A weird thought I have

   Sometimes I’ll see someone express a thought I’ve held privately. I know they don’t know me, and I’m certain they couldn’t have read my blog, but there will be my words, written not in my voice but using a thought I’ve held for a long time. I don’t get angry or jealous, but I think something that honestly doesn’t make sense. I think, “Maybe I have more influence than I thought I did.” 

    I know it’s silly. I know I’m not the only person affected by way the world moves, and it’s not improbable that I’m merely absorbing thoughts from others around me, but when you move alone these thoughts and fantasies tend to be important to you, especially if you know that the moment you told someone else, they will laugh and dismiss you. 

   I keep writing because I think that if I write something, even if nobody ever reads it, it will still change the world in some way. I know that’s not possible; how can I change someone’s mind if they never speak to me at all? But I keep believing it because in this world power comes not in what we have, but what we want to have someday. I don’t want to be famous, but I want to be allowed to believe that I could be famous if I wanted to be. I think that’s true for everyone to an extent. It’s why so many stories end with someone becoming successful. I’ve always thought that most of us don’t want to reach the top. We say we do, because we think that’s what we’re supposed to say, but if all of us wanted to reach the top society would look very different than it does. What most of us want is the dream that we could reach the top, be famous or rich or powerful in one way or another. Shows about rich people screwing up are popular not because they make rich people relatable, but because they feed into a fear that we all have, the fear that we could have everything we want, but we still won’t be happy. 

    I do think we take that too far sometimes. There’s nothing wrong with not wanting to be successful, but I still think we should all want something. Not something more or better than what we have now, but something that’s meaningful to us in a way that if we were to tell anybody else, it wouldn’t make any sense to them. One of my strongest beliefs is that our universe is built from the belief that we want to matter in some way. I don’t really know if it’s true, I don’t really care either. I just think that we want to matter, to leave a mark that can be seen when we’re gone.