It's been interesting, at least to me, to watch myself over the last few...minutes? Years? So much a return to the contrived. I'm plugged in. I'm day-by-day with the same resolve that got through school, drives me on my commute, and does the math to put his aberrant behavior aside just long enough.
It's a wonder how I manage to account for that aberrant behavior, if I manage at all. I legitimately didn't believe in my ability to correct for my language before I started real-world jobs. I didn't have the impulse control to not suffer my idealism with perpetual headaches and impassioned pleas to be listened to for all of the easily-fixable problems I could identify. I think I just started to really feel how actually simple things were. Or, better stated, simple for those who've worked to pursue the embodiment of timeless ideals and cliches.
Take something like responsibility. What does it really mean? I think, on balance, the world is random. There's as strong a case to be made for never and nothing responsibility as there is for my posture about being “responsible for everything.” Is it either? Is it both? What manifests is your genuine belief in either. You find yourself at the whims of fate, or you start dictating how you're going to navigate what's happening around you. That's perhaps the wisdom or spell of consciousness and why I don't feel bad killing bugs. You can find yourself flying blindly into a light, but, honey, you're human. I expect you to do better.
I had some pretty dope lines about forgiveness I don't know that I'll be able to reproduce. Is forgiveness possible? I think the fact that we've pawned the responsibility for it onto magic sky daddies suggest “no.” Without them, that leaves it to us to forgive. That means we have to understand our darkness. That means we have to actually feel good about things we actually never believe we'll feel good about. Does that betray your consciousness? Is it a bitten thumb in the face of existence? What if I “got over” Trump or my ideas about fascism? Without condoning, what if I discovered them as a continuum of human experience? What if I considered them as a wave, just up or down, subject to the gravity in which I could exert upon them? More manageable? Accessible as a physics issue, not an infinitely unknowable series of probabilistic human machinations?
I don't know if I forgive myself more than I try to understand myself. I think when I talk about my “self-destructive impulse” I'm speaking to a kind of ignorance more than a perpetual desire to die or experience pain. Maybe I don't know how to cope. Maybe I never really want to give myself the kind of credit my experience suggests. I find myself in a kind of ever-spiraling humble-brag about what it is I think I can accomplish or have already. I'm proud of myself. I can't stand what I get by way of other peoples' opinions or lack-thereof contributions. That has an insane amount of power I always want checked. Who's going to do so?
I've gotten so insanely comfortable. I'm sitting here at 1am, finishing off my Blue Moons, maybe going to get 3 or so hours of sleep, before I limp my way back to my cushy job dancing around poor and desperate people. Why do I deserve that? Why am I so comfortable, that I can recognize the degree of my regal existence well-before I actually start getting to the financial or decision-making place that will start shifting the world? Did I do the work of humility? Did I eschew the kind of ignorant pride I see on the face of business-school kids? Have I somehow atoned for all of the horrible thoughts or actions I've engaged in with reckless abandon for how we're all connected and what it would mean for the world at large? Do I, in my bones, even believe that high-minded jibber jabber?
What I know is that I've watched most of the people I've been closest to get as far away as impracticality calls for. I know that my supports are good for a good deal, but their heart isn't in the same place. I know that I've been thinking for a while about a line from Bill Maher about, paraphrasing, “maybe some people in your life were just meant to be there for a moment, and you're not supposed to be attached forever.” I don't think I need to facebook stalk everyone I've ever known, but I have an incredibly hard time dismissing the influence I saw you bring to the culture. The “random” text or invitation you get months or years from now is going to have everything to do with that sentiment.
It's the moment I want to sit back and just enjoy, just revel, just laugh, or just stare at what I've done that I realize I'll always want more. I want the world. I want what's next. I want to perform. I want to exhibit. I want to feel my fingers freeze as I cope with my impulse to address some longstanding need that presented itself without warning, so now here we are in some random-ass place and have to deal. (Imagine, figuring a way to transport a large tool in an ill-equipped car – a frequent occurrence for me.) Every span of time I think is “forever” leaves me feeling about for the next lever to pull after the bill gets paid or the months instantaneously blink by. These words, like everything I've ever said, exist now, and forever, and pick to operate in that vein of existence about what's possible verses what's happening.
Like I've said, mildly drunk me is the best me. I draw a lot of inspiration from that guy, and all of my deeply buried lovey-dovey feelings I've learned to repress come out as a befuddling diatribe talking about how great it's all going to be. Get on my level.
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