Perspectives

It seems to me that the somewhat annoyingly simple-termed ‘adulthood’ has much ado about coming to terms with the costs of attaining what we think we want, and finding joy in the challenge. Another part of it is the unkind way in which life forces you to realize which parts you had wrong, completely wrong. If one were to personify reality one could say it gets a kick out of informing you about just how much of a baby you are. “Oh you thought it matters what you want? Sweetie, haha!”

Truth is, life doesn’t care if we’re comfortable, if a situation is stressing us out, or indeed how much we’ve invested in misguided ideas. I’m part of a generation that has experienced a substantial uptick in comfort and convenience, thanks to the work of our parent generations. I’m not yet sure why they were so compelled to comfort us, but it looks like some of us, perhaps quite a lot of us, are getting screwed by our affinity for this comfort. Sure they love us and care for us, but it’s hard for an addict to appreciate the value of his fortune when all he can think about is how there isn’t quite enough. When he never knew a reality where there wasn’t any of his poison crack candy comfort.

Maybe our parents thought that they could give to us what they wished for: to be able to go where you want and be what you want. Oh dear…
See that notion is very much like a fresh, steamy cow pat to bare feet on a winter’s morning. You can stand in it for a minute and enjoy the warmth. Lovely! But now your feet stink of cow doo-doo, and they’re doomed to endure many more hours of burning, numbing cold. Why such a smelly analogy? Well, there are a very strict set of rules one needs to adhere to in order to bring oneself even close to a reality where life resembles a stroll through the orchards of paradise, and unblemished fruit hang low. Given the nature of our societal structures, how our economies function, this requires admirable amounts of discipline. Furthermore it often comes at high cost to the more primitive elements in our frustratingly biological constitution. The odds are stacked against those who feel a lot, those with poor intellectual discipline. To those who fail to empathize or simply carry less intense feeling in their experience of life, there is a distinct advantage. They have less work to do in order to align themselves with the requirements of a mechanistic economy, fewer distractions! However, before such discrepancies become most relevant, we first need a grand narrative that inclines our conscious and unconscious selves to a purpose, to responsibility, to meaning. Without it we might as well be stick figures, arranged by an unknown hand, swept away by the next gust of wind.

Growing up believing you can be anything you want sure beats growing up with a slave mentality. I don’t have to wear rags on my head or tassels on my pants! I don’t have to be mutilated or shave my hair! I don’t have to go to boot camp or give my life to a piece of shrapnel on a front line halfway across the world! I don’t have to sit in an office and arrange papers with supposedly important stuff inked on them. But what can I be? Really. See, the lives of our parents already place constraints on our reality. Once we enter this world the collective events that form our lives only add to that list of constraints! If you want good perspective on just how much our set of options are narrowed down at any given place in space-time, have a look at Vsauce – Zipf’s Law. It speaks of the Pareto principle that exercises the function of reducing nearly every decision we make to what seems like mathematically precise determinism.
It is not to say that we cannot transcend these constraints and shape a new reality for ourselves. It means that there is a lot to be answered for before we can even become aware of the possibility to transcend! There are forces that drive us, from infancy they evolve ever more rapidly as we grow and interact with our environment. We need to know what they are and how they feed into the narrative we’re building for ourselves! Very few of us are set up to proverbially launch straight into a future that resembles what we imagined in terms of wealth acquisition and material benefits. Let alone the emotional wealth we dream of! So many of us get carried away by romantic stories about eventualities that simply look nothing like their portrayal. Walk around with the magical support of our excessively nice parents who are ready to throw their resources at whatever our stupid little dreamworks studio could come up with. For those who don’t have much it is more a matter of debt and postponement of responsibility and worry. “We will make it happen!”

