I’m struck by the thought of “exceeding in order to reduce” and want to see where it goes.
Maybe you eat healthy and work out now so you’re not helpless and coughing in bed when you’re older. Maybe you get all your homework done on the bus so you can spend time at home relaxing. Maybe you move the big furniture down the stairs first so the rest feels like a breeze.
The idea of exceeding expectations seems to carry a weight when the expectations are either very low or very naive. Set them too high and you build in unrelenting anxiety and stress. But how do we go about setting them up in the first place? Other than the ones implied or imposed from institutions, I mean, what’s the basis for an expectation to begin with?
At present, it seems like an accident. You decided to read a book a week for a month, now everyone expects you to keep doing the same. You picked up math easy enough when you were young, so damned if you don’t employ your god-given talent towards an engineering degree. We can use the idea of “personal best” to both elevate ourselves while barring anyone from burdening us with “unfair” comparisons that would shift our expectations against our will.
I’ve been looking for the language and argument for giving a damn. I’m trying to persuade myself into a mindset and habit I’ve only taken for granted in the past. Adopting the burden to overload myself. Make the beer at the end of the week feel deserved and not easy. I want to see my effort as a piece of something more or as something scalable. I want to know if I’m the littlest gear or the listless leaf on the wind.
Try to imagine living in an environment where everything is attacking you. You step outside, the wind is blowing you off your feet. You take a breath, the air isn’t all there. You start a conversation, people respond with anger and judgment. You put on a movie or music to relax, the lyrics drag you into memories of your worst days and the characters play out the most dramatic instances of your childhood. Your food is slowly poisoning you. Your friends steal not just your physical possessions but parts of your soul with every engagement. When you need it to work, it breaks down. When you need a hand, it’s swinging towards your face.
Your only way out is to play mind games. Oh blustery wind, how fun it is to fly! before your head hits the pavement. At least it’s not water! as the air struggles to reach your lungs. I know all the words to this one! the movies and music race by. I don’t even gag anymore! then you swallow it down. I’ve been meaning to cut back! on conceiving of yourself as someone more than what people take you for.
Can the heart of explicitly selfish and solipsistic behavior result in a kind of trickle-down self- (humanity level)-preservation? A comedian’s book on The Daily Show of childlike drawings making a “statement’ about mass incarceration still brings it into greater awareness, no? He’s not getting a genius award, but through a habit of stoned cursory glances at the state of the world, the stage is his. Does pursuing attention alone mean you essentially control more of “the whole of attention” as you gain popularity? I’ve listened to the latest Taylor Swift album like 10 times trying to figure out where the “magic” is that keeps this overgrown 13 year old on top. It’s 13 year olds. The lyrics don’t have to be profound, it’s nice when the beat is catchy, but the mechanism to motivate an entire mirror album in a different style, unironically, doesn’t speak to much beyond the power of garnered attention.
I got that recognition early in school. I re-created a medium for attention with the party house. I allowed people to build expectations of me in pursuing things entrepreneurially. We praise the nerdiest of the nerds who go out and advocate for science, or the deepest of the deep in their insecurities who choose to make us laugh over them. You shoot to completely obliterate the self when you take on an acting role, while at the same time hope you can entertain and inform about the most personal and touching instances that define the human story. To find such depth in a character in so completely losing even the memory of the actor portraying them.
What I can’t do is know what’s going on in someone else’s head. I can paint a rosy picture all day about being selfish, but I can only relate how it translates to me and my motivation. I didn’t want to show off as much as I wanted cash for my good grades. I liked knowing that people could loosen up and trust my house was a safe spot to get obliterated. Selfish would have consistently charged a lot more for the alcohol... And in business I want to empower everyone to be owners of their own effort because I’ve done nothing but feel exploited most of my working life.
The environment no-less suggests we should pursue the attention. You’re broke and crack jokes with your friends? Start a podcast! You have no idea what to do with your instrument after high school? Cover the latest songs and throw it on Youtube! Have literally no where and no one to honestly express yourself? Find validation in comment karma and videogame points! Make sure everyone can see where you stand and just how dedicated you are to increasing your score.
It’s a habit of conflation. It’s a reduction of every word and interaction into its most absurd example. You don’t have to care why you’re popular, it’s just that you are, and therefore value. You don’t have to think of consequence, so the spigot runs freely with whatever ignorant thoughts you may entertain. It’s how I can routinely get attacked for thinking. Thinking is the enemy. To think isn’t a linear or concise path like the illusions of order we’re offered, so it must be dismissed as “sophomoric rant” in lieu of your preference, special status, and paycheck.
I feel myself trying to persuade myself into selfishness not because it’s the right thing to do, but because the “fuck you” message I receive from everyone who enjoys it so much is becoming too much. The smugness. The matter-of-fact manner. The pride. The flat and ceaseless denial of any acknowledgment to any degree of a problem. The hair-trigger to what will offed. The tip-toed niceties. You can’t talk. You can’t fight. Your escape rests in swallowing the same pill people are gobbling by the fistful.
Does my writing register as a desperate insecure grab for attention? Can someone pursue a hobby so ignorantly and so selfishly that I’m completely blind to how much I need you to love me!? I suppose only you can be the judge, but even typing that sentence makes me want to disappear to the mountains and never see another person again. As long as distinctions remain lost, that may increasingly look like the thing to do.
I think writing is my fail-safe exceeding of effort in order to reduce. When nothing else is going on, I want all the work of trying to remain sane to be packed in here so I can better deal with how it’ll be received. Make up a character to get lost in. Make a game of looking for reasons to put the bat down and matches away. Find any excuse to claim there’s a reason.
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