adult turned into a child and turned our 6 year old self into the adult who had to listen to their problems, look after them, and protect them from the big bad wolf world.

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Adults are always going on about how vulnerable little children are – maybe they are on the outside but on the inside they’re primal survivalists. It’s the adults who seem vulnerable to the child, they may be giants on the outside but on the inside they have these fragile egos which shatter at the slightest breath. They’re always screaming and shouting, losing their heads which fly off and bash into everything and everyone.

Oh, remember The Adventures of Baron Munchausen… no, wait, you haven’t seen it yet, you will and you’ll love it. It had answers to some of your WHY? and it will become a fond reference point for you. Should I be telling you these sort of things…

Should I be telling you about your future? I know you want to know about them, you desired so much to see ahead… to know that the decision you made to keep going wasn’t pointless. 16 was a milestone. There will be more milestones. And I’m not worried that telling you about your future will change the present for me now – if it does, then it does.

We used to worry so much about… so many abstract things like that. We were often trying to change the present by altering the past. Mostly though we tried to change the present by altering ourselves – almost all of us did that one way or another. You did it at school to fit in, make friends, belong – remember the lesson you learned. Remember that moment when you realised how empty it felt to achieve the fitting in and belonging to the popular group. Even the void of the abyss which you’re feeling right now doesn’t feel as empty as that.

What frightens you the most right now is that – is that all there is, is that what life will be, is that what you’ll eventually have to give to because you’ll never beat the system and you’ll have to join it or opt out completely, is that what the world of human is underneath its surface veneer?

Are all those people who look like they belong and fit in just pretending to belong and fit in with each other? Are they afraid of being alone and yet feeling horribly alone while surround by people? Does honest emptiness frighten them more than the dishonest emptiness? Is everything they say and do an attempt to fill the emptiness with sound and action, to cover it up, drown it out, feed it until… and yet it is never full, filled?

Your WHY? is asking that and so much more, and the answers will be both easy and hard to find. The tricky part is understanding the answers, and understanding that something is an answer when it doesn’t look or sound like an answer at all. Sometimes the question is the answer.

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There’s so much noise in the world. So much noise in your world. It’s difficult to think with so much noise. That noise doesn’t want you to think, at least not to think for yourself, it wants to do the thinking for you, tell you what to think and don’t think about it, most of the thinking it does for you it didn’t do for itself, it’s just passing along thinks it was told to think and not think about.

You keep trying to figure out how to stop people from screaming and shouting.

I still haven’t figured that one out, I don’t think we’re supposed to figure it out – some things are meant to be… the spurs which spur us to ask WHY? and then go on our quest for answers (the quest matters more than the answers – you will come across that notion and think it is bullshit until you think that it may have a point). But I have figured out how to do my own screaming and shouting… you to do it in writing, then people have the option to tune in or tune out, turn the volume on, up, down, off, rather than be forced to be orally assaulted.

You know those sore throats you get, the ones like burning razors blades, the flaming claws strangling from within… I think it’s our 19 year old self who figures out that those are due to holding back the ire we feel, our own inner screaming and shouting, when on the receiving end of someone else’s ire, their screaming and shouting.

Keeping quiet, keeping calm, keeping it all bottled up inside, they are allowed to do this not you, you shut up, and you do knowing that it’s pointless to say anything because no one is listening. They’re not listening to themselves so WHY? would they listen to anyone else. They can’t hear themselves because of their screaming and shouting. No one can hear over the din of verbal dinner plates and glasses being smashed as they get thrown around a room. Vocal cutlery being thrown, knives and forks like heat-seeking missiles. Ping, ping, PING!

Do they really expect anyone to hear what they are saying when it is said too loudly and erratically, and do they believe that this is a show of strength. People who are strong on the inside don’t need to scream and shout so much, or prove how strong they are with loud words or with anything other than being calm, cool, collected. But always being calm, cool, collected can become less of a strength and more of a weakness.

Our 6 year old self knew that, but our later selves kept forgetting it, getting confused. We were exposed more and more to the world of people and there is so much brainwashing washing away… washing us away, washing themselves away, like a tidal wave.

