Peter Pan
So apparently I am a Peter Pan. It actually checks out pretty nicely. I was a precocious child. I was a high achiever, at least academically. I am non-committal. I am a daydreamer. I am keeping my options open, not committing to anything, not realizing any of the potential life I may have. And being Peter Pan is killing me.
The worst thing I felt when I learned about this is that the traits that define who I am, the traits that I am most proud of, are not really me but more like symptoms of a disease. It is similar to a story of two people falling in love, only to find out that they had parasites in their brains. The parasites reproduced by making their hosts mate with each other. So they were not really loving each other. It was just that the parasites manipulated the hormones inside their brains so that they couldn't help feeling in love, eventually having sex and help the parasites reproduce.
Similarly, I am nothing but a vessel for this parasitic soul of Peter Pan.
There are two potential solutions. One, I can kill the parasite. I can just kill Peter Pan. I just need to commit to anything. The more boring, the more ordinary, the better. Getting married to any girl, settling down anywhere, working at any job. Then after living it for 30, 40 years, when everything in my life has died down, I may sit down, and the contentment I feel may outweigh the regret I have for not living an extraordinary life. I would say there is a 50-50 chance of success. With the continual innovations in mindfulness and other "treatment", the success may reach 70% or even higher 30-40 years from now. Frankly, I prefer killing myself right now. So there is the second solution. I separate the good from the bad. I separate the laziness, the dependency, the passivity from the creativity, the passion, the freedom. And the way to do so, once again, is commitment. Not to the standards most people adhere to and encourage others to adhere to even if they don't believe themselves. No, commitment to an art or a craft, a discipline to mould the smoke of daydream into something concrete in life, something magical that we all desperately need.
There is just no other choice, right?