To The Silent Army:
Masks may hide the shadows you hold dear, but know those shadows slowly drain you of life, feeding on the machine of emotion you have set in motion to keep those dark places hidden. And they need not be dark corners full of seven sins. They may simply be that part of you that you have repressed and hidden away, that part that is truly you, fully expressed, and fully living.
For too long you didn’t allow it to live. For too long you have made it stay quiet. And now it eats you from the inside out, a consuming fire with embers still red with passion, slowly simmering away your will to live as you tell it that someone else’s dreams and passions are more important than your own. You excuse it with responsibility, working for another’s passion to pay the dreams of yet another, surrounding yourself with tinkering toys, hoping to fill that emptiness, that hole that is ever growing with the burning embers of past hopes and dreams.
It’s time you face the sun and shine light on the shadows. It’s time those shadows become only the contrast between who you once were and who you are becoming. Fiat Lux, Genetheto Phos, Yehi Or, let light exist. It is not a call for the sun to shine upon your skin. Instead, it is a call for light to shine upon your inner most depths, bringing forth the creation of your beautiful and unique self, the expression of the deepest parts of you, the breaking forth of light from within, the reigniting of the fire of your passions and dreams, and spreading that light to others in the hopes of reigniting their own repressed inner flames.
You are not oppressed, since no person can silence you but yourself. You are not bound by the chains of others, except that you bind yourself in dark places out of fear of rejection and loss. You are not the mask you show to others, except in as much as you reflect the world around you and hide the light you bear. But the world around you need not happen upon you. You can create that world from within, and your light expose the shadows of others, those dark things holding them back from truly living.
So be fully you, fully expressed, and a the gift to the world that you’ve been keeping in a box. Open that small, ornate box that you keep in the dark. That box you’ve kept chains and told yourself that demons hide within. Remember that it’s not full of monsters. It’s full of light.
~Draven Grey
image: Marcel Oosterwijk
