The Nature of Projection in anticlimatic

It takes time to make peace with yourself.

It’s hard to accept that you’re not a good guy.
Or a bad guy.

It’s hard to stop punishing yourself for doing bad things, by doing more bad things.

It’s hard to accept that “the line between good and evil runs through every human heart,” our own included.

We think changing is something we do, when really it’s something that is done to us.

I feel more like a manager of low level Walmart employees than I do a direct puppet master over myself. Like I can send out some vague orders, and hope they figure it out- but it’s not actually me doing the work on the store (myself).

One of my favorite movie themes are characters struggling with themselves in the pursuit of change. Sometimes managing it, which is beautiful. Like Darth Vader. Sometimes giving it up, and embracing who they are. Which is also beautiful. Like William Munny in Unforgiven.

I like a little of both, myself.

I like a character that initially is changed into something he or she is not, but is trapped there- and then through force of will and chance manages to overcome adversity to change again- not into something that they are not, but who they really are deep down in all of their authentic glory.

Which has lead me to a thought I can’t get out of my head:

If love is the absence of the illusion of separation- I am you as you are me, what harms you harms me, what lifts you lifts me- and Hate is just a projection of that which we dislike in ourselves, onto others, then where to other people ever actually come into play?

If those we hate are just ourselves, and those we love are just ourselves, does that leave randos we don’t know or know well as the only other people out there that aren’t us in some way? Are they real people, or are they sort of “not-people?” Rather, “not-people-yet?” But perhaps “with the potentiality” for being people?

And if that is the case, does that not leave us essentially incapable of any genuine interaction with anything other than ourselves?