…when everyone wants a Mountain.
Being a Foggy Mist, when everyone wants a Flood.
Becoming a Flood, when everyone wants Sunshine.
Becoming Sunshine, when everyone wants The Night.
Becoming The Night, when everyone wants The Dream.
Striving to become The Dream, but becoming The Reality.
Realizing The Reality is made of the act of flowing through the stream of striving to appease ever changing requirements…
To become The Mountain no River could ever Be.
Everyone wanted a Mountain to Climb, but all i could ever do was Be Water, and flow down, to ultimately be absorbed into, and washed away by, The River of Deceit… and to eventually be deposited into the Sea, with all the others who found, and flowed around, the Mountains we could never Be.
Becoming The Sea, full of fish who don’t even know what water is, and don’t even notice me.
For someone of my intellectual capacity, to always be treated as the opposite of anything anyone wants, or as the most commonly available substance on the planet… has always been a humbling experience.
And that’s part of why i find it so infuriating to be accused of lacking humility, especially by those who will never even know what that really is, or how it feels.
Part of humility is understanding that even if i were the most intellectually capable person on the planet, that is not what people want. My “good qualities” are not what others prioritize.
The closest i could ever get, to becoming The Mountain, would be to become an Iceberg.
Almost, but not quite.
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So, I was looking for a quote to post here by a famous quote-worthy person and found this one, which made me stop immediately.
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. ~Oscar Wilde
I have words to use. I don’t have to live though and speak from a google search. For me that is what you are saying. Everyone wants me to be a quote by Einstein, but those aren’t my words. If you are water then be water. Water is more powerful than a mountain washing, eroding inch by inch over millennia until that mountain become a canyon.
Everyone wants to have a thousand “likes” and I beat myself up, criticize myself when not a soul clicks.
Some days I’m water and some days a mountain or an iceberg. To hold true to yourself day in and day out through this changing battlefield where everyone is throwing rocks demanding you to be different than what you are, seems to be the greatest challenge.
Thanks for this post. Very powerful words. I’ve read it twice and will come back to it as inspiration to find my own words, my own dream and stand like a mountain.. confident in who I am.
This is some Bruce Lee shit right here. Nice, Man.
Good post. Aside from the intellectual capacity bit, I can relate. I don’t belong in this world because I don’t fit any of its prescribed molds. (I acknowledge there’s more than one, but there’s nothing ME-shaped) My therapist likes to say “there are all kinds of people in the world” every time I touch on this. I don’t believe that makes it okay for me to be me, whoever that is, but for some reason I like hearing her say it…
Never underestimate water. Water cuts through mountains and forms canyons, rivers and gorges. Water erodes mountains (although it takes a very, very long time).
You can’t hide or run away from water when it reclaims land. (Ask anyone who lived through hurricane Katrina). You can take shelter from wind and rain, but you can’t escape the destructive, landscape altering power of the incoming waves.
Why be a mountain when you could be the ocean instead?
Water can’t be the mountain. It doesn’t matter how awesomely powerful or versatile water can be, because of what it can never be.
I’ve discarded several attempts at responding here. I suppose you might say the currents just aren’t flowing that way at this time.
Why insist on trying to be something that’s fundamentally incongruous with your intrinsic nature? A grasshopper can’t be a cow not matter how badly the grasshopper wants it.
It’s all good, clevername. If you really want to undergo a radical transformation, why not convert to feminism?
hehe (j/k) (Delete this comment if you want to).
Great post. I’ll have to let this one stew for a bit. Your ability to draw analogy is sharp but I think your being unduly harsh on yourself. As much as people vary across time and experience, we’re much too similar to go so far as discounting yourself as an elemental alien.
I just thought the writing wasn’t so much about being water as opposed to a mountain, but being one thing when “they” want you to be something else. For me it’s about never being able to stand up just as you are because there’s always someone, some group, yes even SP, even right here as I type this fucking note, who wants you to be like them….conform…fit the mold. “They’re” never happy to see you just as you are.
This… thing, happened very spontaneously, and i just sort of “shot from the hip.” I gave it a fair once-over to check for errors, and while i saw room for improvement, and thought of a few things i almost added, i left it as it was.
The only relevance of the intellect part, is that i’ve always been fully aware of how i’m being treated, and why, based upon expectations formed by others, and even why those form. I’m certainly not saying that only “intellectual” people can understand their own depression or ostracism… but rather that it’s likely more intense and readily apparent, due to both receiving and processing more sensory information at all times (due to the link between hypersensitivity and intelligence).
I did mix a bit of a metaphor cocktail here, but not by mistake; i like when i can meaningfully cross metaphors, in useful ways.
The other important aspect of note, is that water is known as “the universal solvent,” and for good reason.
I’m thinking “entropy.”
If i ever had a “purpose,” it seems i was built to dismantle, erode and dissolve previously existing structures.
People like stone monuments and elevation. We’ve gone out of our way to develop things that are “waterproof.” We know water will ruin anything we build, given enough time and exposure.
Water can sustain life, but can ruin just about anything.
Being water… the ruiner of all things. No one likes rain on their parade, but everyone hates being thirsty.
I don’t think i’m being harsh on myself. I’m simply describing my experience of being alive. And i have indeed been elementally alienated, throughout most of it… as if i were always seen as the catalyst of erosion, dissolver of constructs, diluter of concentrated extracts… as a force of entropy, threatening the minds and views of those who fantastically emphasize “creation.”