Good evening ladies and gentleman

Do you think you know when you change? maybe that’s wrong- when you..evolve? Is change born from within, from stereotypes or from more external factors? You have a child, fall in love, confess that love, move to another part of the world, lose love, become so drowned in overbearing anguish you start to wander if you’ll ever feel anything else- but moreover will you want to? The familiarity of pain is a constant reminder, a comfortable companion in a wanting ultimately to control you as you languish in stagnation.

What does it take for you to genuinely look at yourself and question everything you thought you knew about yourself? How far must one go before one looks inwards- to the thoughts and beliefs constructing one’s own personality in the face of all this pain, the negativity, the lack of feeling progression or any sort of succession. Those drums….the never ending drums.

I, for many years have adopted this system in taking in as much information as i can from people- almost like a sponge. I have taken in as much of a person’s behaviour as i could, understood it to the best of my ability and subsequently used this to what i believed was “predict” their future thoughts and feelings. I have for many years believed people were puzzles made up of patterns, because the alternative was that I actually cared, fearful it could be used against me ultimately, foreseeing my inevitable downfall into humiliation.

I was forced to see this behaviour recently and i am since taking steps to address this habit, controlling who i let into my life and who i choose to trust, to have faith in the humanity of good people where i have for many years done all I can to remove all humanity from behaviour. The thought being if i break people down to their constituent parts (like pieces of a jigsaw, ) look at their behaviours rationally and without emotion i would have better clarity dealing with them.

The thing with a “puzzle” and taking emotion away from a situation in order to avoid something not quite stacking up, when a piece is thrown into the mix that from any angle just doesn’t fit or couldn’t be predicted- i would lose it. The system would error out, warning signs and error messages. The fear of comfortable stagnation reared once again and there i am left. Confused, isolated and so very unsure of my next step in the world.

When you spend so long predicting, rationalising and generalising how people are living their lives- you are going to be right some of the time. When it comes down to it, the idea you have predicted this person’s future and can now predict and deduce everything about them is nothing more than an idea- your idea of them.

Truth is it’s a very lonely way to live and certainly not a place to love, because when all is said and done, you have ideas about everyone in your life. Who they are, how they feel, their loves, hates, fears. Their most angelically devilish fantasies and darkest fears. You don’t really know if any of its true though- because you don’t really know anyone at all.

Not really.

When you get lost in the idea of something, in a theory of their supposedly “predictable” behaviour you are not connecting with that person, you have no chemistry with them at all. In reality you have become so closed off to the point where the puzzle is all you know and its all you want to know. The puzzle brings comfort, the puzzle brings calm. The fear of solving the puzzle is powerful, for a puzzlemaster’s work is never ever done.

If you showed this person you have these\ carefully constructed ideas- would they recognise themselves? If you showed that person this version of them I don’t think have any idea who they are looking at, let alone been confident and trusting enough in you to show the side of themselves they daren’t look at in the mirror. Telling someone they’re in pain is like convincing someone that they are lonely. It only really impacts when they figure it out for themselves and you telling them how they feel isn’t going to benefit anyone or anything other than your ego.

Net result of that is you are going to lose someone you care about, sacrificing another potential connection, chemistry born through fire for the puzzlemaster. No change, no evolution, just pieces on a board, with nothing other than a cinder burning in your soul. Never has the phrase “you won the battle but lost the war” felt more appropriate. So you think you pieced it together- but at what cost? Is solving that puzzle and feeling this out of it because you lost someone who mattered, someone you care about with more depth than you ever imagined yourself capable- worth losing for the pieces of a jigsaw?

Ironically, in times like this the puzzle is king. Loneliness can be deduced away, by figuring out something about her or him that they hadn’t seen. Predicting how your next social connection will go, what you should say, what you shouldn’t say. Being ready for everything and not slipping up like that again.

It is a form of self blame, a form of self loathing for sure. Why open yourself up to someone for it to be thrown back in your face? Why are you going to open yourself up to being heartbroken when all you found out last time is that you have nothing to offer?

So sure your right, with a back catalogue of errors and fuck ups to show how much of brilliant system you have. When you realise your entire belief system about yourself and the people you care about, even the people you love is built from the ideas you have about them and not them as people you realise how disconnected you really are.

The puzzle cannot save you from that. The idea of ever completely solving the puzzle is terrifying, because your not supposed to. Taking away the feeling in a situation doesn’t make the situation easier to handle. It just means you go through life avoiding situations that have the possibility to make you feel truly awful, but could potentially allow you feelings of overwhelming joy.

Protect yourself, from yourself and life will never really evolve. You will just spin on the spot with nothing but the drums, the drums…the never ending drums for company. The puzzle will not stop the drums.

Evolution comes through pain- through raw, unfiltered emotion. Going into things on a hope and a prayer and not caring how the outcome lands, even if it landed on snake eyes, be proud you seized your moment and did it anyway. You live, learn and keep on living. Not everyone deserves all of you and you will never see all of everyone. Some will hate you, some will not trust you, some will spend so long convincing themselves you are the devil. It doesn’t matter what they think, as much as you had your ideas of them, they have their ideas of you.

To believe something real about someone, connect with them on some deeper meaning, beyond anything you know and getting lost in the idea of them is very different. People will do what people do, they will talk, they will run, they will hide, they will shout, they will scream. Your focus is you and your evolution- their evolution is their problem. If we learn to concentrate on what we put out into the world and how we act, doing all we can to act as authentically and as close to our true selves as we can- maybe its possible to promote this behaviour in others.

Your life is only one thing- above all else- yours.

Your understanding and love for those who mean anything stems ultimately from you and what you feel you deserve. Truth is- you deserve the world. Are you this beautiful soul, trying hard to live and love as close to who you choose to be everyday? Are you working on yourself, improving yourself, evolving to be the man or woman living a life you can be proud of?

Are you the master of your life?…or just the Puzzlemaster?

Yours, with love as always.

D.R. x