Oops — is that me?

People confuse themselves —
with everything they are not.
We confuse ourselves.
You and I.

We take thoughts for reality.
We take feelings for identity.
We take story for self.

We confuse worldview with world.
We confuse experience with essence.

The past feels like the present.
Projection feels like fact.

Confusion ripples outward

We confuse ourselves with thoughts.
Inner voices appear as truth.
We believe what we think —
and call it “me.”

Then with feelings.
Whatever rises seems to define us:
sorrow becomes nature,
fear becomes character,
anger becomes identity.

Then with stories.
We bind loose events into a narrative —
and the narrative binds us.

Then with visions.
With images of who we might become,
or who we should become.

Then with what we hope to be.
Longing masquerades as nature.
We chase the ideal
and lose the real.

Then with what we fear to be.
Shadows turn into traits.
Wounds turn into biography.
Fear writes the self
sharper than any truth.

Then with what we never were.
Borrowed sentences,
foreign expectations,
old judgments —
everything collapses together
and calls itself “I.”

None of this bears our name.

Confusion happens —
and no one does it.

You cannot confuse yourself on purpose.