Dear Digital Diary

Dear Digital Diary,

Last week I was standing over the Grand Canyon. 

The rocks were painted red like bricks, but there was nothing artificial about the miles and miles of peaks and valleys and pure canyon. I could barely see the trees that sprinkled the earth below, but I could see a hazy green. Someone next to me — who’d smartly brought binoculars — said they could see horses and a cabin. But to me, I saw nothing. 

In retrospect, I was barely above the canyon. I wasn’t up in space, looking at the planet from a ship and reflecting on how everything I’d known is dust. Yet I did reflect. And it’s not only that I am dust, but nothing I can do can really matter. 

I promise this isn’t a doomsday post. 

It’s sort of like how you can have two takes on unemployment: on one side, you’re unemployed and you have no idea what’s next. On the other side, there’s an immense amount of freedom that has just been placed before you. 

I should rephrase my previous statement by saying that nothing I can do matters to everyone. Not even the most powerful, most influential, most arrogant billionaire in the world could really do something that harms or benefits or matters to every single person. Even Taylor Swift doesn’t exist to certain people. 

Today I finished reading The Catcher in the Rye for the second time, which is also what got me on this spin of thoughts.I’d read it in sophomore year of high school, which was the only book that stuck with me besides Gatsby — I love the classics, what can I say. But I’m not an adolescent boy, so there was nothing about Caulfield that really called to me. I wasn’t chasing anything like he was — women, freedom, violence, etc. Instead, it was the fact that I was reading about him: his internal monologue, raw and unfiltered. And in him, the way his dialogue ran through the pages, I saw myself. 

It’s controversial to see yourself (a now twenty-two-year-old woman) in a fictional teenage boy. But there was something about him that made me realize that I think and feel the same way. My brain runs selfishly, and I put myself first. If you were to suck out the thoughts from my brain and tap them onto a piece of paper, the things that would be apparent after the dust settled would be 99% about me. 

And honestly, forgive me if it’s selfish, that’s the way it should be. 

It’s my world, and you just live in it. 

It’s your world, and I just live in it. 

Or, even better, it’s your world and I’m just a writer you read words from on a Monday and then forget about. 

What I mean is that your life is your own. You and I exist here at the same time, but we don’t have the same experiences. But if a third person went up to space and looked down on the Earth, they wouldn’t even see us. Hell, they wouldn’t even be able to tell where we were on the planet, even if you owned the biggest house and I owned the biggest boat. From up there, you can only see the sea and the earth, like how, above the Grand Canyon, you only see the red and purple rocks, and how far down they go. 

Nothing you do matters to everyone. But everything you do matters to you. Which is why living as close to my authentic self is important to me. If I’m not making choices that make me feel close to my soul, then who am I making choices for?

You’re nothing but a speck of sand. An ant on an anthill. A fictional character in a book nobody cares to read anymore. You’re a tree at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. And although that seems harsh, it doesn’t demean the importance of your soul. You are supposed to be here, but you are supposed to be just how you choose. Your soul is only as important as how you make it. Saying you are small in a big world only takes the pressure off. 

And when there is less pressure, that is when I can truly breathe.