This post was written maybe a week ago, and I had stopped at around 900+ words. Hopefully once I cross 0200 I’ll stop publishing vomits in non-chronological order. We’ll see.
There’s a cute comic somewhere of a dog that’s being all aggressively posturing at a bigger dog (“Let me at ’em! Let me at ’em!”), but is being held back by a leash. The human then drops the leash, unrestraining the dog and giving him what he wants. The dog is startled, and quickly returns the leash to the human before it continues with the bravado. Here we go:
I think I’m largely guilty of the same thing. I think a lot of us are. We claim that our limitations keep us from doing more, from taking action. But we don’t do very much about removing those limitations, do we? And sometimes, in brief moments when the limitations might momentarily disappear, we quietly pretend not to notice. Or better still, we avoid noticing altogether. We don’t pay attention to the actual presence of the limitations- we just assume that they’re always there.
If only I studied I would do well. If only I worked hard I would be successful. I used the approval of people around me as a barometer for my life, and the dangerous or scary thing is that the easiest way to score highly on that barometer is to surround yourself with people who are easily impressed. I think I wasted quite a few years of my life on that. At least I learned from it. I’d like to think that something about it still bothered me. I think it was the disconnect with external reality, with the rest of reality. If we’re really as smart and clever and impressive as we convince ourselves we are, why aren’t we running the world? Why aren’t we making great strides, why aren’t we all major writers and thinkers? Could it be that we’re all bullshitting ourselves?
I have friends who depend on me as an enabler
I had a scary realisation recently- that some of my friends used me as validation for their own procrastination. I think a lot of high-volume Facebook users do this. We’re all complicit in it together. The intellectual arguments and point accumulation. It’s probably the 2nd most compelling game in existence, and it’s much easier to start. Much easier to get comfortable with.
Every smoker has a network of smoker friends that keeps her smoking. Every late night Facebook user feels less bad about wasting his time at 3 am in the morning because he sees those green lights in the sidebar. He’s not alone. There are others. (Some of them are on the other side of the globe, but still.)
I have old friends whom I love dearly but struggle to hold a conversation with. Our ships were in the same harbour briefly, but we have sailed our separate ways. Modern communication systems- Facebook, Twitter etc means that you never really lose contact with anybody. (Unless one of you blocks the other, but even then you can infer a lot from your mutual friends.)
Acquaintances come and go- old classmates, neighbours, etc. Losing those people isn’t a big deal, you never really ‘had’ them in the first place. You coexisted but you were never really a part of each other’s inner lives, you never invited each other into your private mental, emotional, psychological spaces. You didn’t share your dreams and fears and neuroses with them, nor they with you. You are passers-by.
With old friends though, it is different. You have some awareness of each other’s interiority. You know that A’s ex-girlfriend was incredibly clingy, and the one before that was into some really kinky stuff. You’ve had dinner with B’s parents, and they are some really sweet old folks. Though a little weird. C & D were there for you when you were going through a really rough time. E secretly holds some really bigoted opinions. And so on. You know things about each other that the rest of the world might not.
And yet you are no longer a part of each other’s lives. You are no longer helpful to each other. You may even have become toxic and damaging to each other- and only to each other! Even though the good times were better than with anybody else, there’s simply too much bad blood. Too much flakiness, too many broken promises and rough times and lost tempers. It’s hard to rebuild that sort of thing with all that mess. Life is short and there are 7 billion people out there. It might be rational and optimal to both seek out lives amongst others that you have a greater inclination for.
Repaying old debts
I think it’s important to repay old debts. I know what it’s like to feel deeply guilty in a way that goes beyond the conscious. It’s hard to cut and run from past obligations. They’ll haunt you- they haunt me. I’m only recently beginning to realize how unhealthy and damaging this has been for me. It’s like living a distance away from a war zone, or living with incredible noise and light pollution. It just holds the brain down and grates on it. I want to be free from it just as I am now free from smoking.
To make this happen I have to focus on the actionables. I spent years writing about this sort of thing, and what it gave me was a language for thinking about it, a familiarity with the landscape and the things that happen on it. It allows me to make more informed decisions, but on hindsight I’d have gotten a lot more information from acting rather than pontificating. Oh well; what’s done is done. I can’t go back in time, but I can do better moving forward.
I think I should start with my work. I need to give 100% to my work and systematically get shit done, to a greater degree than I have previously attempted, with an attitude and conviction that I have not previously been able to sustain. I have to start without distractions and keep it that way.
What’s different? I think in the past I secretly always thought that all of it was a charade I had to maintain until people got off my back. It was like claiming to quit smoking, but smoking in secret. I used to do that in my earlier attempts. Why? Probably because I was more concerned with persuading other people than actually delivering on a promise I made to myself. Exercising to look good rather than to feel good. Doing work because it’s work worth doing, because it’s in pursuit of the interesting and compelling, not because I want to impress anybody in particular.
“I’ll achieve so much more if I wasn’t held back” is an exercise in myth-building, narrativistic bullshit performance. The real question we should be asking is, “So what’s holding me back, and what do I need to do to remove those restraints so that I can operate with more power?”