Experimentation and the Mortician's Knife

I'm going back to Macon.

Lifehouse bleeds from my speakers.

Solemnness pervades me.

Why?

It's been my companion since I walked away from my self.

I have this theory.

Y'know, in high school, everybody is searching for identity. Nobody really knows who they are yet, so it's this really awkward time where we fight for a sense of the 'self'.

Once college rolls around, some of us have found selves which we recognize as 'us'. Our identity, however, is sometimes not what we expected, sometimes not what we wanted. For some of us, the self assumed is like a second skin that fits like a poorly made suit. Too thick in some places, too thin in others. We feel out of place, even in the places that should be our homes. We feel ourselves outcasts, even in the center of those groups that should be our communities.

And so we begin to search for our selves again, and we do it via experimentation. A sense of who we thought we were attained, we seek out methods and madnesses that challenge who we are. We act as thought we are someone else to discover what is different, and what is real. We seek to experiment to resolve within ourselves the struggle that we ourselves began by assuming a sense of self.

And so some of us turn to drugs and alchohol. Others turn to body piercings or tatoos. We dive into ill-fated relationships, take jobs we hate, and study subjects we always found repulsive. And some of us, like myself, turn to amorality, the loss of the character and chivalry that once defined us.

We love where we might leave, laugh where we might cry. Drink where we should be sober, and are kind when we should be wise. We are sinners when we should be saints, and charlitans when we should be pastors. But we are also benefactors when we should be leveling fines. We are the kindhearted when we should be the just. We volunteer as guardian angels when we should act as though strangers. We fight for ourselves when others are in need and doggedly try to make others happy when they want nothing more than to see our suffering rival their own.

And each experiment is like a cut of the mortician's knife. Bringing us one step closer to the answers, but one clean, deep, incision farther from the selves we once were.

We find that our experimentation doesn't just provide us answers to what was wrong. It doesn't just give us a cause of death for our old selves--It is the cause of death for our old selves.

Our experiments yeild the expected results, but just as in the microcosmic world of particles, in the macrocosmic world of dreams and selves, in measuring the ammount, we influence it and change it's qualities.

Change, perhaps, it's quality as well?

Are we who we want to be, or do we become what we fight most to discover within ourselves?