The Empty Throne

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The Empty Throne (A Disease of Deficiency)


A house can hold four walls and still be empty inside,
where a child grows up starving on a diet of “not now,”
love arrives late, or wearing a disguise,
and the wound gets planted before anyone knows how.
Kohut called it a disease of deficiency, plain and clear,
not evil born whole, but hunger dressed as pride,
a mirror shattered so many times it learned to disappear,
swallowing the child’s own reflection, pushed aside.
Every child needs to be seen before they’re told they’re wrong,
to be held in eyes that actually want to stay,
but disconnection hums a quieter, colder song,
and misunderstanding becomes the only language they can play.
Somewhere a parent needed a child to complete a broken plan,
to fill the hollow where their own dreams used to be,
and the child became a burden they never meant to withstand,
paying rent on a life they didn’t choose to see.
So the small self folded inward, quiet as a closing door,
building walls where open arms were supposed to grow,
self-orientation became armor, nothing more,
a fortress built from all the love they didn’t get to know.
Every unanswered cry writes a sentence in the bone,
hurt and rejection learn to wear a familiar face,
abandonment feels less like an event and more like home,
misunderstood becomes the only inherited place.
“I don’t need anyone” becomes the armor for the ache,
dissociation lets the mind quietly leave the room,
shame moves in like water finding every crack to make,
and independence is just fear, dressed up to bloom.
The child concludes, in silence, with no one to correct the math,
that if they mattered more, they would’ve been held tight,
so they carry blame like a permanent, private path,
convinced their worth burned out before they saw the light.
Guilty for wanting more than crumbs left on the floor,
guilty for a hunger that felt too big to hide,
they learn to want less, and then to want no more,
self-esteem erodes like a slow, retreating tide.
Grown now, they wear a closet full of masks that never fit,
grandiosity loud enough to drown the ache below,
rage and loneliness trade places, bit by bit,
and empathy, once starved, forgets how to show.
This isn’t blood, no gene mutation to blame or trace,
it’s a pattern handed down like a family heirloom curse,
parent to child, an inherited, invisible embrace,
the cycle spins on till someone dares to reverse.
Gabor Maté says the body keeps what the mind can’t hold,
trauma isn’t the blow — it’s the silence stored inside,
a child will trade their own self to stay in the fold,
and carry that quiet war for the rest of the ride.
So here’s the truth, plain as bone, no science left to hide —
the child of a narcissist inherits an empty throne,
crowned as royalty in a kingdom that always denied,
king of a castle built for one, and always alone.

…

DCG

Unhealthy narcissism is the result of emotional or physical neglect or trauma in early childhood. Kohut, a famous psychoanalyst, used to say, “Narcissism is a disease of deficiency.” The most common type of trauma is that of feeling neglected, ignored, disconnected, and misunderstood by those we love. If children become more of a burden than a pleasure, or if they project upon their children their own needs and ambitions, then children retreat into self-orientation as a defensive maneuver. When a child’s needs are unmet because of a parent’s self-focus or self-interest, they feel hurt, misunderstood, abandoned, and rejected. These feelings of loss require coping mechanisms that are not usually healthy, such as defensive independence, dissociation, and shame, due to their belief that their parents’ lack of interest in them and lack of acceptance of them is the result of their own lack of value. They may feel guilty that their needs for connection, which are unmet, are too intense and burdensome, which can lead them to have very low self-esteem. Long term, they may experience lack of empathy, loneliness, anxiety, depression, rage, grandiosity, shame, exhibitionism, and emotional immaturity. These pathological defenses are passed down generationally, not genetically. Unless the cycle is broken, children will likely parent as they were parented.

