This thing that just pissed me off, part of the trigger for me was the sheer banality of this individual. I am better than that, some part of me said.
And I well remember back in my youth, in my teens, deciding that WHATEVER I did with my life, I was not going to be a generic suburban statistic, with 2.2 kids, a house with a 30 year mortgage I planned to trade up in a few years, a wife who was good enough, and a job that mostly didn’t suck. Settling.
You know, a slightly better version of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1I9GqxDA4ac
But everyone who aspires to transcend our culture tends to wind up counter-cultural. When they go up, you go down. When they turn right, you turn left. And the bigger a fuckup you are, the more bohemian respectability you have, if you live in the right city, with the right people.
And of course Jack Kerouac and his literal fellow travelers kind of set up the model for this, in the United States at least. The rejection of bourgeois respectability and sensibilities. No: he was going to go down in a flame, fighting. Anything but the prison of normality.
Here is the thing: it is HEALTHY not to want to be a perfectly fitting cog in a machine which DOES NOT MEET YOUR EMOTIONAL NEEDS. It is healthy not to want to be perfectly synchronized with a world which always leaves you feeling hungry, and a bit emptier every day, sensations which you only make go away by allowing your inner knowing and spirit to atrophy.
At the same time, being a screwup is not spiritual either. Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. I recently printed out a picture from the movie Leviathan to remind myself of this, and am looking for a poster, which I’m sure I can find when I have time. You can beat the system in small ways as an individual, but not in large ways. Masses of people can, but not any one of us. It will crush you, as happened in that movie. It doesn’t matter how mediocre and rotten it is, or how just your cause.
And I thought to myself: am I not living in a machine, too, albeit in my own way? Am I REALLY better in any meaningful, lasting way, than this guy? And it came to me that no, we are really much more alike than different, my vanity notwithstanding.
And if I style myself a “sage” someday, am I better? Not really. No, I think the main value of following a different path is the pleasure in it. It is the fun. The goodwill, the humor. It is not saying FUCK YOU to THE MAN. That is living in relation. Deal with the Man. Make deals with the Man. The Man has his place, his role, and it’s not my job to tell him how to live, or how much better I think I am. He is going to look down on me in any event. His values differ from my own, and he will never judge me by my standards. This whole process, of course, is why we live differently: we both pursue what matters to us.
And of course the ones following the paths less taken tend to have less money, and less stability. This is an obvious and common cost. If comfort and security are the measures, then this is a dumb path.
But here is the thing: my life is my life, and if I am living well, or poorly, it really doesn’t matter how anyone else is living. I asked for freedom: I have freedom, within limits largely defined by my own capacity for ingenuity and work.
You can’t “beat” anyone in Life. What you will die with is the sum total of your experiences, and you cannot possibly know those of anyone else, and have forgotten most of your own.
So I guess to forgive him for being conventional and banal, my task, really, is to live my own life better, while realizing we are both in the same maze, and if my life might in some way better, it is only because I have forgotten him in “following my own bliss”, which is a cliche I am permitting myself in honor of this post.
Flat things open, and reveal three dimensions. Grey envelopes contain the rainbow. If I am really dumb one day, I can always hope to do better in the next.