(It’s Feeding You Too).
Be gentle, now.
Consider this:
what we feed
shapes what we become.
It can liberate us—
or quietly bind us.
This isn’t meant to alarm—
but maybe it’s meant to wake something.
We drift through life
believing we’re in charge,
until a moment arrives
that unsettles the whole illusion.
And we begin to sense
that control
might be more scaffolding
than solid ground—
a framework we’ve built
to feel safe
in a world
that often isn’t.
So what is control, really?
And when we say we want it—
what do we truly mean?
They say power comes with responsibility.
And maybe that’s true.
Maybe Spiderman’s uncle wasn’t just offering a moral.
Because real power—
the quiet kind—
isn’t about forcing outcomes.
It’s about carrying weight
without needing to be seen.
But many of us
chase a different version:
power that dominates,
that influences,
that proves we belong,
that silences the ache
of feeling invisible.
We learn not to show that ache.
We hold our breath.
Tighten our jaw.
Tuck our softness deep inside—
because too much honesty,
too much openness,
might get mistaken for weakness.
That’s the lens we inherit.
But it’s not the whole truth.
It’s just a picture
placed over something more fragile,
more real.
And often, we let that image guide our choices—
even when it starts to shape
the stories we tell ourselves
about who we are.
We begin to wonder:
Am I enough?
Do I matter?
Where do I belong in this vast, moving world?
And in that wondering,
we forget something simple,
something sacred—
Everyone starts as a child.
You.
Me.
The powerful.
The overlooked.
The loud.
The weary.
We all began
with open hands,
hopeful hearts,
and questions we didn’t yet know how to ask.
And then we grew.
We adapted.
We picked up lessons from what the world rewarded.
We learned what to feed
in order to survive.
But not everything we feed
is good for us.
Some things taste like purpose
but leave us hollow.
Some glitter
but quietly decay.
Some slip in
like scentless smoke—
dulling our senses
as we sleep through our own becoming.
I grew up analog—
an early Millennial,
an ’80s baby
before the buzz of iPhones
or the glow of curated feeds.
My snapshots live
not in the cloud,
but in memory—
imperfect, unfiltered,
deeply real.
Secrets,
shenanigans,
laughter on sidewalks at sunset—
we lived those moments,
we didn’t perform them.
They’ll follow us
through late-night wine
and shared recollection—
etched in laughter,
not likes.
So I’ve never quite understood
the need to share every moment—
every meal,
every mood,
every milestone—
with an audience
we barely know.
And honestly…
why doesn’t that scare us just a little?
We call it connection,
but what if it’s just performance?
A crowd-sourced version of intimacy
we’re too tired to fight.
We scroll,
we post,
we compare.
We hunger to be seen—
but the eyes that see us
are often empty.
We trade presence
for validation.
We craft a narrative
and call it self-worth.
And yet we gather,
week after week,
to watch strangers
sell their pain as entertainment.
Housewives and heartbreak.
Luxury and love triangles.
Standards shaped
by stylists and story editors.
Once, that drama played out
behind blinds—
the kind we peeked through
to watch life unfold
on someone else’s porch.
Now we stream it,
study it,
care more for their plotlines
than our own.
And somehow—
we’re both comforted
and ashamed.
Inspired
and a little undone.
Because guilty pleasure
loses its guilt
once it becomes culture.
And honestly,
it’s just high school again.
Who’s in,
who’s out.
What’s trending.
Who gets invited.
What song makes us feel
like we belong.
We haven’t changed—
we’ve just uploaded.
And maybe we’ve forgotten
the quiet wisdom
our better upbringings once tried to give.
Glitter isn’t gold.
Gold doesn’t hold the value it used to.
And influence?
It’s no longer earned—
it’s copied and pasted,
the borrowed jersey
of a team we never trained for.
I’ve always been a deep thinker.
And maybe deep thinking
carries a quiet kind of fear—
not panic,
but presence.
It invites you to look longer,
to ask harder questions,
to wrestle with truth
that doesn’t always come clean.
I’ve studied systems.
Minds.
The mechanics of meaning.
And I’ve seen how fear
becomes fuel.
Passed down.
Dressed up.
Sold back to us
as safety.
We invest in it.
Not always because we believe it—
but because we’re afraid
not to.
We pay with silence,
exhaustion,
and performance.
All in the hope
that we’ll still matter
in a world
that forgets how to see.
We don’t create.
We replicate.
And the power we claim to hold?
Often borrowed.
Always finite.
Maybe we never had it.
Maybe it was never ours to control.
But I’m not here to preach.
I’m here to wonder.
To reflect.
To stay curious.
To ask—
What am I feeding?
And what, without me noticing, is feeding me?
J.N. Rose 