Siddhartha

"And, he decided, It was the Self whose meaning and nature I wished to learn. It was the Self I wished to escape from, wished to overcome" (Hesse 34).














"That I know nothing of myself, that Siddhartha has remained such a stranger to me, such an unknown, comes from one cause, one single cause: I was afraid of myself, I was running away from myself" (Hesse 34).

"Now he was no longer anything but Siddhartha; he was the one who had awoken and nothing more" (Hesse 36).

I felt awakening when I moved from Missouri to Colorado in September. For so long, I mourned my past life and the way things used to be. I wished that my parents wouldn't have fought, that things could be the same as they were when I was young. Eventually, I realized that things were never going to go back, no matter how hard I wished. I also realized that this is how things were and I should just learn to love what I did have. Once I realized that, I actually learned to love Colorado more than I ever had loved Missouri. Things with my parents and family are still really shaky and I do wish things were all good and smooth, but that's not how it is and so I have to just learn to smile through it all because in the end, if I get upset about it, that's only hurting me.

When I was about 7, I did my first musical. It was in that moment that I realized that I feel the most me when I'm on stage. When the cast and I have worked so hard for many weeks-staying up until late at night, running the show, dealing with disasters, hating each other and then apologizing later- and finally it's time for the public to see our show, there is something so real about that. The audience will never know what went on for us to get to that point. When I take that final bow, I bow to the ending of a great few weeks with people I have learned to love and know so well, I bow to that character and all it taught me and I bow to myself and all that I have overcome and what I feel of my performances, whether it be good or bad. I have learned to accept that no matter how great of a show it was (or how bad), or how hard I've worked, eventually the final curtain will close and that's it, it's done.

My grandpa died when I was 10. It was hard for me because he was the one who had inspired me to sing and act in the first place. Although it still is sad, I know realize that the reason I suffer so greatly is because I am clinging. I am clinging to life, to someone who I felt as though I needed in order for me to be successful. The cause of my suffering all along was entitlement and the feeling that I needed longer with him. Everyone dies, and I'm not really sure why it surprised me. I think the reason I was surprised was because he was so young and it felt like I had been robbed of something, when in reality  I never owned his life or his presence. Buddha says that instead of getting mad when things break or die, we should be happy that we had them in the first place because they were already broken and dead and were alive and fixed for a split second in time. I realize now that I should have been aware that death was always there and I was lucky to get 10 years of his life with him.