My Favorite Pastime

I sit back and watch you speak.

It is one of my favorite hobbies. To silently observe your insecurities surface and take strange new shapes in this world. To watch your words build walls around you with ease. To see you hide behind half-truths and lies spoken in conceit. But why? I see you disappear in their eyes. Become a ghost that lives.

You walk on the stage only to create more apparitions for the world to see. Your deftness does amaze me. With empty words, charming and stringed together neatly, waved in the air like a magic wand that’s but illusory, you create magic. The audience goes into a rapture but you bleed within. Somehow, the magic isn’t real for you, is it?

What do you seek?

I sit back and hear you speak. You talk of your love for your family, your gratitude, the wonder of life, Karma, and the Faith to overcome. But you don’t speak. Instead I see you beg, bleat, and try hard to convince. I know your life depends on it. If they stop to believe, you will cease to exist. The illusion they believe is the life you seek! Yes, that’s it. An illusion is what you want to be. An non-entity mistaken for reality.

You are now afraid to speak.

One wrong word and they will wake up from their hypnotic sleep. You are frantic, trying to second-guess them. But you cannot be sure what it is that runs in their minds. A million minds thinking a million thoughts at the same time. Yet you know you cannot make a mistake. You have to harp on nothing but what they want to hear. Cause you speak, not to express but to convince. As does a trained salesman in an upscale boutique. Glib and sweet, acquired civility flashes on you, like a plated gold necklace. An object of adornment that now looks cheap and ugly. Frankly, I don’t like that a bit.

You have no choice now but to keep the act on. To keep on talking. Your heartbeats are now connected to your words. If you stop talking, you stop to live. Funny, isn’t it? You thought you were the master and they, the slaves of your illusion. Your words were gifts from God and you could use them any which way you want. What do you say now? Who slaves for whom?

As long you speak, their dazed eyes will mirror what you want to see. But remember this. Do not express. Just mirror. The moment you truly speak, the spell will be broken. The magic will die in their eyes, and you will die with it! Isn’t it? It is in their eyes that you exist. Beyond it, it is just silent emptiness. Unexplainable fear. Expressionless loneliness.

I still exist. You used to call me the ‘little voice inside your head.’ But that was once upon a time. No longer do you seek my company. So I just sit here silently and watch you speak. It has become my favorite pastime, you see.