Was it our 7 year old self who loved studying the weather, and reading scientific stories about storms. And getting drenched by the rain. Thunderstorms will always be our favourite, but not human thunderstorms. Human thunderstorms think they’re magnificent. Real thunderstorms are magnificent.

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via Oral Traditions

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Remember how our 6 year old self had once wanted to be like her father.

Maybe because everyone kept telling her that’s what she wanted or what she should want, except her mother, of course – You’re just like your father! – and that was a bad thing.

Maybe because those moments spent in his studio painting were fun, were calm, quiet even though he was painting up a creative thunderstorm, and usually had opera blasting the screaming and shouting of the singing world. But it somehow seemed soothing… unless mother burst in to nag either child or father because… even then we knew that mother made herself miserable being the perfect wife, perfect mother, perfect housekeeper, perfect hostess, perfect woman… what a perfect nuisance. It was everyone else’s fault that she was so miserable and her misery wanted company in misery until death do us part.

Maybe we would have ended up being just like our father, it was better than being just like our mother, and at the time those were the only options offered by those around us. But… our mother did not want us to be close to our father because he was bad and she was good, and she would use us as an excuse to save herself, and of course we had to help her.

You’re helping her now, not now in this moment alone when she’s away and you’re so relieved she’s gone, and you’re not feeling guilty about it, but that WHY? contains within it a query about WHY? you feel guilty about things which… WHY? should you feel guilty about wanting to live your own life?

And yet you do because it would mean that you would selfishly stop being so selfless and your mother would have to sort herself out on her own – she’s never going to do that, never going to sort herself out.

And that’s not because she’s happy being who she is as she is, and screw you for looking at her and deciding that she needs to sort herself out because you don’t like her how she is. She’s not happy – have you ever seen her be genuinely happy?

But you’ve heard her tell you endlessly about how unhappy she is, blame you for being the cause of her unhappiness, blame your father, blame her father, blame her brother, blame her mother for dying suddenly… and your child-mother never got the chance to talk with her mother, make up after their fight about her mother not wanting to spend time with her child on her last night of her visit before she abandoned her child to its grandparents or boarding school because it was boring and she had places to go and people to be. Maybe that’s WHY? she started calling our 3 or 4 year old self – Mama, and kept doing it, kept making us her mother, her bad mother, her good mother, her mother who should be a perfect mother to her rather than an imperfect child who kept forcing her to be the mother when she still hadn’t gotten over being a child who was rejected by her own mother.

She keeps saying that she needs to, wants to, sort herself out because then she could be who she wants to be, who she says she really is – perfect, wonderful, generous, lovable and loved by one and all.

You will think she’s sorting herself out over and over and over again, and she’ll think she’s doing it too. She appears to be doing it the most when she’s riding on the updraught caused by your explorations into understanding, but she’s not understanding anything, she’s just repeating your own words back to you which she thinks are her words. You know they’re your words… but you keep telling yourself that they’re her words, and does it matter anyway as long as the words speak of understanding something?

Her repeating what you say as though it was hers is weirdest and most noticeable when she’s using words which aren’t yours, they’re ones you’ve spoken to try them out, ones you’ve absorbed from others, from all those books of New Age, Self-Help, Magic, Mystery, Philosophy, Psychology, Spirituality, Metaphysics, Religion, and so on. You’re testing them out to see if when you speak them you’ll connect with them, or if they’ll sound shallow, false, empty… is that what she’s doing too? It’ll take you a long while to admit to yourself that it’s not, and to see that the words she loves the most are the shallow, the false, the empty which sound deep, true, and full.

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Who’s Queen? – remember that. This is the sort of quote mother would have loved and repeated as her own.

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For a long many years you’ll be like our 9 year old self – I think she was the one who drew an entire comic book and then shared it with father and mother. She knew the comic book wasn’t like a real comic book, but apparently they expected it to be professionally done. She also knew that she should not have shared it with them had she wanted to keep it safe. She had a reason for doing that, but it got lost in the shuffle our 20 year old self made of the past.

I think you will like being our 20 year old self when you get there. She also faced a milestone like the one you did. She followed through on the quest for understanding which you started consciously with the WHY?. She looked for answers everywhere in everything and everyone. It was the only thing which kept her going through what our 30 year old self eventually titled – the dark period. It was a bit like menstruating heavily and continuously for several years which felt like centuries, and nothing would make the bleeding stop.