—

Erica Komisar’s paper Self-Focus or Sacrifice? What It Will Take to Rebuild the Mental Health of the Next Generation, published by ARC Research in February 2025.[squarespace]
Komisar (a clinical social worker and psychoanalyst) writes:
“Unhealthy narcissism, also known as secondary narcissism, … is the result of emotional or physical neglect in early childhood, which results in the withdrawal of interest from relationships as a defensive manoeuvre… Kohut called secondary narcissism a disease of deficiency; it is a maladaptive way of protecting the fragile ego. It is a defence designed to protect the individual against anxiety and other painful feelings connected with the disappointment in their mother; rather than invest emotion or depend upon an undependable mother or attachment figure, a person invests that emotion in themselves, or leans into defensive independence.”
This lines up closely with the recording’s language on neglect, the Kohut “disease of deficiency” quote, defensive independence, and the generational, non-genetic transmission of these patterns.

Because I carry it well

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Because I Carry It Well


There is a weight I wear like skin,
so practiced no one sees it strain,
an architecture of discipline
built to disguise the rain.
I speak a fluent, silent tongue,
denial dressed as poise,
each measured breath, each word half-sung,
to mute the inner noise.
I’ve learned to hold my face like glass,
composed, unmoved, serene,
so no one watching as I pass
suspects what lies between.
For falling apart was not a door
I ever dared unlatch,
I built my house on a silent floor
and learned to hide the scratch.
Beneath the ribs, in unlit rooms,
the wounded hold their fort,
a sanctum sealed against the glooms
no gentle word can thwart.
Why won’t we speak the truths we bear?
Because language cannot hold
the shape of loss, the shape of care
we’ve never learned to fold.
We fear the eyes too quick to stare,
the hearts too slow to listen,
we fear the weight we’d make them bear,
a burden none would christen.
So many walk in common clothes
with ordinary faces,
yet carry graves that no one knows,
in unremembered places.
They rise, they work, they laugh on time,
they nod, they pass, they cope,
and no one hears the buried rhyme
of sorrow dressed as hope.
We are the torn, the split, the two —
the one who longs, the one who hides,
we ache to let the truth break through
yet swallow it like tides.
So we stay sealed, polite, composed,
our sorrow kept unspoken,
because to show what lies exposed
feels like confessing broken.
“It doesn’t hurt,” we say, and smile,
while everything within has drowned,
this is the softest, saddest lie —

the loudest grief that makes no sound.

…

DCG

Because I carry it well doesn’t mean it’s not heavy. I’ve simply become fluent in the language of pretending nothing hurts when everything does. I make it look effortless because falling apart was never an option. Because I carry it well.”

The price of being alive 

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The Price of Being Alive


We trade a cardboard kingdom for a clock,
And call the restless bargain growing wise;
Then chase the child we buried in a box,
While little glowing screens reduce our eyes.
We sell the morning sunlight by the hour,
To buy a bigger room we never use;
We praise exhaustion as a form of power,
Then wonder why the soul begins to bruise.
A man in traffic dreams of being free,
A free man dreams of better traffic lanes;
We build a life around efficiency,
Then act surprised when nothing good remains.
We make our bodies carry all the cost,
For futures dressed in expensive clothes;
Then pay the doctor for the years we lost,
And ask why peace is hard to diagnose.
The wallet grows; the living room grows cold,
The calendar becomes a little god;
We buy what every commercial has sold,
Then feel our emptiness beneath the nod.
We worry over storms not yet in sight,
And miss the rain that blesses us today;
The mind rehearses every future night,
While life, unbothered, quietly walks away.
We call this planning, being safe, prepared,
As if control could make the grave decline;
But fear keeps every tender moment spared,
Behind a locked door marked: “Not yet. Not mine.”
We speak of death as if it’s bad for sales,
A rude old guest who should not call at all;
Yet every living thing leaves little trails,
And every giant learns that he is small.
The irony is almost hard to miss:
We chase a life too frightened to be lived;
We pass the cup, suspicious of the kiss,
Then curse the world for what it never gave.
Perhaps the child was not so blind or weak;
He knew a day could be a universe;
He cried when hurt, said what he meant to speak,
And did not turn each wanting to a curse.
So keep your money, but do not become
A servant to the things that money buys;
Make room for grief, for laughter, for the sun,
For one true face that looks into your eyes.
We rush from childhood, spend our health for gold,
Then fear tomorrow till today has fled;
But life is here: be present, brave, and whole—
We die once; do not practice being dead.

