self-awareness

  • The Lantern and the Fog

    There was a little café tucked away on a side street most people never noticed. It wasn’t famous. It wasn’t trendy. It wasn’t even particularly pretty. But people kept finding their way there. Some said it was because of the coffee. Others said it was the old brick walls covered in photographs of strangers who…

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  • There was a town built entirely of mirrors. Not the kind hanging on walls. The kind people carried around with them. Everywhere they went, they stared into those mirrors, studying themselves, admiring themselves, defending themselves, explaining themselves. And because they were always looking at themselves, they rarely saw what was happening around them. The strangest…

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  • I met a man named Dale in the frozen food aisle. Now before you get excited, Dale was not shopping for frozen vegetables. Dale was standing in front of six family-sized lasagnas, two pizzas, a gallon bucket of ice cream, and something called Bacon Explosion Bites. I didn’t know Bacon Explosion Bites existed. Part of…

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  • There was no beginning. At least not the kind humans understand. No clocks.No calendars.No birthdays.No deadlines.No Mondays. Just endless awareness stretching in every direction like an ocean without a shoreline. And somewhere in that infinite place sat a soul preparing for departure. A nervous little spark of consciousness holding what could only be described as…

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  • Somewhere along the way, we started speaking to the voice in the head in the third person. Not because we lost our mind. Quite the opposite. It happened because one morning, while standing in front of the bathroom mirror brushing our teeth, the voice started talking again. You know the one. The running commentary. The…

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  • Born of Sevens

    There was a table hidden in plain sight. Not the kind hidden behind locked doors or guarded by passwords. The kind hidden because most people would never recognize its value if they sat down in the empty chair. The room itself was ordinary. Wood floors. Dim lights. Coffee cups scattered across the table. No one…

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  • The Things We Carry

    I used to think I was a cactus. Turns out I wasn’t. I was just a stubborn plant trapped in bad circumstances. Back then I lived in a dented coffee can sitting on the floorboard of an old eighteen-wheeler. The man who carried me around wasn’t much different than I was. We were both things…

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  • Are the sleepwalkers afraid to go into the darkness? I think they are. Not because the darkness is dangerous. Not because something is waiting for them there. Because the darkness asks questions the daylight lets them avoid. The darkness is different when you’re strange. When you’re weird. When you’ve spent your entire life being told…

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  • People think peace is soft. That is the first mistake. They imagine peace sitting on a hillside somewhere wearing flowing white robes. They imagine somebody who never gets angry. Never raises their voice. Never says no. Never stands their ground. Never bites back. That isn’t peace. That’s surrender. The older I get, the more I…

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  • Everything has a cost. We like to pretend it doesn’t. We count the obvious expenses. We know what a house costs. We know what a car costs. We know what a bad decision costs. We know what a divorce costs, what a lawsuit costs, what a medical bill costs. The hidden costs are the ones…

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