It’s 437am and I’m having trouble sleeping. I have a meeting at 11, so I’ll have to be out of the house before 10, and so I’ll have to be up before 930. There’s also some preparation I’d like to do, but I suppose I haven’t made that preparation sufficiently precise and some part of my brain is agonizing about it.
I guess there’s just one question running through the heart of everything: am I okay or am I not? And that’s a vague expression so I have to clarify. Okay in what sense? In most senses I’m more okay than most human beings who are alive or who have ever lived. I don’t have anything terribly wrong with my body or mind, save a few mental bugs that I’m in the process of working out.
Am I okay as a husband? That’s a private conversation for me to have with my wife rather than something to write about in specifics- but loosely it mirrors how I feel about most things. I think I’m better than average but I think average is a very low bar to set.
Am I okay as a friend? Well in this transitional stage of my life I don’t really know who my friends are anymore. I have a bunch of long acquaintances that I have some sort of affinity with, and I have old friends who I love mostly because of loyalty and a sense of shared experiences. And I enjoy my colleagues. But who are my friends? What is friendship? What do I really even want from anybody, in life?
I don’t know. I think I’ve learned to be a better person amongst company. I’m less cocky and arrogant and clueless and narcissistic and naive. By all counts I’m much better company than I was 5 years ago. Or even two years ago.
In work, as with my relationships, how do I know if I’m really doing my best? What is my best? My internal compass is still rather unreliable in this regard, it was fed too much bullshit for too many years. I guess when adults said things like “you’re only fooling yourself”, that’s what they meant. It’s a pity (for me) that none of them were really articulate and sensitive enough to adequately convey the true nature of the clusterfuck I would find myself in 10 years later. But bless them, they were trying their best and I was just one of countless responsibilities they had. Perhaps one of my little contributions to the world might be this- adequately communicating to ill-disciplined young smartasses what life might be like for them if they devoted too many neurons to learning how to run away from problems. Maybe it will be futile, but it’s definitely worth the attempt. Just reading something that’s true can have a long-term impact even if it’s ignored in the short-run.
The answer again is to focus on outcomes. [1] I shouldn’t have to constantly stress myself out by wondering if I’m okay. This is clearly some sort of inherited/learned behavior that I deliberately need to unlearn.
When did it start? Probably in school, maybe at home. I would get in trouble for forgetting something or failing to do something, and my teachers and parents would want to know what was wrong with me, why I wasn’t compliant. (On hindsight it’s really quite amusing. [2]) And I knew I never wanted to be defiant or retaliatory. I knew some kids were, and I didn’t want to be like them. [3] I wanted to be a good boy, at least to some degree. I wanted to be a prefect. I wanted to be important, to have responsibilities, to be a leader.
As I got older I began to skip some classes, occasionally skip school altogether, smoke cigarettes and so on. But it was never particularly an act of defiance. I liked teachers, and I loved many of them.
In fact I was very often surprised by how disdainful some of the “good kids” were. They would do their homework but they would bitch about the teachers, sometimes on blogs or anonymous forums. I suppose these are the same people who perform well in their jobs but post antagonizing comments online. I have never fully been able to relate to this. Maybe I’m just really narcissistic- if I have a criticism, I want the world to know that it’s mine. And if I find somebody’s perspective or actions etc to be repulsive, I like to engage with them directly about it. [4]
But I never wanted to hurt anybody. I never wanted anybody to suffer because of me. I didn’t want any sort of payback [5]… I just wanted to be free, to be happy, to enjoy life on my own terms. It’s frustrating how often that that pursuit, especially when you’re too young and dumb to know how to manage it smoothly, ends up hurting or annoying the people you thought you cared about.
(I finally fell asleep around here, and am continuing this on the train on the way to work.)
Well then, so here we are, this is who I am and where I’ve been. What next, what now? Let’s look back. Yes, the central question- am I okay or am I not?
Well, what do I ask? What am I worried about? I get stressed out, why? Am I just enjoying playing this twisted sadomasochistic game with myself, where I torture myself? Not quite. I have some sort of bug that I haven’t resolved. The bug is that I don’t act in my own best interests.
If I were more on top of my own life, I wouldn’t be so anxious. I wouldn’t second-guess so much. And the solution is technically trivial, I know that. Quitting smoking is technically trivial- when you feel like smoking, don’t! So simple. (Technically, so is holding your breath until you die.)
So as I wrote in an earlier vomit, using the non-proliferation of Esperanto as an example – I can’t just design solutions that are technically/fundamentally simple. I also need to design for adoption. Adopt what? The habit of acting in my own self interest. Okay, why am I not doing more of that? What are the possible reasons? Lack of clarity about what actually is in my self-interest. Lack of understanding about how much I can actually do in a day. Overloading myself, failing and then feeling bad about the failing.
Alright.
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I goddamn love footnotes.
[1] I second-guess myself about this a little. I do worry about being excessively goal-oriented of having blinders on and missing out on opportunities and serendipity. And I suppose for some people that’s a real problem… but if I’m honest with myself I now know that that will never be a problem for me. It’s like a musician worrying that learning theory will cramp his style. It doesn’t work like that. If you’re fundamentally a messy person like me, adding some structure is almost always a good thing. (The inverse is maybe true for fundamentally structured people. I don’t know.) What I do know is that having a regular writing practice is better for me than writing purely by whim. Maybe this will change someday in the distant future, but for the foreseeable future, committing to some structure is good for me. Results or outcome in this case can be as simple as committing to start, to showing up. I just need to know that I have made a systematic effort, and beyond THAT I can let the chips fall where they may and pursue serendipity. So this is actually a solved problem.
[2] It’s also a little tragic, but I prefer to try and see the humor in it. Everyone does what they can with what they have but it’s never optimal. I can wish all I want for things to have been different but it doesn’t change the past. The best I can do- and I’m not doing this nearly as much as I should- is to take that fundamental insight with me as I move forward. The insight being that most configurations of reality are arbitrary and suboptimal, and if I want my life to be closer to optimal, that’s something I have to take personal responsibility for. It’s my initiative, my prerogative.
[3] Again with hindsight it’s obvious that those kids had issues of their own, and circumstances that most of the rest of us probably were unaware of- and might not have been able to appreciate even if we WERE aware of them. Isn’t this at the heart of all disagreement and conflict? Each side doesn’t appreciate the other’s context.
[4] I used to be much more trigger-happy about this… I’ve since learnt that in most cases it’s better to disengage, and in the few instances where confrontation is necessary, it’s better to be polite and to ask sincere questions than to go on the offensive. The trick to being sincere rather than sarcastic is to recognize that I probably genuinely do not understand the Other’s context and perspective.
[5] I’m probably guilty of retconning my motivations here. I definitely had some sort of payback mentality at some point in my teenage years. I’m remembering now what an asshole my vice-principal was to me in Junior College… but even then I don’t think I seriously wished him ill. I was just determined to prove him wrong. But now that I think about that, more examples come to mind. I had some “friends” who would mock and insult me and for a while I was motivated by wanting to “win” by being more successful. But as time passes and I get older, the whole idea seems awfully quaint and trite. I’m reminded of the protagonist from Notes From Underground, who was petty and vain. You can’t win such pissing contests, because the moment you engage in one you have lowered your own status. The only way to properly “win” is to rise above the whole thing and live well for yourself, on your own terms, indifferent to the ancient squawking of childhood peers.