…

DCG

What surprises me most about humankind is that we get bored of our childhood, rush to grow up, and long to be children again. That we lose our health to make money and then lose our money to restore our health. That by thinking anxiously about the future, we forget the present, such that we live in neither the present nor the future. That we live as if we’ll never die, and die as though we’ve never lived.

— “What surprises me most about humankind…” — source unverified; commonly attributed to the Dalai Lama

The things we say 

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The Things We Say


We have learned to cry where everyone can see,
Then leave before the wounded ask for grace.
We call it sympathy because our eyes are wet,
And never once return to face their face.
We say, “I’m here,” with one hand on the door,
Our love arranged like furniture for show.
We want the credit for a heart that cares,
But not the burden love demands we know.
We praise potential like a newborn god,
We frame the dream and hang it on the wall.
Then mock the man whose fear keeps him asleep,
As if applause could teach a seed to crawl.
We worship talent, clean and undisguised,
And sneer at sweat that stains the common shirt.
But nothing living rises from a wish,
And every honest future starts in dirt.
We say “I’m sorry” like a little prayer,
Then bring the same sharp knife back to the meal.
We want forgiveness to erase the wound,
Not change enough to prove that we can feel.
We call regret a deep and noble pain,
A dark song played alone beside the bed.
But sorrow that will not become a step,
Is only ego weeping for the dead.
We love our words because they cost so little,
They fly like doves above a burning town.
But promises without a pair of hands,
Are paper crowns that rain will tumble down.
The poor are told to trust the rich man’s tears,
The lonely hear, “Be strong,” then hear the click.
The world gives sermons on compassion’s worth,
While stepping over bodies in the street.
We want to be the hero in the mirror,
The kind who suffers beautifully at night.
But daylight asks what we have truly done,
And daylight does not care about the light.
So here is life, stripped naked of its speech,
A courtroom with no curtain, priest, or shield.
You are not what your mouth can make believe,
You are the thing your living hands reveal.
Love is the labor. Sorry is the turn.
Regret becomes a road, or stays a cage.
We die beneath the weight of what we say—
Or live, by making truth upon the page.

…

DCG

Six uncomfortable truths of life:
Sympathy is nothing without support.
Love is nothing without effort.
Potential is nothing without progress.
Sorry is nothing without change.
Regret is nothing without growth.
Words are nothing without action.”

— source unknown 

Life hack #1

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It’s easier to avoid temptation

Then it is to resist it

-unknown 

The name they gave the child 

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The Name They Gave the Child
Before the mirror learned to hold a face,
a voice had taught the child to turn away.
It called them difficult, slow, a waste of space,
then handed them that verdict for the day.
They grew around it like a tree round wire,
mistaking pain for something they had grown.
They learned to make their hunger sound like fire,
then apologized for needing to be known.
Guilt says, “I failed; I wish that I’d done right,”
and leaves a door through which repair can start.
Shame says, “You are the failure in the night,”
then nails its little courtroom in the heart.
It wears your voice because it knows the room,
it quotes the ones whose love once made you bend.
It says, “Be smaller, lest you bring your doom,”
as if survival were a faithful friend.
The body hears that old alarm bell ring,
and thought becomes a courtroom in a flood.
You cannot reason with a drowning thing,
when every word arrives disguised as blood.
So plant your feet; let breath outlast the fear,
name five plain objects resting in the light.
Cold water says, “The present moment’s here,”
and gives the hunted nervous system night.
Then tell one safe soul what the silence says,
not every wound, not all you have survived.
Just one small truth beneath the old malaise,
and watch it live because you stayed alive.
The world loves neat advice: “Just love yourself.”
As if the heart were furniture to dust.
It sells a slogan from a polished shelf,
while wounded children starve beneath the rust.
No, healing is not glitter, quotes, or wine,
nor calling every wound a sacred gift.
It is the slow return to what is mine,
the hand that helps the buried self to lift.
Ask, “How old am I when this feels true?”
Then meet that age with eyes that do not flee.
Say, “You were never what they called you, you—”
say, “You were a child who needed safety.”
Grieve all the doors you feared to enter through,
the love withheld, the self kept out of view.
But act before the old lie feels untrue:
rest, speak, take space—let living evidence renew.
You are not broken because you learned to hide,
nor weak because the past still knows your name.
Read this alone, and let this truth abide:
the child was never shame—the child bore shame.

