[800] Different Peaces

There is a vast and deep difference between “selfish” and “personal responsibility.”

 

I think we're a severely scarred country. The open questions that plague me center around what I see as self-centered and destructive decision making by and towards people who would otherwise be your allies. It's a very familiar story, and I've yet to wrap my head around the degree in which I see it happening, nor have I attempted to offer a comprehensive story about the different levels I see it happening.

 

There's the classic, my family cannibalizing itself. Grandparents die, kids fight over what's left, eventually you start planning holidays around who can and can't be in a room with each other. I see it in the “everyone run for president” game with the Democrats pretending they aren't mostly aligned and have much of anything new or individuated to bring to the table. I've seen it play out a dozen times in my “friendships,” that have proven to be, if nothing else, a lesson that alone in the field trying to figure things out myself at least allows me the room to breathe without getting blamed for taking up all of the oxygen. I think it's familiar enough with married couples who get passive aggressive and bring up things from years past to levy when they feel insecure or backed into a corner.

 

My dad and I were talking, and he recalled knowing what it felt like to be a part of the neighborhood. The neighbors looked out for each other. They all knew each other's names. They stood up for the kid getting fucked with at the end of the block. Today, my dad, one of the most giving and nicest people on the planet, recalls that he's had neighbors who hate him, for presumably, being him. He keeps his house in order, and will wave to you when he gets home. But, to them, fuck that guy.

 

What is this? Or, why haven't I found a book with the language to help me understand it? If we look to the past, will we find a contagion that infected our parent's generation? Is it easy enough to blame on technology and the internet? How are 25 year relationships broken in a flash? How are some relationships worth therapy and conversation, and others accusations and isolation? Why does no one believe that the guy or girl next to them, with the same ethics, worries, and desires is qualified enough to run things and make a decision in your best interest? Was it a little corruption having an undue effect? Was something lingering in our cultural system waiting for our immune system to take a hit before it could be unleashed?

 

I think about this as I'm standing in the rain for 2 hours waiting outside of a concert venue trying to see one of my favorite bands. I was in front of a group of fuck-you drunk Milwaukee assholes. One had a cross tattooed on his arm. One walked up and down the line several times soliciting high fives. When the couple in front of him didn't want to, he said, “All I want is a high five, all you have to do is touch my hand, and I'll leave you alone.” This persisted for a half hour. I figured he was both a likely rapist and Trump voter. One of them screamed at me, “We're as miserable as you!” as I spoke up and said their chant, “Let us in! Let us in! Let us in!” wasn't working. He was incorrect.

 

Getting drunk is a selfish act in which you can take personal responsibility by not excusing your behavior while drinking, but perhaps using it as a window to reflect on why you did something. You can choose better the next time, if there is a next time. You can discover things that need to be worked on, or conversations that need to be had. But all of that work is as much a personally responsible choice as it is to drink in the first place. One of those is considerably easier to do than the other.

 

I know that I have the capacity to suck up all of the oxygen in the room. I think I'm on a lot of people's minds very well independent of if they actually want me to be there. I think I speak to the personal responsible impulse that I don't see happen in life as often as it needs to. I think when I speak of demise, it's not that I just cherry pick the worse news and hope it self-serves. I think I describe in detail the thought, or lack thereof, that leads to catastrophe, and I attempt to root it in the most persistent observations. You won't talk to me. You won't respond to facebook messages sometimes. You can't be wrong, because your lives are carrying on in the sensitive and selfish place that you and you alone can deem worthy. It comes with all of the judgment and “maturity” about what brings you joy and what you need to just get through the day. It's a hill you're willing to die on.

 

I genuinely don't like how many of my ties have been broken. I don't like that I'm plugged into an environment that I don't believe it's possible to really plug into. But I will break every single one of the fake ones I can while I continue to search for people who actually believe relationships are worth protecting, cultivating, and relating to honestly. I'll keep handing out chances because I don't believe in you, and it's not my desire to create the same kind of black hole of resentment. That doesn't mean I won't continue to have my harsh words. That doesn't mean I forgive the bullshit. But it does mean I'm going to try, in spite of you, and keep attempting to define out why and when I'm wrong, so I don't end up like you. As predicted, unbearably slowly, my dreams and perspective are leading me to precisely where I predict and desire. Given that I see less and less social media celebration, I suspect life is starting to sink in a little harder for the vast majority.

 

For all of the things I believe are genuinely out of control, you can trust that my engagement and challenge and struggles are not on that list. I picked construction area tiny house. I pick statements speaking to the severe lack of care or candor I've started to feel about our dynamic. I pick to lavish rewards and completely withdraw. I don't do it lightly, and I don't do it for fun. But if you're unwilling to be a part of the process and conversation, I'm turning it into a story I can stomach telling. Anymore, it's not that I won't play your games, I'll just show you how bad they can make you feel as you're attempting to do to me. Because I'm no better or worse than you, but for my capacity to call out my own self-destructive impulses, and work to combat them. 

 

I don't even have a crowd, or collective, or friend that I can rely on for more than scraps when it's convenient for them in my immediate day to day. Not really. Because the story for them is about what I've taken or they've sacrificed in service to being in my presence. I don't need to be mildly appeased here and there to be kept as an insurance policy to hopefully be exploited later. I don't want to be in perpetual negotiations about things that were never a problem until insecurities provoked them to be brought up. I don't believe the world is acting in good faith. I don't think my “friendships” survived the hijacking of our minds. I want my power and momentum in life to come from me, and every drop of sweat I put into tearing out my conception of the world and making it real, not the negotiated M.A.D. nonsense of everyone trying to row their own boat across the ocean.

 

And maybe I never get there. Maybe I slowly turn into a country bumpkin with a little too much time and money on his hands, who dies in a freak accident with too many expensive toys on his half-cultivated land. At least I'll have come by it honestly. At least my picture captured at any point in time will be of a clear conscience for leaving nothing unsaid. I think our demise is locked in, and if I could do something to accelerate it, I would. I wish it didn't have to be that way, but what it really means to feel the consequences won't kick in until the last moment. You're not the kind to get out ahead of things. You're just human. You just want to do you. Who am I to judge? Because it's always about me, right?