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Do you ever get the feeling that you don’t fit in? The feeling that while life is going on all around you, you are somehow seperate from it. Somehow you are not actually a part of it. That is what most of my life has felt like. For some reason, it has always felt like there was this disconnectedness between me and everybody else. I tried to fit in. I tried to be normal, whatever that means, but for some reason it never seemed to work. And it is not so much that I was that much different than other people, cause I wasn’t, but it was more the idea that as you get older and start meeting more and more people you start noticing positive qualities in others and noticing the positive things others have to offer. And as I became more and more aware of these positive qualitites in others, I became more and more aware of the fact that I felt like I lacked these qualities. Only it wasn’t so much that I lacked these qualitites, but more that I just didn’t hold myself in the same regard, and had doubts on whether or not somebody else would look at me in this light. It was this feeling that no matter what I did, I was never going to fit in. It was like life came so easy and natural to everybody around me, but it never felt that way to me. And I would tell myself not to worry about it, and I would tell myself that this feeling wouldn’t last forever, but it is as if that feeling never really went away. For years and years I would rack my brain, trying to figure out why I had this feeling, and why it never got any better, until finally I got sick of thinking about it and sick of worrying about it and settled on the idea that maybe it is just me.
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So I got up this morning, and after getting my daily iced coffee and blueberry muffin from Coffee Bean, I grabbed a weekend edition of the L.A. Times, and headed home to attempt the crossword puzzle. I opened up the paper, and decided to read my horoscope, and immediately I was blown away with what I had read. I am not one of those people who is addicted to reading their horoscopes. I read it from time to time, nowadays only when I buy the L.A. Times, as opposed to when I just print the crossword puzzle from latimes.com. I used to read it pretty regularly, and would either be emotionally uplifted by how true the thoughts were, or realistically bitter about how bogus and ridiculous horoscopes were. But every once in a while, a horoscope comes along that perfectly and completely captures the essence of how you feel and what you believe, and today that horoscope appeared to me.
“You feel you’re engaged in the passionate pursuit of goals and ideals. But to others you might look like a person sitting on a couch.”
Never have I read anything that captures my true state of being as much as this horoscope. More often than not I feel like this is what my life has become. I feel like I am trying to rid myself of all of the insignificant, meaningless bullshit that preoccupies our entire existence. Buddha spent six years living in the forest, trying to rid his mind of anything and everything that he felt connected to, freeing himself from anything that would influence his decision making process. Buddha spent six years in the forest becoming enlightened. In this day in age, living in Los Angeles, sometimes the closest that I can get to exiling myself in the forest, is sitting on my couch with a book, free from anything and everything in this world that keeps me from thinking and acting and being my true self. Sitting on my couch, trying to become more enlightened.
