Not a Single Original Thought

I think it's all been done before. I can't imagine a single action, thought, or experience in my life that hasn't happened to someone before me. After thousands of years of existence, there is nothing original in my life.

And it doesn't really bother me all that much.

I used to want to be different. I felt different and searched for things in my life to justify that feeling, and maybe it's having children, or being married, or just maturation, but I'm starting to feel like it's all been done before.

The individual pieces of our lives are interchangeable, we're never alone, and yet what makes us unique are all those pieces together, and the story of our entire lives that we've constructed with those basic building blocks. Like DNA, we all start with the same 'stuff' but how it is arranged, what came before and after and all those small details piled up is what makes us indiciduals.

I sometimes get stuck feeling as though no one understands me. I get tired trying to explain myself to other people, hoping for that glimmer of recongition so I can say, "Yes! That exactly." And not have to explain anymore. I've felt lately that people around me understand the point but not in the context of my life. I feel like I can relate on that one thing, but how it affects me based on past experiences is too far to reach. I feel like even though we have a lot in common, my history makes it impossible to ever be truly understood.

And that's okay. Because if someone ever understood me completely they might find out those things that I try to hide too. The lovely double edged sword.

I guess that in some parts of my life I feel like I'm going in circles. I'm reenacting the same conflicts and disappointments over and over, and I don't know how to jump off that dysfunctional hamster wheel. And people give me advice, and I understand (and often agree) but I can never explain all the small details and experiences to make someone understand that I can't just give up. There is too much history to give up.

So I hop back on the wheel, and run in place. But it's all been done before. Someone has worked it out in the past, and I have full confidence that one day I'll stumble on that path too, that it will be well trod by people before me and I can follow their footsteps for that time until I have myself straightened out, then I'll follow another path and see where it leads me.