I wrote a book about a kid who finds that personality is to a large extent something artificial, an illusion of construct. He discovers a way toward selflessness while out wandering during his college days. You know, the usual Mark Twain stuff of trial and tribulation, error, experimentation, attempts at freedom, etc. It is not a knowledge he would necessarily want to find out, but that's life so there you go. No, it's not the peachy kind of knowledge you'd want during the years of fun, being that it is similar to young Gotama realizing that everything is decaying.

And so he sets out on the path of being a person informed by such knowledge, which is basically to be a nice person, as he's been taught by his parents, even if he still is caught up sometimes in the silliness of bearing a personality to show off to other people so that he doesn't appear too odd. He risks appearing as awkward because of this Buddhist knowledge. His passivity puzzles some, and they might misinterpret him in any number of ways. And what can he do, for he is finding himself on deeper levels. He finds Buddhist insight where he can.

I don't know if such a knowledge lies dormant as he moves on into adult life. Maybe it comes and goes. Probably, the knowledge begins to make more sense with each passing day. Add on top of that aging and the passing of time itself.

It seems to a huge burden to place upon an individual, the cult of personality. Commercial television is absolutely burdened with it, jarringly. (Try to find something decent to watch. The selling of cravings and artificial wants, outlandish and outsized and unreal personalities. The innocent viewer will note that maybe they wish they too could make money being Rambo or James Bond, but they know at the end of the day, after a fantasy perhaps, that such things aren't for them. And, yes, we know it, we watch it, celebrities are victims of what they themselves create as far as a 'winning' persona.

Even the Sunday newspaper becomes the same thing, an onslaught of material external to healthy human nature.

The Buddha was wise. He knew what a burden it would be to maintain a personality before other people, like so much of a puppet show. And so he deflected unnecessary questions and concerns. He presented what he found the human personality to really be. He understood what is healthy for us to engage in.

I fear my job sometimes. I man a bar. I am obliged to make conversation with people. Maybe some days you want to tell them, no one is really here, and nor are they, the customers, really there either. I fall into illusions too. I too have problems too distinguishing what is not real and what is real. That's one of the reasons I write, to underscore what is eternal and worth sharing, to distinguish that which is ego's falsehoods. It's hard to know what direction to go in, you know. Like, who wants to really be the perfect monk, just that it makes the most sense of anything sometimes.

"Wake up." That's what Buddha said. Beautiful. Like the light fresh dusting of snow that has come outside the window just now in wee hours like a small miracle.