The quest continued through our 30’s, and into our 40’s – I’m at the end of the 40’s right now (I know, I’m soooo old, but… I feel so much younger than I did at your age). I have to admit that this is thus far my favourite decade, perhaps because I’ve become decadent. And if I’m being open and honest with you – I hated being you, but I do love you passionately.

Oh, Louis, Louis, still whining, Louis… you’ll understand the reference when you get into your mid-20’s. You’ll read a book, then see a film version of the book, and you will love both versions. They will awaken something dormant within you. You will love the film even though you’ll think the casting was all wrong except for the child who was brilliant, and that it made a mess of the story. You’ll be proud of loving it when others dismiss it as dross, and you’ll have an experience during that time which will feel like the waking life version of a dream you had many years earlier but which you haven’t yet had where you are now.

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To be fair to you, you’re the starting point of the whining. Your WHY? became the WHY?-ning. You didn’t intend for it to go that way, but you can’t always predict the consequences of actions.

The dark period was a whining WHY?-ning hemorrhaging.

In later years you will become very tired of all the inner whining, just as you will be exhausted by all the outer whining of your mother (she’ll never stop whining, she’s still whining away but far from your ears – you do eventually get away from her), of your father (he’s dead now, so when he tells you that he’s immortal and does it so convincingly you’ll almost wonder if…), of all the people around you whining to you about your parents, or about their own lives and how helpless, powerless, they are to do anything about anything.

You’ll attract whiners, whiners who scream and shout at you because of what they’re going through and how hard it is and no one understands them. You’ll understand them because inside of you – that’s you too. But they’ll whine and scream and shout at you that you couldn’t possibly understand them – and you’ll wonder WHY? they’re bothering to talk at you if they believe you couldn’t possibly understand them.

Every now and then you say something along those lines to them – and then regret it because it sets off another round of whining and screaming and shouting.

In all their whining and screaming and shouting you will hear them say how their suffering is caused by caring too much about others, feeling too much what others feel… and you will be tempted to say something along the lines of – if you cared about me, and could truly feel what I feel, you would stop screaming and shouting and whining at me.

And their reaction to that would confirm what our 6 year old self had already observed…

No one cares about anyone else, they just say that they do because they like the sound of their own voice saying it, they like the image it creates for them of themselves, they like how others who hear it react to it, applauding them for their words which they never live by. They don’t have to live by them, they just have to say them and it’s the same thing with less work.

They get to eat the whole apple pie without having to make it or do the washing up afterwards.

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excerpt from: How Feeling All Your Feelings Makes You Free | The Good Therapist

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But none of us listened to our 6 year old self because how could she know… she was only a child.

We kept trying to prove her wrong… and she silently waited for us to prove ourselves wrong.

You paid homage to her with what you felt on that day where you are now, when you wrote the WHY?

And then you doubted her again, wanted to tempt fate, thought about showing the WHY? to someone else in the hope that they would care, would feel, would understand, but…

But.

You knew they wouldn’t see it even if you showed it to them.

You knew they wouldn’t see it, you were not going to show it to them, because you planned on tearing it up and throwing it away.

That was before you realised that people were going through your trash. That was a surprise reserved for you later.

But you won’t tear it up and throw it away. Not for a few weeks…

You were going to write more on that day.

You finally had silence to think, solitude to feel.

But thinking was pointless, feeling was pointless, just as writing more was pointless. The pencil was pointless too after you’d written WHY? as you always put too much pressure on it, on its other pencil friends, and on pens when you used them, as though there was a force inside your fingers, hand, arm, mind which wanted to get out but there was a counter-force blocking it. That force wanted to make a point, but its point was probably pointless just like you. Everything was pointless.

I still feel you inside of me, still hear you, the pointlessness still sharply makes its point… but it doesn’t hurt the way that it used to, perhaps it has grown dull with all the poking and prodding it has done throughout the years, or maybe my inner skin has become tougher with age.

I was thinking about that this morning, and last night before I laid my head down to rest. Something was bothering me, but not as much as how I dealt with what was bothering me bothered me.

