Most people I know have spent a lifetime trying to get somewhere. A better version of themselves. A different feeling. Somewhere that finally feels like enough. And something keeps pulling them back to the same place.
There is a reason for that.
My name is John Arrell.
For most of my life, I thought the answer was to try harder, understand more, or become somehow better.
No matter what changed, I kept arriving in a familiar place.
What I didn't realise was that I was wearing a mask. A version of myself I believed I needed to be in order to succeed, stay safe, and get my needs met.
I began to see that the mask that once protected me had become the thing that was holding me back from what I most wanted to experience.
This poem was my way of putting into words what I discovered when trying to improve myself stopped working, and I became curious about what lay beneath who I thought I needed to be.
I recorded it because some things land differently when spoken.
Have a listen
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The poem is part of something larger, an ongoing exploration of what it means to come home to ourselves