A ceaseless pounding bombards from the outer walls abetting the endless noise inside my head. Trapped in this little prison that I constructed within myself, my mind begins to twist, attempting to abate this cacophony and understand what the external beats want and decode their meanings.
These hard, oak walls constructed as a pen within my mind sealed the “inside” (my self, my soul, what defines me as an individual) from the “outside” (the world, society, what holds reality in our physical sphere). I forced myself into a mindset that dreamed to appease the wants of the outside. I locked myself into a captivity that constantly whispered little lies, telling me who I needed to be, how I needed to define myself, and how I needed to live my life. I was living from the outside in, soaking in the desires of the world to identify who I was, ultimately for myself… to feel accepted by the outside.
Trying to live from the outside in, I desperately needed to understand what they wanted… where society wanted me to turn, what the others thought, where I was supposed to be. Living from the outside in, I believed that the thoughts, expressions, ideas, understandings, notions, and descriptions formed by the world and the individuals around me absolutely defined what was right and who I should be. My life was a constant battle drowning in the noise, trying desperately to decode those incessant knockings from the outside world. What did they mean? What did they want? How could I understand what they craved and use it to paint my soul to best fit their mold? What qualities did they deem to be worthy, suitable, and right?
Living from the outside in.
I was drowning in the dissonance.
I was fumbling around in this little prison that I constructed within myself for the keys that would unlock the door and open my eyes, allowing the radiance of whatever emanates from the source of those unending noises to warm my skin and finally enlighten me with the knowledge of who I was supposed to be. After years and years of blundering through the darkness of my tiny prison for that key, I realized that I was seeking something that didn’t even exist. I was hoping that one or a set of poundings would dance out of cacophony into some sort of melody that made sense, a sort of Morse code that would unveil the secret and point me toward the location of the key… finally allotting access to whatever rays of light that lay outside the confines of the chamber set by the suffocations of my own insecurities.
But, when your feet touch the floor on the inside, you don’t need a key to unlock the door and feel the grass between your toes… all you need is to stand up, twist the bolt pushing the pins up and away from the lock, touch the cool brass metal to turn the knob, and open the door…
My search was no longer a matter of finding an impossible grain of sand along an infinite coastline.
Seeking the definition of myself now only involved a simple choice.
A decision, made in a moment, to stand, twist the knob, and open the door.
Constantly trying to find an unachievable, unreal, imaginary identity from the outside, I had no end goal detailing what attaining it would be for or what it would accomplish… I pushed simply to find it and satisfy the criteria of the poundings from outside? What an empty life I was living.
Happiness stems from an actualization of living from the inside out, completely derailing my previous philosophy.
Embracing the unique intricacies of your individuality, accentuated with the innate similarities of every human being that strings each and every one of us together as we stumble to figure out this crossword of Life together, and wholly breaking down those tall, oak walls allows you to swing open the beautiful realities of your soul and illuminate even the darkest corners of a mortal reality. Living from the inside out, and tapping into your deepest realities, emphasizes an inner light that can only be defined by You and fills you up with an indescribable contentment that spills over and out into the world around you.
Breaking down my walls and smothering the need to live from the outside in freed me to breathe and simply be me. It’s a constant battle to keep those walls from reconstructing themselves, but we can only do our best to live in the beauty of an identity that lives from the inside out, silencing the cacophony from without to sing alongside the noise, creating a melody that can only be sourced from within and shaped together in a chorus of our distinct identities.
