who am I?

I am a human being. A part of a world not of my own choosing, at least when I got here I wasn't aware that I'd chosen it. I've been told differently since. Whether or not I wanted to be here or otherwise I am here alive now for a limited time only. Why should I keep going? First of all I lack the will and courage to leave and transform myself into dust. Dust doesn't have any fun as far as I can tell, but then again neither do I, dust also just is. If I were to go all zen and become enlightened I would just be too. And how is this different from death?

When I wake up in the morning I face a conclave of endless choices, most of which thankfully are filtered out by whatever is happening behind the curtain. My awareness seems to be limited to a fixed amount of inputs. I don't know the scope or plasticity of those limits, but I do know that death is one of them; its reach is universal, there is some point in every ones future where everyone stops being human. I have come to like my humanity precisely because it allows me to like and dislike things. If life went on forever I could go about exploring every single aspect of the universe, but that is not my experience, so I am required to prioritize, to make decisions. I often shrink from this necessity of being.

Part of the difficulty in deciding how to live is simply in the process itself. By this I mean that I have an idea of what a good life looks like and how I'd like to be, but the methods that I choose to use, to achieve those ends seem to often subtly pull me away from my desired aim. I hear a lot about the check box mentality and how that can alienate us from reaching the heights of a morally integrated life; why? Because we turn into pharisees? We lose sight of how to be, distracted by what steps we've chosen to get there? I don't know.