[347] Brittle Bones And Base Tones

I’d like to talk about fragility.

We’re builders. Whether it’s looking up at a sky scraper and getting chills or crying upon looking at a beautiful piece of art, there’s almost something spiritual in creating and then reflecting. I can’t say if there’s much a difference if you’re looking at your own work verses someone else’s, because it’s not just about pride. There’s an innate itch towards doing something that once scratched seems to fulfill everything.

As easily as we build, we destroy. I had to stop and kill a perfectly innocent bug in the middle of the last paragraph because I’m conditioned to feel uncomfortable by the amount of legs it has. I can’t even kill bugs without imagining an alien super race swinging an oversized telephone book at me. That organism was just as complex and lucky, well not so much lucky, to be alive as I am. In an instant and in fact every instant, some form of existence disappears.

Clearly, I seek to immortalize this bug. I should make its death mean something. Maybe I can use what happened to better explain how my thoughts on aliens don’t so much humble me as they do paralyze. Maybe I’ll be able to explain that’s what happens when you try to instantly evaluate everything you’ve created, everything you’ve invested in for your continued existence, and then poof it out of existence. It could help to explain that you can’t help it but to run such thought experiments. It could help relate your propensity to overstep or move quickly.

When a tornado rips through a neighborhood and leaves more than one house intact, no one’s following up with the lucky few who won’t do battle with an insurance company. The story is about the lost pet that was found under the rubble and returned home. Even with everything you own gone, the bond created between an owner and his pet makes it go down easier. Part of you always knew moving to “tornado alley” would beget something like this, but looking at your house in matchstick form is a different kind of loss. Even if all your neighbors’ pets are dead, and maybe they are too, there’s something we want to hear about, we want to believe in, which defies a, certainly impartial, wind storm.

I’ve certainly experienced the shock of something unexpected or completely new jamming up the works. It’s a rather haunting paralysis. You’d like to believe even in the worst of situations, it should be possible to “keep it together” or whatever that’s supposed to mean. But I think there’s a power in identifying and owning how easily you can be blown away. I think you step more carefully and maybe care more deeply.

You hear stories of the slow burn. The scientist who thought the systematic killing of elephants would re-enrich desert land only to have that shocking moment 20 years later that everything he’d been doing was dead wrong. The bad relationship where something finally snaps and you find yourself saying or doing things best represented in what were previously considered overly dramatic movies. Rarely are you next to the roadside bomb or getting railed by the Mack truck, the next moments only confirming you still have light receptors and tinnitus.

The best you can do is try and form a solid foundation. It’s something of an oxymoron, but I’ll take troops who’ve been through boot camp before the overzealous neighborhood watch militia any day. You want the best kind of friendships? Try and be the best of what you expect out of your friends. When things go wrong, you’ll be able to recognize if/when they’re doing the work as well. You want to be an authority on something? Make sure you’ve incorporated the lessons of those who’ve earned the right to own that authority before you.

We’re a memory. You’re basically “kind of cool” or “kind of not cool” to everyone you meet. The amount of time and circumstance it can take before someone gets a real sense of what you’re about, generally, is exhausting and often not worth it. (amIrite!?) Once people start to see themselves in you or see themselves depending on you for something is when stupid words like love come into the equation. The memory converts from merely remembering things about you to now provoking how they’ve made you feel. Add this to the list of reasons feelings shouldn’t be overstated.

Think of the Christian pride of those who are excited to knock on your door. They think they have something to share! But generally awake and thinking people see it as annoying, hollow, naïve, and kind of take pity that you can’t be happy with real things. They telegraph their bad motivation. Ironically, they think they’re trying to save you from something they’re running from. I look for people who give off the impression they think. I invest when the message is about the struggle, not necessarily the answers. After all, the answers are generally obvious once you ask why or get details.

How do they keep the faith? Ignorance and denial. They are as solid a foundation as anything, in that you can build the exact same walls as high as you like regardless of the materials. How do you maintain confidence in your relationships, your likes and dislikes, your motivation? It’s really easy to confidently masquerade as if you have a plan when no one’s asking to see it and you’ve no intention of offering it up freely. Then the truth of how little it’s built on might come to light. Then you might get stuck, having never been forced to deal with what you’re doing and what it really means. You might have to wonder how it matters, HOW ANYTHING MATTERS!? And then carry on like your mind wasn’t blown by a category 5 tornado.

It’s in doing the work that you have any real kind of foundation. A completed building just sits there. All ideas either linger or get lost forever. But when you’re in the thick of it, things get clearer. When your feet move down the path you laid out, for better or worse, but you really did everything you could to make it your path and not “a path,” things start to border on making sense. It’s when you allow yourself to create exactly what you needed to see.

Whether this helps tackle problems or not, you at least start to see the role you’re suited for. That way, if you die before the play hits the stage, at least you’ll know it was yours.