The Silence
“All I wanted was to disappear.”
It felt like such a simple wish. I didn’t want to bother anyone else. But every time I’m in a room with people, I feel like I lose pieces of myself. If it’s just one other person, I feel like half of me is there. Two people? A third of me. A full room? I might as well not exist at all.
One day, you wake up and realize the world is messed up—and so are you for being part of it. So, you try to run, do anything to avoid facing who you are. It’s easier to lie to ourselves than ask the hard questions: Why do we hate ourselves so much? Why is there so much hate in the world? They say the truth will set you free, but I think that’s a lie. Lies protect us. They keep us from the pain of the truth.
The big question is: Why are we like this?
I can’t stop thinking about the person who just killed 32 people not far from where I live. How does that kind of hate even happen? Why do we hate others—and ourselves—so much?
We have so much potential for greatness, yet we hold onto misery like it’s all we’ve got. We spread that misery to everyone around us, forgetting we all come from the same beginnings. We’re all connected—Einstein believed it, and science backs it up. Matter doesn’t disappear; it just changes form. We’re part of something bigger, but somehow, we’ve lost sight of that.
We’re all searching for love, happiness, and purpose. But instead of feeling connected, we feel alone. And no matter how hard we search, it seems like we can’t find what we’re missing.
Sometimes, it feels like life moves too fast to keep up. The Earth spins at 1,000 miles per hour, and I swear I can feel it under my feet. But when we look in the mirror, why can’t we see how amazing we really are? We pick ourselves apart, always finding flaws, never feeling good enough.
Maybe we’ve never really seen ourselves clearly. We hide behind fake smiles and pretend everything’s fine. But deep down, we’re tired and broken, stumbling through life, trying to figure it all out.
Do you ever feel like this—lost and waiting for your life to truly begin? There’s a saying: “Once you know who you’re not, you can start to see who you are.”
I don’t think I’ll ever fully know who I am, and maybe most of us won’t. But I do know we have the power to become something better. Life is fragile, and if we’re not careful, society can twist us into people we don’t recognize—like the shooter at Virginia Tech.
Why do we chase greatness yet measure our lives by misery?
Someone once called me a hippie because I believe in loving everyone and everything. At first, I felt insulted, but now I think the world could use more of that. Why can’t we care about each other and the planet we share?
I think it’s fear. Fear changes us. Fear keeps us from acting, from loving, from living. It starts young, with our parents’ fears, then grows as we face the world. School shows us how cruel people can be, and the working world is just as harsh. We run around like scared ants, too afraid to change anything.
Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. And hate leads to suffering.
My dad once asked me, “What are you so afraid of?” At the time, I was 23 and brushed it off, but he was right. He told me, “You’re already a winner. You beat the odds just by being here. You’re the result of millions of years of life, and you come from a line of survivors. You were born without fear—so why let it stop you now?”
He said courage and love are what give us strength. Love for the people and the world around us. Love is what keeps us going.
Maybe if the Virginia Tech shooter had been shown love—had felt even a little bit of magic in his life—things could’ve been different.
We all have magic inside us. If we could just share it, even a little, the world could be so much better. Let’s try to be a little more magical.