Yes. But how? Are we getting training for this process or do we all have to be the new employee in a poorly administrated company? You know, that person who gets pushed around and shat on for not knowing things. “You’re supposed to know this!” Yes, and your dad was supposed to wear a condom.
I never needed a romantic fantasy! I never wanted a more palatable version of reality where dreams come true and angels carry you! All I ever wanted was to know that, given how undeniably shitty life can be, it will be OK. All I ever needed was a handful of tools to keep with me so that I’ll be as ready as can be for the next hurdle.
There are many things that can kill you, so avoid them at due cost. The rest might hurt, but it’s OK! It actually helps to hurt now and then, just so you can get a more realistic sense of what life is about. Heaven is an idea that helps us strive for less unnecessary suffering. You cannot realistically supplant the dictates of a universe with the rather tepid notion of effortless living in the absence of misfortune! But you can stave off the dark chaos to a considerable extent. You can protect enough of your fortune to make relative well-being persist.

This has become important to me because I learned that discipline is one of the few tools we have to save us from evil. It is important for our parents to be able to simulate reality to a sufficient degree that it can immunize us against definite, inevitable perils. It serves us no good to be completely insulated from the harshness of existence here, on earth, in this solar system. Even when it comes to the rules that guide our civil discipline there’s a balance between order and chaos. Rigidity is good only to the degree that it provides stability. When you don’t understand what the rules are there for, and you don’t know when and how to bend the rules for your own well-being, your own sense of vivacity, then you’re slowly building your own little dystopia.

Not long ago, I still thought this being operated under cognitive majority rule. I underestimated the force with which the body wills it’s way once certain conditions become true. Rebel forces threatened to overthrow my government! It made me see how important it really is to ‘make hay while the sun shines’ and buffer yourself as hard and far as you can against the inevitable stupidity of the animal you still are. Because when it comes on, you have to ride it out and try to keep it from coming in contact with important things. See, if we don’t have control, we’re little more than cattle. We could still run across a highway and cause several deaths, we can still cause all sorts of collateral damage, we still have plenty consequence, but the benefit of keeping us alive is drastically diminished. We need to recognize that. We’re not intrinsically special, because we’re descendants of a supposed divine creation. We’re special because we can be. And that is a potential we cannot afford to neglect even a bit. Anyone who does will be made viscerally aware, and will be gravely mistaken in thinking value comes without work, or that respect is given, not earned. This is also important in understanding why our society applies the rules we have. If our rules don’t accommodate the fact that we are strange beasts with abstract inclinations then we end up in a depressingly square circumstance.

A proper stock-take has been overdue. There are things that need some explaining. There are ambitions that await scrutiny! But it no longer matters so much how and why things are as they are, wants and all. What matters now is “making it happen!” That strange, enigmatic thing people keep saying. The “making it happen” part is all here with me, with my ability to go against my nature and shape myself into something other people want. Making it happen is to apply boat loads of discipline and patience to a lifelong project without demanding gratification. We live in a society where gratification is sold literally everywhere! Our work as responsible humans is to make sure we don’t indulge any of our inclinations in excess. To maintain a position of balance! But I think we’ve been indulging comfort more than we can afford, and now it is catching up with us. It’s true for me at least.

The notion of going where one wants and being what one wants often lives in our minds without being tethered down by the facts that enable such wonders. There are costs involved and we simply can’t neglect thinking about what they are, and whether we’re willing to pay for it! Another element comes into play when entering adulthood. It is one I think parents become most aware of, but it isn’t limited to parenthood. What I’m talking about is the subtle, indirect ways in which we don’t live for ourselves alone. We’re suspended in a web that enables a lot of this life we experience in society. So whenever we move around in this web, we have strings that pull along with us! If we move too far, there are strings that will need severing in order for us to afford the cost of our move. Are these attachments ones we are willing or even able to sever? Are we willing to establish new ones to replace them?
This is a subject I’m currently particularly annoyed with. There is this idea out there, it says that there are plenty of people around and we don’t have to commit ourselves to any one of them forever. It is as if we don’t have to align ourselves with any particular person’s needs if it doesn’t suit the model we have of potential life partners. A lot of it is born out of the chaos of impatience, poor judgement and untimely divorce. Nucleus families that break up and destroy notions of sentiment, perseverance and mutual self improvement in the children they brought with them. Our social world is becoming increasingly competitive, and the abundance of options out there make people think of relationships as a matter of shopping for the right item, more than it is a matter of commitment and hard work. We don’t have enough faith in ourselves to be the good things we want to be, and we don’t accept from others the proposition that we might already be as much of it as we’ll ever be.

