Every individual, every personality has their own personal Pandora’s box.
Every writer has their favorite theme.
Every scientist has their favorite object of study.
Each of us has something that seems to be engraved on our gravestone even before our birth. An abstract something that runs like a red thread through the entire course of our life.
And this red thread is our guiding star, our worst nightmare, our itch in the summer heat, and the small stone that gets stuck in our shoe.
It is the question and the answer, the longing and the result of our entire life’s journey.
Perhaps not everyone of us has found what it is, or maybe we have found it but not correctly. Right now, unfortunately, I don’t know how to accurately determine whether we know correctly what it is for us. Perhaps we will only know this by living our life to the very end.
Then, in the company of all our ancestors and loved ones who are waiting for us somewhere in the infinity of space and time, “she” will meet us.
For now, we can only guess. And I would recommend treating it not as a terrifyingly stressful exam, but as a kind of hide-and-seek game. After all, this something wants you to find it, to unravel its essence; its existence depends on you finding it—that is its fate and its death. So if you haven’t found what it is yet, it’s not a problem. It means you are not yet ready; it means your hands cannot yet hold it.
But do not stop searching and simply wait for it to come to you on its own. For if you do, you will mock both yourself and this “something.”
Kierkegaard wrote in his work on death that we need to become ourselves.
And perhaps this something is the only clue that leads us along this thorny path to ourselves.
Kierkegaard also wrote that the scariest thing that can happen is not finding oneself but trying to become someone else, to remake oneself.
Thus fleeing from the true self to a distance that cannot be crossed within a single lifetime.
Here, I will allow myself to disagree, as I believe that the attempt to transform oneself is a kind of transitional stage that distributes souls according to their possibility of finding their true self or not.
After all, we are accustomed to our reflection in the mirror. There is nothing unusual or complex about this; after all, I am me. I have always been this way, and in your memory, all physical changes are kept on a separate shelf, even though they occurred imperceptibly to your eyes.
But to find oneself and discover this something, you need to get to know yourself again. Especially if the external mirror and soul show a picture that you find completely displeasing.
You need to take a break from yourself, throw all your strength, perseverance, and willpower into remaking yourself. To rip out this red thread from your life path and insert a new one that you like better. But only to get bored with it.
Just like in Akutagawa’s story about the monk and his long nose.
So that at the end of this struggle, when you are nearing defeat, you can tear off this mask from yourself. With pain and resentment, but eventually, after the abyss of despair, look into the mirror and see anew what you have observed for years.
To be amazed at how you could not notice what was literally right in front of your nose and find peace.
To accept the world and yourself in it as it is.
I think there are people somewhere born with the mask of themselves on their face and who will not face a terrifying solitary walk through a gloomy forest.
It is nice to think about and perhaps pleasant to dream that this story is about you. But without despair, you will not be able to experience and understand the magic that lives in this world and therefore in yourself.
So all that remains for us is to clean the mirror every day, so that one day we are ready for what we see there. To be ready to grasp the end of the thread and follow the labyrinth to the end. To be ready for the battle with the Minotaur.
To be ready to walk the path that you have chosen and that was simultaneously destined for you.
That is what I wish for you. And I urge you not to fear despair, for if it has stretched its black tentacles to your chest, it does not mean that the end is near. It means that the end is inevitable, and what happens after the end is decided only by you—the true and real you who has been hiding behind the mask all this time.
