When You Are the Problem

I am the problem. It's a devastating blow when you arrive at this conclusion on your own. The rot in society that I have wholeheartedly cursed is in me.

It's a strange position to be in. You begin to look back and try to look for the source of this behavior as if trying to blame someone/something else for it. The first stage is always disbelief. I refused to accept that I was wrong on a moral level.

Slowly as you notice the evidence of your nature, you begin to lament since you have become the demon you condemned so little a while back with so much empty venom. I like to compare life then to that of Ravan. All of your thoughts are suddenly arriving from heads that you do would not like to call your own. In situations the first thoughts you have are those you need to condemn. It is hell, or as close to that as can be. Knowing that you are the problem.

Over time though it eases off. You begin to notice that you no longer do the things you used to do. You now have an understanding of the nature of your thoughts. That you can and probably will be wrong in the future. You catch yourself asking again and again "Who am I to say so?". I was inevitably drawn to science due to this. There was a safety in knowing how much it is that you don't know and how sure you can be of certain things. Yet you demolish your own thoughts in the light of this finding. You begin to rely on surer things like logic.
You begin to notice the true nature of your memories. They are fickle shape shifters constantly changing to appease the current you to such an extent that you can only be sure of the facts you can wring out of them and even those needing confirmation. Some suddenly become hateful remembrances of instances. Most of them contain you and oh you have not been the saint you thought you were. The only solace you have is in the fact that you have the will to change.

You begin to be subject to Reverse Culture Shock. You begin to realize that potentially, there are only a few places where your demon could have been birthed. You can name each place. It is too late however. You witness the young being fed this poison and do nothing because you are afraid.

You are still not strong enough to refute this beast which until so recently and perhaps even now, resides in your own mind. You are weak and you lash yourself for this weakness, knowing that your silence is all it takes for this ugly existence to grow. Yet you keep the silence because you now know that it was this squall which secured your position in society and that years of living with this in your mind has made you so terribly frail that you would not survive it's cleaving from one's self.

You hate yourself for your actions. You repent your deeds. Perhaps if change smiles upon you, you get to ask for forgiveness. You spend your days knowing that your actions have supported a system which is wrong. The German citizen lending support to Hitler no longer seems incredulous to you. On some level, you understand how it could have happened and you pray that it did not happen that way because it would show you a sight which would scorch your soul.

You know things. You know, and you can never forget them. That is the curse of knowledge, for if ignorance is bliss the is not knowledge pain? They are constantly there at the fore of your mind, coloring your experiences and marking the schools of thought in people. Turning otherwise happy moments into objects of deep sadness and rage. You begin to generalize and then quickly correct yourself. You begin to find it difficult to love and hate people. People are no longer so simple. You surprise yourself at not being angry at things which would have enraged your earlier self. You begin to question views of your own which are too absolute to be true. You begin to realize that objectivity is after all, manufactured. You begin to take philosophy seriously and wonder why you took so long.

A line from a beautiful song comes to mind. Perhaps only when you are the problem, it is the easiest to fix. Finding out that you are the problem is hard; and painful. No wonder we live in a world difficult to change. I'll leave you with a line from a song that was introduced to me not so long ago.