Recently I’ve been using a new approach to old bothersome wounds. I’ve been focusing in on the pain, but not diving into to it like I once did. Sometimes diving into it is how you resolve it, but sometimes… it just leads to whining, and even when my whining is justified I can’t bring myself to do it, hate myself for doing it even slightly. Yet sometimes I want to do it, need to do it to get it out of my system, feel like doing it… it makes me feel the want and need of a primal scream. But I don’t let it out. WHY? because of what might happen if I let it out – I’m not sure if that is a question or an answer.

What was bothering me was connected to that.

What was bothering me reminded me of you, and in remembering you, I remembered other me’s, ones you have been and ones who you have yet to be, and all our answers for the WHY?, the reasons for the WHY?, all the paths which led to it and away from it to return back to it. Always wondering if it was all pointless and WHY? are we… bothering with the WHY?

Would you like to know my answer to WHY?

Would you understand it if I told you?

It’s not dissimilar to the answers others shared in their writings, those writings you read which are similar to my writings now, which you had trouble understanding, more so when you tried so hard to understand because you believed they had the answer.

Did they have the answer?

Yes, and no. They had their own answer to their own WHY? and parts of their answer to their own WHY? have become parts of my answer to our own WHY? but not because they… but because of our they, and everything all of us went through when it was our turn to be the me.

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It’s my turn to be the me, and it’s been an interesting turn of events thus far. One of those is WHY? I am writing this to you. I’m doing something which is called blogging. I’m not sure how to explain it to you.

You tried keeping a diary a year or two before because other people your age did that and it was one of many things you tried to do because everyone else was doing it, and the results were ones which made you feel increasingly aware that there was something about you which made you unable to be like everyone else… later on you’ll find out that everyone else isn’t like everyone else either.

Blogging is like keeping a diary only it’s not as boring as that was for you… mainly because it’s me who is doing it and I remember you doing it and I’m doing the opposite of that. I’m saying what you could never bring yourself to say, and yes, it did terrify me when I started, and it still makes me nervous but the anxiety tips into thrilling more often than it tips into panic stations delete destroy.

This diary isn’t kept hidden from the eyes of others, locked up, buried like a tell-tale heart… I share it with the whole wide world… yes, I can feel you recoil in horror.

Remember Poe, oh, how you loved Poe and his Murders in Rue Morgue – that was your favourite because you could relate to the murderous ape. You did tell a few people about that, and then decided that wasn’t a good idea. People are always saying that they want to get to know you, that they’re interested in you, that you should participate more (school…), but when you do participate and things get interesting they suddenly don’t want to know you.

Not all people are like that. You will meet one or two in your journey through the decades, then a few, then more and more. There are some people who genuinely care, they’re usually not the ones talking about it, they just do it.

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Remember Dumas… you’ll never forget, it was the first time you ever sobbed so freely, unashamedly, with passion… with pleasure… the Musketeers were twats, but The Count of Monte Cristo… you were him and he was you when he was the prisoner in the Chateau d’If – you were definitely a prisoner of If’s and the castles they create which aren’t castles at all. You longed to be him when he escaped, when he set about his revenge… it was so delicious you could taste it, lick the blood of your sweet vengeance off the metal blade. But you skipped that part of being him and ended up where he ended up in the end – knowing that there is no point to making a point like that, so much time wasted on others – WHY?

Did I spoil the end for you? We both know that I didn’t, because even at the worst of times there was a tough little cookie inside who protected the best of us all.

I want to thank you for the WHY?, do you want to know WHY?

I also want you to know that being you… I know I said that I hated being you, I did, I hated being me… but I also loved being you, I did, I loved being me.

Oh, and by the way we’re human.

I know that you’re not certain if you are a human at all, you’re more convinced that you’re an alien who was abandoned here on Earth by your kind. They didn’t want you either. Yes, I know you tried to tell yourself other versions of it where they came out better, and you had some hope…

It’s probably just as well that our 30-something self didn’t write you a letter, she had a lot to say about hope being the worst evil in Pandora’s Box. She learned not to say that out loud, it wasn’t a difficult lesson to learn, it was simply more of the lesson which you have already learned. Which all of us learned and kept learning.

I’m sort of unlearning it now. I’m doing a lot of things backwards… which may be what led me backwards through time to you.

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Over to you…