In many ways, you are your own companion.
You observe yourself. You talk with yourself. You judge yourself.
You live in a constant duality.
There is the side of you performing your actions — let’s call it the performer.
And the side of you judging those actions — let’s call it the thinker.
The thinker is probably the one you identify with the most. The one that feels like you.
The performer is also you, yet you treat it like a stranger. You judge it harshly.
You despise it in subtle ways. You might not even feel it’s truly you.
See, many disassociate from their performing self
because the life they perform is so disconnected from the reality inside their head.
The words they speak, the things they do — they’re so disingenuous.
It might as well be a stranger doing them.
Society has conditioned you to do so many things that don’t align with your thinking self.
It’s diminished you, making you feel like an observer of a performance you don’t even like.
You let it diminish you.
You see this everywhere. In every conversation.
People describe themselves by their job, their roles, their hobbies.
They ask, “So, what do you do?”
while not caring the slightest about the answer they’re about to receive.
Everybody knows this. Yet everybody plays along.
It’s tragicomic.
And on rare occasions, you meet someone so uninfluenced by societal norms
that it rocks the ground you stand on.
They seem free in all the ways you are not.
They reject all the constraints you’ve quietly agreed to.
They walk lightly. Speak plainly. Exist fully.
And you reject them outright.
Because accepting their genuineness
would mean confronting your own absurd act.
Your rehearsed lines. Your image.
Most would rather live in their thinking self —
and conveniently disassociate and judge their performing self.
Because taking an honest look at yourself would be too painful.
It would be too much.
It would mean rejecting what you’ve been living by for most of your life.
All the norms, habits, and standards.
You’d lose the ground on which you stand.
You’d be in free fall.
So most never do.
Most live in this duality their entire life — with all the suffering it brings.
Why do most end in this horrid position?
Because they mistake their comfort for truth.
Because they believe that stability is worth more than sincerity.
They confuse stillness with safety, and repetition with identity.
And so they cling to routines, to job titles, to social roles.
Not because they believe in them,
but because they fear what would happen if they let go.
They fear that if they stopped pretending — even for a moment —
everything would collapse.
Their relationships. Their ambitions. Their sense of self.
And perhaps they’re right.
Because collapse is not failure.
Collapse is the beginning of truth.
To face yourself is not to tidy up your image.
It is to burn it down.
It is to admit that most of what you call “you” is borrowed.
A collection of inherited phrases, recycled gestures, automated roles.
None of which were chosen freely.
And to feel this truly is to feel naked.
To lose the false confidence of knowing who you are.
To be left with nothing but questions.
Who am I when I stop performing?
What do I want when no one is watching?
What remains when I subtract every label?
These questions haunt you for a reason.
Because they matter more than any plan, any career path, any personality trait you’ve mastered for applause.
But you avoid them.
You find something else to fix.
You optimize your morning routine.
You tweak your productivity system.
You meditate just enough to keep from screaming.
You’ll do anything.
Except sit quietly in the wreckage of your false self and ask what was ever real.
Because here is the truth:
The moment you actually face yourself — the real you, not the curated version —
you realize that most of your life has been a reaction.
Not a choice.
A chain of compromises built on fear, wrapped in language that made it sound noble.
You called it responsibility.
You called it maturity.
You called it realism.
But really — it was avoidance.
Avoidance of the one task only you can do:
To become whole.
Not by fixing your flaws.
Not by perfecting your image.
But by unifying your selves.
By making your thinker and your performer one and the same.
By speaking only what you believe.
By doing only what you value.
That is integration.
That is freedom.
But make no mistake — it comes at a cost.
The death of who you were pretending to be.
And most would rather suffer than pay that price.
They would rather live a tolerable lie than risk a painful truth.
But if you’re still here,
there’s a chance you won’t.
There’s a chance you’re ready.
To stop performing.
To stop observing.
To stop waiting for someone else to make it safe.
No one will.
There is no safe way to be free.
Only the honest way.
Sincerely,
Milo Morrison