From the moment we are born, all we seem to need is the basic TLC, which we hope our family structure will want to give us: security, care, and love to boot!
If we are lucky, these needs are met within the first few hours of our birth. A father and mother cooing over us as if we are the biggest miracle the world has ever seen.
Believe it or not, we start communicating instantly with our surroundings outside of the family circle, thus exposing us to failure, rejection, or acceptance, depending on how cute we are...
All children use their antennas to measure the world and the people around us. We learn to navigate through conformity and the expectations of others. Our basic instinct is "wanting to please and fit in." However, along the way there are many hurdles that break down our natural optimism and trust in others.
Which often raises more questions than it provides answers...
For example:
Am I good enough?
Will they like me?
Can I belong?
And last but not least... Am I loved? Can I be my funny, quirky, and quickly tempered self? Or is my environment and my culture going to dictate who and what I should be from an early age?
Some of us wake up at 40 wondering what happened. When was the last time we rolled on the floor with laughter and without a care in the world?
Who the heck did I become?
What my family told me to!
What was expected of me!
But what did I lose... and at what price?
During the last 40 years, this individual has learned to guard themselves from others, especially from strangers and worst of all from life.
We have become comatose, numbed beyond belief! Why?
Killings, war, police brutality, ban burkas, Black Lives Matter, another suicide bomber has...
I don't really know what I believe. I let it all wash over me. It does not really touch me.
We are desensitized, numb...
Let me take another happy pill so that I don't have to feel or do something... it will help me deal with who I have become. Please just leave me be, in my nice little comfortable life that I have created for my family.
If for one crazy moment, I feel something, I remember that I had a Voice...
But instead I am a bystander letting the world spin out of control pretending it does not concern or touch me!
I want to defend the woman in a burka walking down the street that my buddies are shouting at. But the price to reach out and help her is too high! I would end up being the outcast myself, the pariah of my community, bumped off my social pedestal!
One moment in each and everyone's lives... We have all experienced what it is like to be shunned, humiliated, lonely, not fitting in, an outcast or a pariah...
That is why I stay in my shell and hide...
Being comatose is safe!