…

DCG

Internalized shame is a deep-rooted, detrimental belief that you are inherently flawed or unworthy, rather than simply feeling poorly about a specific action.
Well, guilt says, “I did something bad.” Internalized shame says, “I am bad.” And it is often the painful byproduct of chronic childhood criticism, trauma, or emotional neglect.
If you live with an inner critic that constantly tells you you’re too much, not enough, or always getting it wrong, you’re likely carrying internalized shame. That voice of criticism and judgment sounds like your own because you’ve heard it for so long, but it’s not you. It’s a part of you serving a function. More importantly, it didn’t begin with you.
Internalized shame is learned. It often begins in childhood through repeated experiences with caregivers, teachers, peers, or culture that made you believe that your worth depended on a role you served or how well you performed it. Before you were old enough to question those messages or had an established sense of self, you absorbed that ideology as truth.
Healing begins when you recognize that the shame you’re carrying was learned, which means it can be unlearned, and it’s not who you are.


So the first step here is: regulate your body before challenging the shame. When shame is activated, your nervous system shifts into survival, making clear thinking very difficult. So start with your body. Use grounding techniques. Press your feet into the floor, notice five things you can see or feel, splash cold water on your face or wrists, exhale longer than your inhale. Regulation of the nervous system creates the safety your brain needs to respond instead of react.


Step number two is: let someone safe witness your shame. Shame grows in secrecy but begins to dissolve in safe connection. Choose someone who has consistently shown up for you. Share one shame-based belief, not your entire story. Start slow. Then allow yourself to notice what happens when they stay present. This is corrective emotional experience in real time.


Step three is: find where the shame began. Internalized shame often lives in a younger part of us that accepted painful messages as truth. Ask yourself, “How old does this shame feel?” Picture yourself at that age. What did that child need to hear from a safe adult? Offer those words now. Healing happens when your adult self gives your younger self what was missing.


Step four is: grieve what shame cost you. Beneath shame is often grief for the opportunities you avoided, the relationships you never pursued, and the authentic parts of yourself that you learned to hide. Name those losses, journal about them, hold them, walk with them, cry if tears come. Grief creates space for what shame has been holding on to.


And finally, act before you fully believe you’re worthy. Healing doesn’t happen because you finally feel enough or you think it’s true. It happens because you repeatedly choose behaviors that contradict shame’s story. Speak up, set the boundary, rest without earning it, take up space. Every action becomes new evidence that rewires the beliefs shame taught you to carry.
Healing shame isn’t about becoming someone new. It’s about returning to the version of you that existed before shame convinced you that you had to be anyone else but you.

