Kafka’s Bug

“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous bug…

What has happened to me? He thought. It was no dream…”

-Franz Kafka

Oblivious isn’t exactly the right word, because I could feel self-awareness coming on, like an emotional swell, that I could stuff down into some dark cold vacant part of my mind. Willful ignorance is more accurate. When friends expressed concern, I’d feel the blood rushing to my cheeks, the tremble in my hands, and I would take that creeping self-awareness and put it in a shoebox, lock it in an uncrackable safe, which happened to be in a locked closet, in a derelict house, which was situated in the worst and least visited neighborhood of my mind. 

Hide away the bad thoughts, stuff them into the cracks of the couch with the crumbs, I’ll get to them later. The house was on fire, but such a large house, and if I couldn’t feel the warmth from my bedroom, did it matter?

And then I would wake up a monstrous bug, with no ability to disguise myself, from myself. I would wake up with every bit of hidden knowledge crashed down upon me like the Hindenburg. 

On these mornings of revelation, I would need to solve every problem instantaneously. I would search for the easiest solution or the most radical. I vacillated between belief that either one small change or total upheaval were the answer. This led to years of failure and frustration.

Changing one thing never led to a miraculous recovery and changing everything all at once didn’t either. 

It took many years for me to understand that in order to become a different person, many instances of small change were required, but that I wouldn’t understand them all on day one. That getting good at a single change might then require another change to bolster improvement.

Self-improvement has no end and if I’m not working towards this in some way, I am in deterioration. 

I prefer getting better.