Start off ignorant. Deflect provoking topics and questions. Don’t take anyone too seriously - especially not yourself. Be thick-skinned. Avoid vulnerability. When your rough exterior prevents you from seeking support, fantasize about comfort but never pursue it. Learn what the word ‘fester’ means. Brush it off. Impose your emotional harshness on the most vulnerable people around you. You will resent yourself for this later. For now, mistake hardness for strength and criticize your desire for introspection. Recognize how your ignorance limits your sphere of influence in the world. Stop taking yourself so seriously. Maintain your ignorance.
Shatter your ignorance. Experience a life-altering event. Consequently develop what has been described to you as an ‘isolated sensorimotor memory track.’ The frequent short-circuiting to this dangerous mental territory is like a series of emotional concussions. Flashback-induced headaches give you the sensation that your skull is resisting the expansion of a black hole in your brain. The unpredictability of these outbursts is fascinating and terrifying. In an attempt to condition yourself, flex your entire being and intentionally inundate yourself with triggering stimuli. Unfortunately, you learn, this is the physiological equivalent of picking at a bad pimple. Stop doing it. The frailty of the human psyche continues to fascinate you and terrify you. Weep. If you clench the wound in your fist, it will bleed through the cracks. You are incredibly vulnerable. Ignorance is no longer an option.
Shatter your ignorance. Experience a life-altering event. Consequently develop what has been described to you as an ‘isolated sensorimotor memory track.’ The frequent short-circuiting to this dangerous mental territory is like a series of emotional concussions. Flashback-induced headaches give you the sensation that your skull is resisting the expansion of a black hole in your brain. The unpredictability of these outbursts is fascinating and terrifying. In an attempt to condition yourself, flex your entire being and intentionally inundate yourself with triggering stimuli. Unfortunately, you learn, this is the physiological equivalent of picking at a bad pimple. Stop doing it. The frailty of the human psyche continues to fascinate you and terrify you. Weep. If you clench the wound in your fist, it will bleed through the cracks. You are incredibly vulnerable. Ignorance is no longer an option.
Notice how the shattering of your ignorance has expanded your sphere of influence in the world; you’ve learned something you always wanted to know in a way you never wanted to learn it and people listen closer than they ever had before. Embrace this but struggle with it. Every day, the world will break your heart a little more. You have to let it. Open your eyes. Recognize the suffering that surrounds you daily. Don’t look away; the life you’d be living the moment you choose to avert your eyes is infinitely darker than the one you see looking forward. So keep looking. Be a source of light in the world; share every hidden pocket of sunshine you stumble upon with those who surround you. If somebody’s suffering is too great for consolation, remain present. Learn to carry others with you, and learn to cry for them. It will probably take you most of your life to be strong enough to do this. For now, at least understand the value of your tears. Refuse to let the world make you hard; hardness is not strength.
This is what it is to be porous. Breathe through your entire soul. Do not fool yourself; this way of living will not eradicate your suffering. You may never stop aching for the return of those you lost too young, too soon. But maybe someday you'll have seen enough through this porous lens to paint the whole world for them. Maybe someday you'll be able to paint it all so intricately and so authentically for them that they’ll feel like they were right here with the rest of you all along.
This is what it is to be porous. Breathe through your entire soul. Do not fool yourself; this way of living will not eradicate your suffering. You may never stop aching for the return of those you lost too young, too soon. But maybe someday you'll have seen enough through this porous lens to paint the whole world for them. Maybe someday you'll be able to paint it all so intricately and so authentically for them that they’ll feel like they were right here with the rest of you all along.
