It seems that if I am struck as often by physical objects as by my thoughts, I would have either arrive dead on my way to work or be found dead on my bathroom floor.

Halfway through my shower this morning, I realized that if someone is observant enough, he/she will be able to see correlations between my vocabulary, my body language, my intonations and my disposition.

I suppose everyone becomes the mental image which they want to portray of themselves.

And that is precisely what makes them predictable.

After all, self expression, portraying oneself, personal styles, are simply exhibited patterns; relatively consistent forms of expressing oneself.

It was an uncomfortable realization that someone can read me like a book. It was years since I last have any intentions which I need to mask, and it was years since I need to hide my thoughts from myself or from anyone. Yet there was a resistance when I realize that my physical body can betray my mental self.

If a person can read my thoughts, would not he/she be said to be able to understand me? And have I not, in the past, crave for understanding, thirst for my thoughts to be shared with someone, with anyone?

But that was in the past, in the relatively distant past.

Now, I just want my thoughts to reverberate only through the empty labyrinths of my mind. And then, they are to be silenced. But why am I suddenly so comfortable in my the cold of the solipsistic limbo? Perhaps I have finally resigned myself to the Nietzschean heights, or perhaps I am finally at peace with the true lonely nature of human existence. Then why do mere, harmless, random, often uncontrollable, imprudent thoughts matter so much to me that I have to guard them? Does it truly matter if others can hear them or see them? What exactly makes them so sacred, so precious?

Perhaps like knowledge, they are all that I have and all that I can ever have. Or perhaps they are like the intangible will and the fleeting images we called memories, all that I am.

And all that I ever will be.

Are they then who I am? Is this privacy of my intentions the very key to my individuality?

The answer to this question holds implications of such gravity that I shall be respectfully silent.

I began questioning years ago, if the people who asked to be understood really knew what they were in for. They asked for someone to truly understand them, to truly share their thoughts and their likes, their dislikes, and their passion. But have they asked if they can truly live with themselves? Have they asked whether their soulmates truly understand them, would they still be able to love them? Could imperfect creatures such as they, incapable of even approximating unconditional love, love creatures as flawed as themselves?

I think not. But I am in no position to answer the above questions since the said persons have chose not to answer them.