I went for a long walk tonight, and somehow got to thinking about the strings we tie from ourselves to other people, from our past to our present and future, from singular life experiences to uncomplicated enduring convictions as if it were a simple matter of cause and effect. As if there was any such thing as a simple matter of cause and effect. As if your past could predict your future, or your experiences always tell you the truth about the world. It’s not that I don’t think you should learn from the past. In fact, I think history – both global and personal – is an incredibly valuable tool for understanding the world, but when we tie ourselves fast to our experience like it’s the only life raft in the vast ocean of the world, we are actually dooming ourselves to making the same assumptions, and therefore the same mistakes over and over again.
Western civilization must be good because it’s the only thing I’ve ever known. If someone hurts me, they don’t love me enough. Colombia has crime, so if I go there I will probably die. Scientific discovery always improves our lives; that’s why they call it “advancement.” My parents owned a house, so I should, too. And what about the platitudes that we accept as true and repeat as advice to other people just because we've been saying them for so long that it’s never occurred to us to question the values underlying them?
“Great minds think alike.” Yep. Avoid making waves at all costs. Hide everything about you that isn’t like the people around you. Assume that someone else’s corroboration is somehow evidence that your beliefs are valid, that your life is valid. See where that gets you.
“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”[1] Well, that’s fine, I suppose. If your primary aim is to get from one end of life to the other without ever being taken in, even at the cost of never truly forgiving anyone for anything. But what if you’ve simply decided it’s OK to be fooled again? Or maybe not OK, but not the inevitable result of being fooled once - and that you should consider taking that chance rather than removing everything from your life that has ever caused you any pain?
And on a similar note:
“Once bitten, twice shy.” Someone hurt you once, so everyone else must be out to do the same thing? You’d better protect yourself from it? It’s possible to protect yourself from it? Or maybe not. Maybe you just say fuck it. Maybe you accept that you’re going to get hurt sometimes in life. Whether by scary men in dark streets who want to be powerful, governments that want to control you, or people who love you and who simply fuck up. Do I avoid taking a long walk on a quiet rainy night just because sometimes bad things happen in the dark? Do I forget about seeing the pyramids because some people have died in Egypt? Do I stop trusting other people because some of them are cruel (or are, at least, capable of cruel things)?
At the end of the day, for me, the question isn’t “What am I afraid of?” The question isn’t “How can I avoid pain or mistakes?” (No matter how much it might feel like it sometimes, we are not here to avoid mistakes. It is not even possible to avoid them, so why make ourselves unhappy trying?). As far as I’m concerned, the question is “What do I want from this one shot at life?” And I think a lot of people will do almost anything to avoid having to answer that question, because they think it’s a hard one. They think it’s some big answer. And whatever else I know or don’t know, I’m now pretty sure that it almost never is. It’s usually a long conversation with someone who inspires you, or someone who makes you laugh. It’s a really nice cup of coffee and a good book. It’s children, and helping other people, and growing or creating something with your own hands. It’s seeing the mountains, the oceans and the world’s beautiful cities. It’s skinny-dipping, dancing, singing out loud, or otherwise looking like an idiot and not even caring. It’s laughter. It’s feeling like you’ve done something with your life. And you’ll never do that if you think it’s all already been decided.
Or maybe I'm wrong. Who knows anything, really?
[1] I still can’t hear that expression without thinking of how eloquently the 43rd president of the U.S. put it when he said, "… fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.”
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