With our demons settled, what have we left?

I think. I think a great deal. In fact, if ever you were to pose the question "what are you thinking about?" a response of "nothing" would likely be a lie. I can, perhaps, count on my two hands the number of times in my life I can remember finding myself in a moment where there was no thought at the forefront of my mind. Maybe thought isn't the proper word, though...maybe obsession is more befitting.

I have this recurring dream of what my mind would look like if made able to be observed. I see myself sitting and staring at a notebook, half filled with text, and my pencil stopped mid stroke. I have tripped over a work or idea that has sent my mind spinning into a torrent. above my head I can see a dark storm cloud that casts darkness over the entire room, obscuring and making invisible the room around me. This storm cloud begins with small flashes of lightning internally, but the flashes become brighter and more violent, some striking down past my head and singeing the paper to which my pencil was held. Lightning strikes around the room do nothing to lessen the obscurity of the room around, but rather, make it more difficult to see.

My face is without expression, save for the occasional flash of agony, as if surprised by a sudden pain. After many moments, the pencil that laid in stasis begins to move again, and the storm cloud begins to withdraw into itself. Smaller and smaller, it gets, until it has turned to less than half its normal size with few occasional internal lightning flashes appearing. It's as though I had sealed the storm by what I wrote down on the paper.

I have described above one of my demons, as it was in a dream. From time to time I will trip across a thought or idea that will spin and spin, consuming my entire mind as it goes. I will be unable to hear the voices of those around me, and the room itself that I am in may as well not exist. I will anguish over whatever this though be until a mental resolution is found...once I arrive at this resolution, I will write it down. This act of writing out the thought and the resolution is a way of making it all tangible, and thus, more easily handled. Some of these writings I keep because they are useful even after the paining thoughts have faded, and others will be thrown away.

I wonder what I would be without this and my other demons? I wonder if I would be the same person with the same wisdom and outlook. I wonder if I would have the same creativity and critical mind. We all are plagued and weighted with challenges, both tangible and otherwise. I think these things make us who we are, though. Who are the people remembered? The ones who never struggled? No. The ones who persevered over their pain, and those who took their demons into their command and used them to run ahead.

If you took an old man with thousands of stories and look at his history, then took away each conflict and hindrance, every demon, tell me what you would be left with? Someone far less amazing, I think.