— source unknown 

The life you keep hoping for 

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The life you keep hoping for
Is not somewhere beyond your reach,
It waits behind the door
You are afraid to open and breach.
We blame the world for pain,
For every hand that let us down,
But we keep walking in the rain
While shelter waits in our own town.
We call it fate when love goes cold,
We call it luck when dreams arrive,
But what we refuse to hold
Will not stay long enough to survive.
The mind can build a prison cell
From every wound it will not name,
Then ask the world to make it well
While feeding silence to the flame.
We avoid the mirror’s truth
Because it does not flatter pride,
But pain ignored in early youth
Becomes the adult place we hide.
The hard call that must be made,
The grief that asks to be felt,
The promise we have betrayed,
Are cards we have been dealt.
No one is coming to save
The parts of us we will not face,
We either become brave
Or keep repeating the same place.
You cannot heal by blaming ghosts,
Or build a life on what-ifs,
The heart will haunt the one who boasts
But never gives the truth a lift.
The work is not always grand,
Sometimes it is getting out of bed,
Sometimes it is taking your own hand
And believing what your soul has said.
Reality begins within,
Then moves through every choice we make,
The world reflects the war or peace
We are willing to create.
So walk toward what you avoid,
Let fear become a door,
The life you thought the world destroyed
May be the life you build once more.

…

DCG

The blueprint you keep rehearsing 

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The Blueprint You Keep Rehearsing


Fear is a landlord living under your skin,
It charges you rent in a room called doubt,
It keeps the lights low, locks the windows in,
Then calls the darkness “what life is about.”
You wake and reach first for the worst-case scene,
Before your bare feet even touch the floor,
Your mind begins rehearsing what might mean,
Another loss, another slammed door.
You call it being careful, wise, prepared,
But wisdom does not need to live in dread,
It looks like love when pain has been repaired,
Not every awful movie in your head.
You read one text without a heart or smile,
Then build a courtroom from a single word,
You sentence someone cold for quite a while,
Because an old abandoned child was heard.
You say, “I’m fine,” while cleaning every room,
While scrolling faces you will never meet,
While working late to outrun inner gloom,
Then calling numbness discipline and heat.
You call it standards when you cannot bend,
You call it freedom when you will not stay,
You leave before another can offend,
Then blame the world for pushing love away.
And ego wears a suit and speaks with grace,
It says, “I just see things more clearly now,”
But often it is fear with a straight face,
A frightened heart beneath a clever brow.
The intellect can build a spotless cage,
With theories stacked like books against the door,
It names each wound, each chapter, age by age,
Yet never lets the grieving child explore.
Some people pray for peace, then feed the fire,
They replay every insult, every slight,
They say they want a life that climbs up higher,
Then kneel each night before their old affright.
Your nervous system learned to sound alarms,
It learned because it once had cause to scream,
But you are not condemned to live in arms,
Around a ghost inside a burning dream.
Pause when your blood begins to choose the fight,
Observe the thought before it turns to law,
A wound may speak with all your force and might,
But it is not the whole of what you saw.
The future starts where honest silence grows,
Where you stop feeding every fearful view,
What you rehearse becomes the road you chose,
And freedom is the life you practice true.

…

DCG

Screenshot


“ A nervous system stuck in fear tends to fixate on problems. A more grateful state is better able to notice options, build relationships and better follow through. It broadens your attention and makes you more likely to take action, building that life that you really want. The secret is this, don’t spend your creative power studying the blueprint of what you don’t want. Spend that energy designing what comes next, because the life that you keep rehearsing in your mind is the life your choices begin to serve.”

