Locked Up in my Tower

The point self reflection is, foremost, to clarify and to find honesty. Self-reflection is the way to throw self lies out and face the truth- however painful it might be to admit that you were wrong. We seek consistency in ourselves, and so when we are faced with inconsistency, we struggle to deny.

Denial has no place in self-reflection, and so it is incumbent upon a person to admit his errors, to embrace them and to move along in a more positive direction.

For sometimes we are afraid to hope, because hope breeds expectation and expectation can lead to disappointment.

And so i ask myself again, without the protective wall - or at least, conscious of it and determined to climb over it - why do i feel kinship to some people who has betrayed almost everything that i came to hold dear? why do i think about them ever?

I have often wondered, even recently and even as i ponder this new direction, if they are the one who i might have been had i not chosen the paths that i have chosen.

Reality is a curious thing. Truth is not as solid and as universal as any of us would like it to be; selfishness guides perception and perception invites justification. They physical image in the mirror, if not pleasing, can be altered by the mere brush of fingers through hair.

And so it is true that we can manipulate our own reality. we can persuade, even deceive. we can make others view us in dishonest ways. we can hide selfishness with charity, make a craving for acceptance into magnanimity, and amplify our smile to coerce a hesitant lover. the world is illusion, and often delusion, as victors write the histories and the children who die quietly under the stamp of a triumphant army never really existed. The robber baron becomes philanthropist in the final analysis, bequeathing only that for which he had no more use. the king who sends young men and women to die becomes beneficent with the kiss of a baby. every problem becomes a problem of perception to those who understand that reality, in reality, is what you make reality to be.

For a more difficult alteration than the physical image is the image that appears in the glass of introspection, the pureness or rot of the heart and soul.

For many, sadly, this is not an issue, for the illusion of their lives becomes self delusion, a masquerade that revels in the applause and sees in a pittance to charity a stain remover for the soul. How many conquerors, i wonder, who crushed out the lives of tens of thousands, could not hear those cries of inflicted despair beyond the applause of those who believed the wars would make the world a better place? How many thieves, i wonder, hear not the laments of victims and willingly blind themselves to the misery wrought of their violation under a blanket of their own suffered injustices?

when does theft becomes entitlement?

There are those who cannot see the stains on their souls. some lack the capacity to look in the glass of introspection, perhaps, and other alter reality without and within.

Only there, in that place, is the road of redemption, for any of us. only in facing honesty that image in the glass can we change the reality of who we are. Only in seeing the scars and the stains and the rot can we begin to heal.

I am not a king. not in temperament, nor by desire, nor heritage, nor popular demand. i am a small player in the events of a small region in a large world. when my day is past, i will be remembered, i hope, by those whose lives ive touched. when my day is past, i will be remembered...

I hope, fondly.