There was a time when I hated parts of myself.
My overthinking.
My impatience.
My insecurity.
I thought the only way to grow was to attack these flaws, eradicate them, destroy them like enemies in a war.
But Buddhism teaches something radically different:
You don’t destroy the self to grow.
You outgrow the illusion of the self.
At first, I didn’t understand.
How can “I” be an illusion? My thoughts felt real. My emotions felt real. My fears felt real. But the more I observed them, the more I realized:
My thoughts change every hour.
My emotions shift every moment.
My fears evolve every year.
My preferences transform with experience.
If everything I identify as “me” keeps changing, then who is the “me” I’m defending so fiercely?
The Buddha uses the metaphor of a chariot:
You can name it, admire it, protect it—but when you break it down into wheels, axles, wood, and rope, the “chariot” disappears. What’s left is just parts, temporarily assembled.
I am the same.
What I call “Andy” is just a temporary assembly:
A body.
A mind.
A history.
Conditions.
Experiences.
Habits.
Emotions.
But behind all of that is something else—
the awareness that never changes.
When I discovered that awareness, I stopped waging war inside my mind. I didn’t need to kill my flaws; I needed to stop identifying with them. They weren’t “me”; they were passing conditions.
Impatience arises.
Anger arises.
Fear arises.
But so does calm.
So does clarity.
So does compassion.
None of these are “me,” but all of them pass through me.
Buddhism didn’t make me someone new.
It showed me the part of me that was always there—
the part untouched by fear, untouched by ego, untouched by chaos.
The self I tried to destroy never really existed.
And the self I found is the one that has been quietly watching all along.