Letting Go of the Self

I Let Go of the Self

I was a young man who disliked my own timid and quiet nature in a world that demanded brightness and healthy growth.

I believed I couldn’t laugh simply because nothing around me felt amusing, and I never once thought warm feelings were floating through society.

No matter what I saw or heard, everything felt dull and flavorless. I must have been showing a blank, mask-like face to others while drifting from job to job.

I was troubled without even knowing the word “self-denial.”

I didn’t even recognize that the trouble itself belonged to me.

From the outside, it must have looked as if I had wrapped my heart in a shell of “worry.”

Like armor, it clung to me—yet without a mirror, I couldn’t see it.

Because I couldn’t see it, I couldn’t realize it was “worry.”

I lived inside that very worry.

I had no real interest in money, and I never escaped the level of a starting salary.

I believed that doing things steadily was what it meant to be “serious,” yet at work people mocked me, saying,

“You’re so damn serious you’ve got crap piled on your head!”

I had no words to respond.

Even past thirty, I couldn’t feel the warmth of people’s words.

I walked with my head down, and the muffled figure of myself from behind felt nothing but pitiful.

As they said—“too serious”—I was the type to brood over what “seriousness” even meant.

My “thoughts” were nothing more than impressions caught by my senses and turned into words—

shadowy figures that vanished the moment they were spoken.

Even if my hand touched ice and felt “cold,” that coldness exists neither in heaven nor on earth.

I, who could die at any moment, was a rootless weed.

The words that left my mouth were irresponsible shadows—“rough,” “careless,” drifting

without weight.

Humans are creatures within the food chain, yet we float above the natural world in a society built from words that deceive us.

When someone says, “You’re smart,” I might flare up in irritation, or on the contrary, accept it with simple joy.

We sway back and forth, flipping the meanings of words.

People say that “a good speaker is a good listener,” as if the way we hear is everything.

When I held a stone in my hand, I thought it was “hard,” and before understanding anything, I assumed as common sense that “a hard stone” existed as a fact.

Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am”—

once I realized that the “I” in that phrase could die at any moment, I understood that this “I” does not truly exist.

And yet, where had I been clinging my thoughts?

What was I holding onto when I believed the world was full of “things that exist,” repeating “it’s real, it’s real”?

The thought made me laugh out loud.

There was nothing in the world that bound my heart.

In a flash, the haze lifted.

My heart began to dance.

The clouds parted, and a blue sky appeared.

Perhaps this is what it means to “let go of the self.”

Wrapped in joy, my heart grew calm, like a sea settling into stillness.