Two Hundred and Eighty Six

Who am I?  What am I?  I no longer remember.

I know I once had the potential—was born with the potential—to become more than who and what I was.  Why did I fail to realise that potential?

Most of us fail because we’re born in the wrong place at the wrong time.  But has there ever been a right place and time?  Perhaps there was, before we became what we call civilised. 

When I was young, I wanted to be and do everything—writer, composer, singer, dancer, musician, actor, artist—because I did them all well.  Or so others told me.   

Most people are multitalented—probably we all are—but they become successful only by limiting themselves, and focusing on their most marketable talent.  I didn’t have to read Marx to know capitalism’s division of labor forces us to become machines performing one and only one task.

I wished I lived in Marx’s ideal society, so I could hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon and philosophise after dinner without having to become a hunter, a fisherman or a philosopher in order to earn a living.  Like Whitman, I contain multitudes.  But I had to be one and only one person, so I chose to be a teacher.  A bodhisattva.     

The moment I became aware of the world, I knew it was broken.  I never imagined I was the only person who could mend it, but I believed I was one of them.

Others thought so, too.  As soon as I was old enough to read and write, other children gathered around me, sitting on the porch steps and listening as I read to them.

Later, in school, some teachers resented me because other students came to me instead of them for help.  Others have always come to me for help—not only other people, but lost and/or wounded animals—but although I helped other animals, I could never help other people.  They thanked me, but kept making the same mistakes, like children who never grow up.  I finally got tired of telling them what they already knew.

All we know, we knew in the beginning.  But we forget what all animals know in order to become what we call civilised.

I always felt more at home in the company of other animals than other humans.  We’re both prisoners in the world humans made, and call civilised.  

When I was a child, other people’s dogs jumped their fences and followed me as I walked home from school.  When I sat down, birds and butterflies perched on my head and shoulders.  Now I seldom see birds or butterflies in the city.  I am alone.

The failure isn’t mine alone.  We all took a wrong turn at the beginning, and now from the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing can be made.

I know I still hear them in my dreams, because I’m aware of a sudden silence when I wake.  But I no longer remember my dreams.