All my life I’ve held myself back, both consciously and unconsciously, for various reasons. But now, I’m at a point in my life where I think I need to stop doing that. I have to let go. Perhaps writing about it will help.

Over the years, as I’ve learned more about who I am, I can look back at my childhood to try to explain to myself who I was back then. By testing myself in various ways, I now know that my mind is somehow different from others. Its information processing ability seems to be, at the very least, above average. And even back then, as a child, it seems that mind could somehow see and intuitively understand some things that some people don’t even understand in a lifetime. What I didn’t have, was the strength, experience, and maturity to know how to make wise decisions based on such understanding. Knowing that something is wrong, and deciding what to do about it, are two very different things. Only as an adult have I begun to get a handle on the latter.

Yet, all children have to make decisions, whether or not they’re ready for it. Some of those decisions still affect who I am today. This post is about why I might have decided hold myself back.

There are two aspects to it. The first, and simplest, was the external pressure. I was bullied, so I needed to hide myself, make myself as “uninteresting” as possible as a target. I had a sensitive, kind heart, and it was being manipulated and preyed on as a weakness, so I needed to build a shell where nobody could find it and hurt it. Everyone around me failed me or let me down in one way or another, so I needed to hold back my desire to associate with or assist other people, just to protect myself. Even if it meant giving up a piece of what I am.

The other aspect was the fear of the darkness within. Although I don’t believe there’s a clear-cut distinction between good and evil, I do believe the capacity for both good and evil actions lie within us all, despite everyone else’s attempts at hiding this simple fact (often from themselves). Ironically, when people try to preserve the illusion that their own hearts are good and pure, the end result is almost always evil. Why? Because it encourages “us-vs-them”-thinking.

That kind of thinking goes something like: “Since my own heart is pure (and I’m convinced it is), clearly there are others whose hearts are not pure, otherwise this world would be good and just, and it isn’t. That means me and my peers (We) are different, and better, than Them. Given this, I can probably lump anyone who disagrees with my pure heart into the Them category. That’s convenient, because I can now use the impurity of their hearts to discredit their opinions, so I don’t have to listen to them. Moreover, it is now also much easier for Us to go to war against Them, for any excuse we choose, and we’ll still be able to consider ourselves the Good Guys.”

When we see our “enemy” engage in “us-vs-them”-thinking, we call it bigotry, racism, ignorance, extremism, terrorism, whatever. But when we do it ourselves, at worst we call it not being “politically correct”; mostly, it’s just business as usual. There’s even social pressure to engage in it, if you don’t already. So, having a bias is depressingly common, and it’s a near certainty that any self-proclaimed pure heart, is really among the least pure you can find. It’s really no surprise that priests have been caught doing nasty things.

Even as a child, none of this would have shocked me. The darkness was easy to see, plain as day all around me. It was obvious in the bullies that tormented me, it was obvious in my authoritarian father (who, as an adult, I’m relieved to no longer need to listen to, or even show any respect for), and it was obvious in the world around me, both locally and globally. Bullying, discrimination, hooliganism, politics, war. I saw that “evil” was not a conscious choice, nor a mental disease that only affected a selected few, which could be identified and locked up. “Evil” is actually a potential within us all, and the more we try to cover it up, the more it roams free.

(The capacity for evil within us all has also been substantiated through scientific testing, e.g. in the Stanford prison experiment, or The Third Wave)

Even today, this seems hard for people to understand. Take the incident where right-wing political activist Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people, for example. I was disappointed to see people fall into the same old traps. “Cold-blooded murderer!”, “Psycho!”, and many other accusations. Was he? No, none of those things. The only thing provably wrong with him was a massive ego (“narcissistic personality disorder”), which, let’s face it, is not that unusual. And he used drugs to shut down his emotions during the shooting, so he’s not even cold-blooded – he just somehow thought it was the right thing to do. And in the online culture he was engaged in, that was probably indeed the consensus. That is, in the “us-vs-them” world he and his friends lived in, it was the right thing to do. In his own eyes, he wasn’t evil, he was a good guy sending out a wake-up-call to the world, and particularly to those he considered traitors (the Labour Party). So, there was nothing much psychologically abnormal about him, there are people a lot like him everywhere. All he did, was become part of a radical culture. And yet, people insist on not learning from this, and try to treat him as some anomaly that can be locked up and forgotten about, instead of recognizing the potential within us all, and how our own preconceptions work to feed that potential. Hence, even after these reminders, not only do the same kind of violence continue to exist to this day, our reactions are actively making it worse.

Anyway, so, as a child, I could see the darkness in the hearts of men all around, and I knew it was also within me. I was afraid. I was miserable, and I was pushed into darkness, but I couldn’t let the darkness win – I was afraid of becoming yet another deluded man who did bad things, thinking they were good things. And “us-vs-them”-thinking will easily make you that deluded. I’ve tried to never think that way, but I knew it might not be enough. My mind doesn’t work the same way as others, how could I know when I’ve crossed the line, or even where the line is?

I’ve tried to live a good life. I’ve tried to repair the damage caused by my childhood, and some of the people around me as I grew up. Over time, I’ve managed to recover some of the strength and humanity I lost back then. I’m less afraid of people. But there’s still much I miss.

For example, I still am not quite sure what being loved feels like. I do know what it is like to love, but not vice versa – or at least, I’ve never felt the “good” kind of love. (If I must, I might grudgingly acknowledge having experienced the “when someone drags you through the nine levels of hell, without consent” kind of “love”, but I can’t say I cared much for that.) It’s been many years since I gave up on ever feeling loved. My best prospects for the future has been that even though I might never find happiness, at least I won’t be miserable, because I’ll at least find a purpose for myself.

But still, I’ve always held myself back. I’ve always been afraid of the darkness, of what I might become. They say that with great power comes great responsibility, and that’s something I’ve always believed. It seems that the more I’ve learned about my own potential, the more real the possibility seemed of one day actually gaining significant power, and so the more I’ve held myself back. Power corrupts, and I didn’t want to be corrupted. I didn’t want power before I could be reasonably sure I could fight the darkness within.

I guess I just have to find a way. At this point, destiny seems to have already granted me significant power and influence, whether or not I asked for it, but I’m still afraid of the darkness within. What would I do if I dared to accept power? Would I be able to walk the line? Who would I become? Exactly what am I made of?

I don’t know. And I think I’ve always been afraid of the answer. I mean, how can a person who has never truly felt loved be made of something good? Of something capable of resisting the corruption of power?

I have to figure this out…