Because I don't spend much time “doing anything,” I do spend a lot of time putting myself through thought experiments. It's one of the few ways I can trick myself into feeling more than the low hum of my general existence without alcohol. Then I poke around for what moved me. When you're busy, it's hard to zero in on where any one feeling may be coming from. Some very long days working became better dealt with overnight when it occurred to me I wasn't eating enough. But on days like today, where my car has died again, I'm forced to exist in a space that doesn't really want me here, and I can choose to read about the world, watch tv, or mindlessly scroll through pictures, I decided instead to do the thought experiment game.
I wish every day I was more like the people who seem to be generally supportive and caring about what others are doing. The people who can use “passion” without irony and smile super bright because, I don't know, you saw a tree on a different mountain this weekend. I think about what it would take to get me there. I also think about what anchors me in aversion to acquiring the ability. Immediately it's apparent to me “all the things that aren't done yet that are more important.” My mind registers “escaping” into the woods as “too easy” and therefore “bad.” To be sure, of course the picture isn't that simple, but I have to start somewhere. More interesting to me is when I consider where I'd have to be to not care about the “bad” feeling. It's usually after I tell myself that nothing can be fixed and nothing matters.
Days like today are a microcosm of my “year of being boring.” Even if I've been mentally preparing to make a big payment to get my car fixed again, I'm not under immediate threat of dire financial circumstances. Whether I work all day for the next week or just enough to keep making shed payments, I'm still not going to find myself in ideal social interactions or make consequential steps in something entrepreneurial. I'm forced to believe, no matter the money, no matter the motivation, no matter the time, that nothing can be fixed and nothing matters. I actually had the thought that part of me secretly wanted my car to cost more because then I no longer would have to be burdened with the choice of where I should spend my time. I don't know what to make of that beyond a kind of exhaustion with my perceived levels of general freedom. Perhaps a dramatic scaling up of that is our current political climate. The gun is to our head.
The goal is to provide yourself with a road to adopting something you don't think is a good idea. The ideal realization is to do it in a way that doesn't make you resolve to a nihilistic cliché. I don't want to get bored with opposition and then let that be the metric by which I can see your point of view. I want to understand what puts you doing what you're doing over what I'd rather be or think we should be doing together. It's something like the idea where, if every selfie replaces a page of Nazi history you could have read, “we're” not going to fix the backdrop under which I trust your smile or see the wisdom of your vacation. Again, it's not linear or as directly causal as I've presented it, yet the general mode of being seems to be resolved fatalistic escapism. Easy enough to understand, hard to respect, anymore than I “need” a few $7 beers after “forcing” myself to drive all day.
Another thing I've tried to persuade myself of is to lean towards more “traditional” behaviors and advocacy of marriage. Here though, it's not exactly the same feeling of opposition, but a kind of disgust with myself for throwing what I've learned under the bus. There is no facebook montage version of the cutest, most well liked, and most respected set of couples. They are human. They have brains and life experiences at least as prone to driving them towards everything I've experienced and into a “reduction” of statistics of the billions who've come before.
I start having to denigrate myself when I think about getting married. “Oh, you're just as susceptible of being afraid of being alone as anyone else, might as well settle down.” Is there an indignity in fearing being alone? No. Is it logical to think companionship in and of itself speaks to your real problem or longing? No. “Oh! you don't want to be a dirty old man staring down a new crop of 18 year olds as long as you live in a college town, do you?” Well, yeah, kinda, I do. Hot shit is hot, oh well.
In order for me to advocate for marriage I have to morph my conception of what it symbolizes. To the degree it's understood as evidence of commitment seems such an obvious joke. Obviously I'm not persuaded by sanctity, sexual fidelity, or to be used to justify ugly children. For me to be an advocate, it would have to be so everybody knew I was doing what the person I put first in the world wanted to do. I've said a number of times if my ex had asked me, I would have said yes. I can see the point of having a goal to as often as you can put the needs of the ones you care about above yourself. To the degree your marriage means that is the degree I understand where you're coming from. Quick, hurry up and tell me that's in fact what your marriage really means...
I find it funny, and I don't think it's an accident, that often enough when I use some theoretical example in my writing about the “ideal” person “doing what they do” I actually have that person in my circles. I've made the “best video gamer” caricature before, perfectly unaware I had a friend who was in the 1% of the world at like 12. I'm always trying to point out the doctors and “unbelievably nice” people as models for the rest of us to live by, and overwhelmingly have that crowd who's, at the very least, refrained from deleting me from facebook. Long ago, I was made aware of how much I am attracted to or tend to move towards the people who have what I'm missing. Perhaps better stated, are comfortable doing and being what I gave up a long time ago, but still see why it's needed. I'll need the outdoors kids when most of my money can be positioned behind extravagance or food. I'll need the contended loving descriptions and looks after I'm looking sideways at an iffy one night stand.
I think there's an overarching theme at play. It's again the difference between the freedom to choose and being compelled. If the hobbies you love are all that you could afford. If the love of your life is the only one who would have you. If your celebration is a desperate escape from the history and literature and responsibility to be more of consequence. That's what always remains unclear to me. I run headlong into fires I create or otherwise. I do it because before the fire was lit, I did the work of preparing the plan and my mind to carry it out. I don't want to find myself writing when I'm old about all the things I did out of desperation or fear. I don't want to have a thousand questions about my impact, framed in ways I can never answer, by planting their roots in someone else's shitty opinion. Maybe I'll never know “what it all means” or what dumb words you'll pick over the dumb words I chose instead, but I'll always be able to at least watch what it's doing to you, and what it's doing to us. I'd rather close my eyes.
