A discursive rant to a distant part of humanity:
We have nothing in common.
Your pride is most malignant. It is puerile and reckless, and I can’t be around it. You are a weak imitation, a sad mimicry. Who are you? Do tell me! No? Fine, then I shall tell you: You are other people. You chase after approval, you feign confidence to hide your insecurities. Who are you? What are your passions, what are your dreams? I want nothing of them. I have no interest in hearing mine, nor do I have an interest in hearing the dreams of the herd, both of which you have shamefully adopted. There is no authenticity, no originality. And I can’t blame you, for you stand with the majority.
You never understood me because you never understood yourself. You are a facade. A weak facade. I am not fooled. I have never been fooled. How can I be so sure? Because you are a poor judge of yourself, and self- deception is the most deceitful form of deception, for it is the only form of deception that covers its own tracks.
A strong man is open with his weakness, knowing that by being closed he risks deceiving himself of his limitations. Pride comes before the fall. You see, a man who thinks of himself too great will have no rivals. And that is the greatest deception of all.
You don’t get it do you? I have nothing in common with you. And what commonality you believe to perceive is a product of your own delusion, evidence that my position is all the more accurate.
Throughout the duration of our relationship, I debased my own dreams in an effort to elevate yours, to implant within you a desire to sow originality into your life. Time and time again I have grown distressed, tired of hearing myself. My desire is not to ingratiate you with my conversation, not to sell you on my ideas. It is to instill a desire to be original, a yearning to be something more than yourself. But I have failed myself and in turn failed you.
I don’t know you. Away from me: I never knew you.
Pride is cancer: all consuming auto destruction; deceptive and illusive.
My own pride has led me to believe that by catering to your insecurities I have done you a favor. In the end, I have only sabotaged myself.
Voluntary vulnerability is a sign of strength. Your lack of vulnerability reeks of weakness. That is why I no longer associate with you.
If I have to tip toe around people, I know that they are lying to themselves, that their sensitivities to other’s opinions keep them from the truth they seek to hide from themselves.
I know myself to be a fool.
I tell people things and wait for them to be challenged. If my words are not challenged, then those with whom I converse are not thinking, or simply absorbing my opinion.
I feed you what you want to hear in order to test your susceptibility to influence. I have found that you are the most susceptible. I don’t need more of me in my life. If I am to become what I was born to be, then I should first discard what I have always been. This requires shedding roles I have tried on in the past.
You do not know me, because you do not know yourself. You wait for others to tell you your dreams, you nurse the values of others in order to sustain yourself. As a result, you are kept a mere toddler attached at the breast of the herd.
You are everything I seek to turn away from in this world. You are everything I pity, and despise, and more. Our friendship was a contrivance out of mere convenience. You are a child, and I treated you as such. In the same way we act when a child happens upon some new found fact in his mundane world, we dramatize the enthusiasm we share with the child, we play to the child’s affections out of sympathy, knowing that this child has much to learn, that he is hopelessly lost without our approval. I prod and prattle children in this way. And you are a child.
A man wrapped up in himself makes for a very small bundle, and small you are.
One day you just wake up and you look around, and realize that you have nothing in common with the people surrounding you. You look at both sides of the coin for the first time. You see yourself maintaining these relationships, and you grow sick, nauseous. You realize that you have been suckered into the same sick mediocrity you proclaim to avoid in others.
A great men must never close the gap between himself and the group. If he does, he is no longer what he must be.
I aim to avoid judging a man’s actions until I know his motives. You have made your motives clear, and only then did I pass judgement.
We have nothing in common. What we do have in common, I want to make uncommon. What is it that we have in common? Pride. And I seek to rid that nefarious delusion of perfectitude from my soul every waking day. Pride is the greatest of evils.
Why don’t I want to be friends? You represent everything I hate in myself. That is your reward for emulating me.
You can tell more about a person by what he says about others than you can by what others say about himself. I have told you much about myself.
Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be. ~Thomas à Kempis
The wise man doubts often, and changes his mind; the fool is obstinate, and doubts not; he knows all things but his own ignorance.’ — Akhenaton
“Constant development is the law of life, and a man who always tries to maintain his dogmas in order to appear consistent drives himself into a false position” —Mahatma Gandhi
“A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.” —Oscar Wilde
William Dare 