What would I be if I had no barriers? Most would contend that I don't. Those who would view me as the over-privileged son of an overindulgent father, never denied any luxury or convenience. What barriers exist for me? What obstacle can I not overcome with a forceful turn of phrase and a dollar sign?

Money affords the wealthy access to many, many things. I have resources, I'm certain, that I haven't even explored. They'll be there when I need them. Doors don't merely open for me, they appear. They appear because I force them to. Regrettably, it isn't a door that I need.

It's a window. Clarity. The ability to see into a place that even I can not yet enter.

The future.

More specifically, my future. In some ways I feel that the superficial perception of me is the closest to the truth - that I am nothing more than the over-privileged son of an overindulgent father. Though I would most likely define my father's indulgences with more hollowness than an outsider would, and less venom. I know that the environment I was raised in has wrought something strange in me. A disease peculiar and unique to the children of the upper crust. We are raised with skewed perception.

Though of course, everyone else is as well. There truly is no such thing as normalcy. There's no equator banding the center of the spectrum of human behavior. There are extremes, there are variances, but no textbook definitions of perfect human traits. Not that anyone would agree with those criteria if they existed, and they can't agree for the same reason that those criteria can not exist. Human behavior is an anomaly, even though there truly is no norm for it to deviate from. So yes, I suppose that's an oxymoronic statement. It's organic in its development, not formulaic.

People are, in truth, creatures of perception. We are not simply viewed through or misinterpreted by perception, we are perception, at the core. Products of the way we view the world. The world will present itself in whatever way it sees fit, but the way you see it - the way I have learned to see it - that's completely internalized. It's a matter of what you choose to believe about what you see, hear, taste, smell, touch - the way you perceive these things is influenced by the world that presents them to you, but I believe there is still a measure of individual control in how you filter that world.

For example, twins - genetically identical - raised in the same home, by the same people, perhaps in the same room - how often does it occur that two people, even those who are biologically programmed to be similar, can be complete opposites? Perception. It's like a fingerprint. Completely unique to the individual.

We all have to believe in what surrounds us, or we deny it - in any case, that's what truly makes us who we are. The way we've learned to react to the world, because of the way we've learned to see the world. The way we've come to reflect the world, and likewise the world reflecting back on us. It's a circle of perceptive influence.

So, it is perception that drives me to seek windows instead of doors. I've seen the world of my present, I've stepped through windows into my past. I've seen what my perceptions of things - some of which were forced on me, some of which I misconstrued, some of which I allowed to be conditioned away for a time - I've seen how they've made me who I am now. But the things I see today… the things I perceive and thus believe or deny - I have no way of knowing how those things will reflect on the world. How I will reflect on the world.

Will I be remembered as the rich man's son? Or will I one day have a window to look through that leads back here, and finally see how my perception of this time and place has forged me into what I'll be then?

Sometimes, when I focus hard enough on looking through that window, I can almost see it. That's usually when I almost decide that I don't want to know, because there's something thicker than the typical uncertainty looming beyond it.

And that, I can already feel.