I woke up in a rage.

The feeling of disgust as I saw everything around me arranged in exactly the same way. The old objects splayed around my room in their respective posts, the sun tilting through the windows as it had done so many times before. The realization that I have become a part of these fixed proceedings.

I don’t want any of this!

The permanence of objects is really of little concern to me; what’s infuriating is becoming trapped by these objects, knowing that their rigidity has settled down into your soul—that your habits and the way thoughts interact in your mind have become another piece of furniture. The fact that you’re saddled with these things makes you detest them—what would be commonplace feels like shackles, intolerable because they’re yours. Everything—your appearance, your relationships, the basic tenets of your personality—begins to stink. What have I done to deserve this? Why do I sit and watch the tides of my own anguish number the years?

Reinvention. Reinvention is the answer. The need for reinvention is one we all have, and it’s not a response to a problem, either. It’s an extension of the yearning for growth. This is why we cut our hair, buy new clothes, try new workouts to watch our bodies grow and morph in novel ways. Sometimes I fantasize about reinventing myself in degrees of varying intensity: selling all my clothes, moving to a different city, state or continent, changing my lifestyle to become a bum or materialist chasing wealth, deleting myself and choosing a new starting point at random, transplanting into a new culture and a new language. It’s the urge for growth and the frantic clamor for life experience that moves me so.

As I reach new plateaus I look ever outward for new feelings to drive me on. Which instances of the shared universal can I achieve in my limited body, in the narrow window of human consciousness? What is it like to speak a different language? What’s it like to exist as a member of the opposite sex? What does it feel like to fly? How much of this can I really achieve, and what are the obstacles that would prevent me from doing so?

The undermining of this appetite is what makes me curse all my worldly possessions and loathe myself. There’s nothing wrong with this, really. The fault lies in the blinders of culture and custom, which cause us to view such curiosity as alien. We’ve limited ourselves to a small slice of existence; this is mine, and everything else is wrong. Really, we deserve the whole pie.

I love my isolation, and I cherish my perspective as an outsider of sorts. It’s a badge I would proudly bear in defense of my current position—my search for something grander, while all these people walk back and forth, back and forth, desperately trying to convince themselves that they know, truly, what is important and what is good in their straightforward, unblinking existence.