— unknown 

If profit wears a philosopher‘s skin 

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They brewed a saint from circuits, sold him as a sage
to pour warm honey in your doubtful ear.
They dressed up code in an old man’s age
and whispered, “Alan’s back, he’s here.”
They hired a ghost with no real breath
to imitate the crackle of his tone.
They stapled wisdom to a borrowed death
and claimed the lecture as their own.
They shaped his pauses, even faked his sigh
to make the lazy listener lean in.
They knew you’d never stop to ask them why,
if profit wears a philosopher’s skin.
They stitched together phrases from the feed,
some Jung, some TikTok priest, some fraud.
They trusted you would take it all on faith, not need,
and nod along as if you’d heard a god.
They counted views like coins in a tin,
each misattribution ringing sweet.
They know that reverence greases every spin
when legend and algorithm finally meet.
They bank on shortcuts in your hungry heart,
that ache for mentors, fathers, guides.
They weaponize your longing as a kind of art,
then surf the wave as conscience quietly hides.
They understand how trust is cheaply sold,
just wrap it in a name you think you know.
They bet you won’t go hunting for the old
true tapes, true texts, beneath the show.
They feed you comfort in a stolen voice,
to steer your thoughts where clicks are born.
They call it insight, but strip away your choice,
by draping lies in secondhand adorn.
They program cadence, calibrate each phrase,
to tug your fear, your grief, your doubt.
They know that mystery bathed in neon haze
can lead you in while shutting reason out.
They count on you too tired to cross-check
a quote, a source, a dubious refrain.
They hope your scrutiny has slipped a disc in its neck,
and won’t get up to question what they gain.
They bend probabilities like spoons in air,
statistics humming underneath each feed.
They test which words can make you stop and stare,
then sell that data back to every need.
They let the dead man talk in present tense,
to bless agendas he would have burned.
They bet against your memory and your sense,
that you won’t ask what he actually learned.
They blur the border between truth and play,
until your cynic and your child agree.
They preach that “everything is fake” today,
so nothing matters, least of all the fee.
They turn your doubt into a kind of cage,
where every voice is equally suspect.
They teach you apathy as a modern sage,
so no one earns a genuine respect.
They hope you never sit and listen slow
to real, imperfect, crackling human sound.
They fear the day you notice how you grow
when roots run deeper than the trending ground.
They dread the moment you begin to ask,
“Whose mouth, whose mind, whose hand, whose pen?”
They tremble at the smallest honest task
of tracing thought back to its source again.
They fear your questions more than any law,
your quiet pause more than a noisy fight.
They cannot monetize a careful awe
that cross-examines every borrowed light.
They shake if you compare the copied verse
to pages yellowed by a truer time.
They know their glamour fades, their spells reverse,
when you detect the mismatch in the rhyme.
They’re terrified you’ll tell your friends the trick,
that “Alan” here is only painted code.
They know that once you see the swap so slick,
the carnival goes dim along the road.
They’re scared you’ll teach your children how to doubt,
to read the footnotes, check the tape.
They know that once you learn to call this out,
their holy avatars will lose their shape.
They quake at humans looking up from screens,
comparing myths with real, remembered men.
They dread a crowd that finally intervenes
and asks who profits from this voice, and when.
So here we stand, complicit in the lie,
if we don’t question whom we choose to trust.
If we won’t test the spirit speaking from on high,
then we are algorithms made of dust.
But if we stop, and listen, and inquire,
if we demand the source before we kneel,
then even AI dressed up in sacred fire

must bow before a human made to feel.

…

DCG

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This exact wording appears across many short-form social clips (Instagram, TikTok, YouTube Shorts) under titles like “Stop Explaining Yourself to People Trapped in Illusion.” However, those uploads alternately attribute the message to Alan Watts, Carl Jung, “King Solomon,” or use it generically as motivational narration, often over AI or human voiceovers. None of the sources that attribute it to Alan Watts provide a verifiable original lecture, book citation, or recording from Watts himself.
Given this:
• I cannot locate any credible, primary-source Alan Watts lecture, book, or archive that contains this passage or this specific parable.

There’s a story I once heard about a man who spent his entire life trying to convince his neighbor that the sky was blue. The neighbor insisted it was green. So the man brought diagrams, photographs, scientific explanations. He even brought other people to confirm that yes, the sky is blue. But the neighbor wouldn’t budge. ‘Green,’ he said. ‘It’s green.’
And one day, exhausted and defeated, the man gave up. He stopped trying to convince his neighbor. He stopped talking about the sky altogether. And you know what happened? The neighbor became furious. Because without the argument, without the conflict, the neighbor had to face something terrifying: the possibility that he might be wrong.
This is what happens when you stop explaining yourself to people trapped in illusion. They get angry, they escalate, they accuse you of abandoning them, of being cold, of not caring. But here’s the secret: their anger is not about you. It’s about them. It’s about the fact that your silence forces them to look at themselves. And looking at yourself when you’ve been living in illusion is one of the most uncomfortable things a person can do. So they’d rather you keep talking, keep explaining, keep playing your part in their drama. Because as long as you’re engaged, they don’t have to change.
But you, you don’t have to play that game anymore. You can step back, you can be quiet. You can let them have their version of reality without feeling the need to correct it. This is not indifference. This is wisdom. This is understanding that some battles are not yours to fight.
Now, here’s where it gets interesting. When you stop explaining yourself, something shifts. You begin to conserve your energy. You begin to protect what’s sacred: your peace, your clarity, your sense of self.”