Why is it that so many of us cannot get ourselves to be patient enough to be what we are,  let others be what they are, and find the places where these beings coalesce into better wholes? Why do we have to keep checking if the back door is open, so that we can slip out if and when it becomes a little much?

Undoubtedly there are people who shouldn’t be together. Personalities clash and needs differ too much sometimes. But what of the things that are good to you? Where do we stop with the romantic ideas of a relationship and work on the practical parts where you recognize what is valuable to you, and make the necessary adjustments to keep it?
I suppose the key to the more enduring, practical part lies in both parties being willing to make necessary adjustments. And by ‘willing’ I mean something like ‘determined to change for the better of the whole at all cost’. See, we’re stronger with partners. A partner can have your back when you’re down. Cheer you up when you’re sad. Encourage you when you’re scared. Make food when you’re too busy! Partners are there to help us make difficult decisions.
There is always a risk in investing some of yourself in someone else. You can’t always be sure the other person will honor your investment. Sometimes we fail to conduct ourselves in a manner that motivates continued participation. Sometimes we lose vision, while all of these things require a lot of patience to maintain and see to fruition.

What I’m getting at is that there is a point at which we can no longer do what we want. A point where we already have what we want, and now carry the responsibility of making this thing work that our past selves wanted. Even if it doesn’t look the same anymore. Sure, we still have some control over which responsibilities we keep! But changes in such a regard become ever more costly to us as we grow and our lives fill up. Changing these responsibilities become costly to the people closest to us. Similarly a lack of change can be equally costly. It means that every decision you make is no longer a decision just for yourself, but a decision for the people around you too. Before we know it we are encircled by past decisions that looked much less consequential when they were made, but are now too consequential to change (or leave unchanged) without causing damage.

If it wasn’t for an ideal, a grand narrative that propels me through thick and thin, I’d be utterly confused right now. Downtrodden with indecision. See it doesn’t quite matter so much what exactly the end goal is, because you might never reach it. What matters is how this thing motivates you, gives you hope, and enables you to navigate through and overpower whatever seeks to stop you. Most importantly, you have to be sure that this ideal you pursue will cause you to do the most good along the way out of all your options. You can’t always be sure and sometimes it will most definitely look like you fucked up! So the best way to keep an eye on it is to maintain enough big-picture perspective. Much like Alan Watts describes getting into meditation: you need to calm yourself, breathe, and listen to the world around you. Recognize how all the thoughts in your head resemble the noise outside. Become an observer to your thoughts. Distance yourself from the urgency they demand. This is when you come in contact with your higher self. When you see a timeline that stretches beyond your urgent frame of mind, beyond what happens now.

Many of us are apprehensive about mystical hoo-haa. We should be duly skeptical! But we cannot sacrifice the vital role imagination plays in creating a story that uplifts us and takes us to the places we dream of! You are no better off by just sticking to empirical facts, and conducting yourself mechanistically. We need a system rich in imagination that can elevate us in spirit, until we can elevate ourselves in material. There is no point in tipping to the other side of the scale and denying the relevance of the material world we live in! That’s just fucking silly. You just want to bring balance to yourself, so that when necessary, you can tap into that which is not yet real, that which you keep alive in your minds eye. This is how we drag ourselves out of the mud, put ourselves on green pastures, and fight the demons that threaten our joy and success.

Thanks for joining me for another ramble. May we have the discipline to bring us closer to our aspirations. Until the next text, good luck, and good riddance.