I'm gonna try really hard to keep this from sounding conceited.
I'm anchored in the past. So much of my thought harkens to what I've accomplished more than what I dream. It's not that I don't dream big, but by definition, it's speculation. Many of my desires over time have changed, and I've found healthier ways and things to want I had yet to discover. When I think I'm getting something I want in the present, and it conjures a familiar sense or pattern from the past, I'm immediately swept back into more I need to explore.
One doomed skill I seem to have is my capacity to garner resentment. The Oxford definition of “resentment” is “bitter indignation at having been treated unfairly.” In my life it forms as a Catch-22. The more I try to be fair, the bitterness and indignation from others grows. Fair to what? Now we get to jump into the million dollar question.
I recently explained to a colleague how I felt regarding a “sales training,” and I use that term liberally, fell short of my lived experience. Her takeaway was to “like,” “bomb” emoji, and tell me “it sounds like there was some useful takeaways.” I like her. I think she's smart and works hard. I'm defeated that she read that I took anything useful away from that training. She's attempting to be professional, cordial, and nondescript, which I understand, but struggle to relate to. I was attempting to speak “above” what the lowly, rich, sales people were saying. My idea of a “fair” interpretation of a lacking presentation can either be “bomb” entertainment, or perceived as condescending and potentially stoking resentment. In our culture, if I'm not making their kind of money, what do I know?
I get treated like something “dangerous” a lot. People will get this look on their face after I say something in a peculiar or grating manner. I've heard a number of people offer how my reputation has preceded me. I am dangerous. I'm not dangerous because I'm looking for a fight or super keen to take advantage of you. I'm dangerous because I know I'm capable of doing both. I'm dangerous because I've made peace with how that works.
In my explanation, I told my colleague I understand myself to be selling people “themselves to themselves.” I know enough about my desires, needs, and self-dialogue that I can abstract it out to scripts or world-building that helps facilitate behavior. I think most people are less conservative about sex or partying than our shitty culture might suggest, so I created an environment that gave them license to explore that. I think most people wish to be more daring and assertive regarding their ideas and dreams, so I collapse the fog of the unknown into the action steps they can take on the road to achieving greater things. I believe people are generally dumb and terrified, so I smile and laugh and joke to ease what is more often confusion and insecurity well before maliciousness or insightful.
The past is all I have to attest what I claim to be aware of. When I try to have the “on the level” conversation about “what we both know,” more often than not, people pull away. It's an unconscious revulsion for the idea that they would dare engage in that manner of psychopathic exploration. When I take for granted I've met someone who “gets it” like I do, there's no quicker road to hell. This has you feeling a certain kind of loneliness, and it makes me try to get even more exacting in how I try to relate to people. The Catch-22 kicks in, I get more refined, less genuinely close or intimate, and the more I detail out that process or understanding, more alienated.
I was a veritable whore in college. I set my sights on what would facilitate that whoriness. I understood not merely that alcohol lowers inhibitions, but that when you formulate an entire party culture, setting, and series of buy-ins and entertainment, everything flows with a certain “naturalness.” Ok, plug in that kind of work and understanding with 20-somethings still piecing together their identities. You're gonna garner a lot of deep resentment for the manipulation and control you demonstrated. Moreover, people are going to hate how they gave themselves over to what you've created, say, if they decide they were a little too drunk or embarrassed or otherwise experience the regrets that often accompany drinking.
There's an irony, because people know they're capable of the same control, awareness, and work. What other basis would they have for their anger or resentment? If you didn't feel yourself under the sway of someone who seemed to recognize something about you, maybe know something better than you knew yourself, you'd just otherwise be a player in your own game. You'd confidently black out. You'd budget for morning after pills and wager that you've chosen to party with a crowd that wasn't trying to exploit you upon doing so.
Something that has kept me sane is refusing to take responsibility for what you haven't figured out. I'm able to do this because I write. I literally, before, during, and many years after, continue to write about the step-by-step machinations of my head, reasons for or against my behavior, and how it has informed or changed what I do going forward. I won't throw the same parties I did in college, but I'll still throw parties, and I'm still a whore. My writing has been public and accessible, particularly to the parties inspiring the thoughts. I'm perpetually inviting people to engage and create a shared dialogue and understanding of how we're to relate to each other.
What's the prevailing opinion? Silence. I'm gleaning from Wikipedia that scientists consider resentment a secondary emotion elicited from insult and/or injury. Clearly, I pretty fluidly maintain something of an ambivalence to insulting people, and for many years, I was poorly understanding how much pain I was causing by my words. That is, I didn't know enough about the brain in that it doesn't split hairs as often as I might wish it would.
In any event, the responsibility that comes with owning everything you are capable of has not been something I've witnessed people being willing to take. As such, it tends to make them poor assessors of the conditions and nature of responsibility. I think a lot of this confusion is lending itself to the current “woke” crisis and ideas of “safe space” or “freedom” and “rights.” None of these things make sense if you can't fairly account for your responsibilities. And you don't know what's fair because you're not counting and you don't claim the necessary levels of responsibility.
I recently watched The Defiant Ones. In a final sequence, the rich and famous offer their concluding sentiments about pursuing goals:
“If you want to accomplish something that hasn't been accomplished, you have to be relentlessly, and unapologetically determined.” - Bruce Springsteen. “Be true to yourself. Be true to your art. Never take anything for granted.” - The D.O.C. “You don't have to conform. You can be as raw as you need to be.” - Ice Cube. “Don't ever change who you are.” - Eminem. You can't please everybody.” - Patti Smith. “Do more. Do more. You are the underdog.” - Wil.i.am. “Do it again. Do it again. Do it again. - Gwen Stefani. “Treat everything like it's your first opportunity.” - Kendrick Lamar. “Quit fucking around” - Trent Reznor. “Stay in the fucking saddle.” “Deliver quality.”
Taken individually or all at once, you are always obligated to unpacking how those sentiments influence your thoughts and behavior. All of the crazy shit that informs any of those people's work is both theirs and transcends them. It is our work and our culture to be worked out and celebrated or suffered. You can be made to listen to a song until it becomes tolerable, or you can create or choose the music you wish to hear. You have to recognize how the craziest people use the exact same ideas in the opposite ways. I find Paul Ryan touting his affection for Rage Against the Machine constantly instructive. There's no irony when you're unaware, so you fluidly say dumb shit and blame the world around you for not understanding.
I think I have a handle on why people react to me the way they do. I know the unconscious interrupted flow that makes it intolerable for me to even hike next to you after you've been forced to reckon with my previously voiced ambivalence or displeasure for the outdoors. Do I care if you like what I enjoy? Be it partying, watching TV, jumping sporadically into a business or project? No. I just do them, confidently, and with a spirit of trying to demonstrate what I think and say. I try to fail forward. I work in spite of the open questions, detestations, and speculations, deliberately uninformed, of my motives. I keep talking after voicing how much I hate your silence.
I think we all understand that being capable doesn't mean you are worthy. Your potential is not something to be taken for granted. Your potential is earned or it's exploited or it's wasted. But it can only be any of those things when you, or someone else, is aware of it. When you can't tell the difference of what's happening to or with your potential, you can't blame other people. You can't blame me. You're literally still watching me work to remain aware of what I think I can or can't control and how I wish to better dictate how I use my time. You're looking at the words that have inspired another digression. You're seeing how I turnover the past. I can't choose to wake you up to your own process. I can't put the words on your lips, even if I can put the shot in front of you.