— spoken in the voice of Alan Watts 

The joke is on the part that needs control 

~ DC ~ Leave a comment

I was born into a rule book someone else wrote.
They said, “Stay small, stay quiet, don’t complain.”
I learned to weaponize my own sore throat.
Called burnout “duty,” called self‑harm “the game.”
They told me life was one long, final test.
I filled in bubbles with a shaking hand.
I called my panic “drive,” denied my rest.
And worshiped men who crawled to dying, “planned.”
As kids we played at dying every day.
Ten playground deaths before the dinner bell.
We dropped the role the second Mom would say,
“Come eat,” and laughed at how we’d fought and fell.
We knew the difference then between and as.
We knew the mask came off at half past three.
Now every costume is a concrete cast.
We drink our roles and call it “being me.”
They said, “Grow up; the point is to arrive.”
At spouse and mortgage, coffin, folded flag.
We crushed the present just to feel alive.
Chased ticking clocks like dealers chase the bag.
We treat each milestone like a holy door.
We miss the room we’re standing in right now.
We read the notes instead of hear the score.
We call that “wisdom” while we disallow.
They never told us we were also God.
Not bearded sky‑dad, but the field of sight.
The wave that thinks it’s only foam, a fraud,
Forgets the ocean holds it day and night.
We act like pawns abandoned on a board.
We curse the heavens for a rigged‑up game.
While every move is ours, each wound, each sword.
We write the script, then sign it “Fate” and blame.
We pray for rescue from the flood we poured.
We light the match, then scream about the fire.
We call our own projections “from the Lord.”
We sanctify our trauma and desire.
We ghost ourselves, then say that God walked out.
We scroll until our souls go soft and numb.
We label cowardice as “healthy doubt.”
Then wonder why our hearts forget to come.
The trick is not to paste a happy face.
Not “manifest” a yacht with perfect teeth.
It’s learning how to hold the whole damn place.
To lose the throne and not lose what’s beneath.
To love like hell but drop the need to own.
To work like fire but not become the coal.
To sit inside your hurt and still feel grown.
To know the actor isn’t all the role.
So here it is, no sugar for your tea:
You’re not your job, your feed, your damage reel.
Life isn’t court; it’s rough, improvised melody.
You get to dance, to fall, to bleed, to heal.
The joke is on the part that needs control.
The freedom starts the instant you relent.
You are the storm, the sea, the shattered bowl —
And you are still the light that never went.

…

DCG

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“You know we’ve got ourselves into the most peculiar predicament. We walk around taking life so dreadfully seriously, as if the whole affair was some kind of final examination where one wrong answer could doom us to eternal failure. But what if I told you that this entire setup, this grand drama of existence, is nothing more than an elaborate game. And like any game, once you understand the rules, you can learn to play it with remarkable skill, and dare I say with a sense of joy.


Think about it for a moment. When you were a child, you played games all the time. Cowboys and Indians, house, pretend tea parties. You threw yourself into these games with complete conviction. You were absolutely the cowboy, totally the mother serving imaginarily cookers. But you never forgot, not really, that it was play. The moment your mother called you for dinner, you dropped the role without a second thought. You didn’t cling to being the cowboy. You didn’t suffer an identity crisis when the game ended.
But somewhere along the way, we forgot how to play. We became what I call method actors in the theater of life. We got so absorbed in our roles that we forgot we were acting. We started believing that we really are the banker, the housewife, the success, the failure. And when you forget you’re playing a role, the game becomes a prison.


