The Voice in My Head Is an Asshole

Are those conspirators that you spy through your window or is it a mirror reflecting the chattering parasites in your mind? – Stewart Stafford

 

To be clear, I’m not talking about “hearing voices,”

I’m talking about the internal narrator, the most intimate part of our lives.

The voice comes braying in as soon as we open our eyes in the morning, and then heckles us all day long with an air horn.

It’s a fever swamp of urges, desires, and judgments.

It’s fixated on the past and the future, to the detriment of the here and now.

It’s what has us reaching into the fridge when we’re not hungry, losing our temper when we know it’s not really in our best interest, and pruning our inboxes when we’re ostensibly engaged in conversation with other human beings.

Our inner chatter isn’t all bad, of course.

Sometimes it’s creative, generous, or funny.

But if we don’t pay close attention —which very few of us are taught how to do— it can be a malevolent puppeteer.   – Dan Harris

Taught myself how to do sometimes.

Actually just one of the voices is an asshole.

A younger voice mostly now muted.

A distant whisper I can today ignore if I so choose.

And I so choose.

Must pay close attention.