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the words

‘someone somewhere’

A middle-aged someone in the middle of somewhere sat on an over-sized behind glued to an over-used television set.

“I’m not sure they mean it. What they say. Not really.” He said out-loud to no one in particular.

All these years he’d been convinced that he was right. And now he wasn’t sure.

All these years he’d been convinced that he’d made his own choice. His own choice. And now he wasn’t sure.

Somehow tonight’s presidential debate sounded different. Perhaps the words had always been the same, just his ability to listen to what was being said had changed. Something had changed.

“… why are they telling me what they think I need to hear?” His thoughts were taking a route almost forgotten by his tired sense of self.

And as the television pushed out the same old words re-arranged in the language of the moment, it dawned on him that he had chosen to listen, to agree without examination beyond the intellectual facade. Beyond the obvious words.

“… then who was it that checked my voting slip? Who was it that signed my name?”

And gradually it dawned on him that his decisions to do almost everything in his life had been made from this same place. Through the fog of what he’d led himself to believe. A seemingly ever-moving belief caused by listening to the world shouting its opinions of what was right and what was wrong.

His thought continued its mis-adventure,“… maybe this shouting has deafened me to hearing my own voice. To having my own voice.”

As the television faded, the world became silent for the first time in as long as he could remember. There was just himself.

“… who is it that’s been living my life?”