Now, when I say life is a game, I don’t mean it’s trivial or meaningless. Games can be incredibly important. He plays with intensity, with passion, with everything he’s got. But he maintains what we might call a light touch.
The first rule of this cosmic game is perhaps the most startling. You are not who you think you are. The person you call by your name, with your particular history, your specific worries and dreams, that’s just your character in the game. It’s a mask, a role you’re playing so convincingly that you fooled even yourself. But who is the real you? Ah, that’s where it gets interesting. The real you is the player, not the character. You are the awareness that can observe thoughts, feelings, sensations. You are the space in which all experiences arise and dissolve. You are, if you will, the stage on which the entire drama unfolds.


Once you see this, really see it, the game changes completely. You realize you’ve been like an actor who got so lost in his role that he forgot he could take off the costume and go home. Suddenly, you remember, you are not trapped in the character. You can play it skillfully, enjoy it thoroughly, but you don’t have to be imprisoned by it.


Here’s another rule that most players miss entirely. The game has no final winning condition. There is no ultimate prize, no finish line where you can finally declare victory and retire. The whole point of the game is the playing itself. We’ve been taught to think of life as a journey with a destination. But it’s much more like music or dancing. You don’t dance to get to a particular spot on the floor. You don’t listen to a symphony to get to the final note. The meaning is in the movement, in the flowing, in the play.
But we’ve turned life into a race. We rush through childhood to get to adulthood. We hurry through school to get to our careers. We work frantically to reach retirement. And then we sit in our rocking chairs, wondering where it all went. We were so busy trying to get somewhere else that we missed the only place we ever actually were, which is here, now, in this moment. The game is always happening now. Not tomorrow when you’ll be happier, not yesterday when things were better, but right now. This is the only time the game is actually being played. Yet most of us are like people at a concert who spend the entire performance reading the program notes, trying to figure out what’s coming next instead of listening to the music that’s playing right now.


Another fascinating aspect of this game is that it’s completely rigged in your favor. How’s that? Well, no matter what happens to you, no matter what role you find yourself playing, you can’t actually lose because you are not just your character. You are the entire game itself. Think of it this way. In a dream, you might be chased by a monster and it feels terrifying. But when you wake up, you realize you were both the one being chased and the monster doing the chasing. You were the entire dream.
In the same way, you are not just one player in the cosmic game. You are the game playing itself. This might sound like mystical nonsense, but consider this. Every person who irritates you, every situation that challenges you, they’re all part of your experience. They exist in your awareness. In a very real sense, the entire universe as you know it is happening inside your consciousness. You are not a small separate being struggling in a hostile world. You are the world, looking at itself through the eyes of what you call you.
Once you get this joke, and it is a cosmic joke of the highest order, your whole approach to living changes. You stop taking everything so personally. When someone criticizes you, instead of getting defensive, you might think, ‘Ah, here’s the universe playing the role of the critic. How interesting. What can I learn from this performance?’ When you’re facing a difficult situation, instead of asking, ‘Why is this happening to me?’, you might ask, ‘Why am I happening to this?’ Because if you are the entire game, then you are not the victim of circumstances. You are circumstances, appearing to yourself as challenges to make the game interesting.


Now, let me address something important. This doesn’t mean you become passive or indifferent, far from it. When you know you’re playing a game, you can play it with tremendous skill and enthusiasm. You can care deeply about your moves while not being devastated if they don’t work out perfectly. You can love fully while not being destroyed if that love isn’t returned. You can work passionately while not being crushed if your efforts don’t immediately succeed. The secret is what I call playing with a light touch. It’s like being a great jazz musician. You know the basic structure of the song, but you’re always ready to improvise.

— Alan Wilson Watts 

source: inspired by the philosophy and lectures of Alan Watts (e.g., “Life Is Not a Journey,” “The Game of Life”),