101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think

become your own
WORST ENEMY 
(without ever realizing it)
Let yourself be governed by the illusion of separateness. Believe that
you are always in competition with those around you, that you are
only as good as you are better than someone else. Believe your
conditioning is the only one, the right one. Drown your desire for
connection by manically scrolling through feed after feed, day after
day. Live your life waiting, waiting, waiting for someone else to make
you feel love. Put it all in their hands. Condemn them when they
don’t perform. Believe you’re not enough on your own, that there’s
something in this world that will save you, and can, and should.
Believe that marriage licenses mean love, job titles success,
religion goodness, money contentment. Trust fully in the powers that
be; let them teach you how to let your fear control you.
Do not let yourself feel anything other than what other people say
it’s okay to feel. If your life looks good from the outside, don’t take
the liberty to say it doesn’t feel good on the inside. Act only in
accordance with what will make sense to other people. Make the
most important facet of your existence being palatable to anyone
and everyone else. Trick yourself into thinking that kind of numb
safety is happiness.
Hate yourself for still caring about the person you aren’t supposed
to care about anymore. Shame yourself until you’re completely
suppressing everything you feel. Spend days and months and years
checking their status updates and new pictures in search of
something, anything, that justifies the feelings you just want to kill off.
Tie yourself in mental knots trying to get your head and heart to
coexist. Make caring a bad thing. Make loving worse.
Assume that the line between “good” and “bad” runs between
religions, or races, or creeds, or nations, rather than in each human

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heart. Disregard our universal capacity to drown in our denseness.
Fail to recognize the sameness and beauty in the people you’ve
condemned because they were born with genetics or practices or
perceptions that are different than yours…because they were
conditioned the opposite way to which you were.
Never realize that you were conditioned at all.
Believe that you are your thoughts, that you are your emotions,
rather than the being observing those things. Never realize the
constant stream of conversation you hold with yourself. Never realize
that two-thirds of the statements you make and ideas you have are
not organically yours. Disregard that they don’t lead you to
contentment or kindness or hope, and accept them anyway.
Pick and choose the people to whom you afford humanness.
Decide who is worthy and not. Sift through the traits and habits of
others, categorize them into what’s acceptable and not. Don’t let
someone be worthy of love and respect just because they are alive;
doing this will ensure you never give the same kindness to yourself.
Be your worst enemy so nobody else can be. Assume the worst so
nobody can surprise you with it. Call it being realistic. Accept the life
someone else thinks you deserve. Don’t believe that change is real.
Don’t believe in anything other than what you can immediately sense
and see. Suffocate the chance of possibility. Sustain yourself on
temporary highs, the kind that come from other people and their
attention. Let your past experiences quantify your self-hatred. Create
your past in your present.
Let other people wash away the good parts of you. Call this being
strong. Settle because you are afraid to choose. Call this being
smart. Fight others so you don’t have to face yourself. Resist and
reject until it seems like everyone and everything is seeping under
your skin and torturing you. Never realize your mind does the
wielding. Never realize that bit by bit, you created the life you never
really wanted with the pieces you never really chose.

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47
IF WE SAW 
SOULS