Childish Things

A Live Report On Location From The Trailing Cusp of 2000

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

— 1 Corinthians 13:11

My natal chart: sun in Scorp, moon in Sag, Virgo rising, and the planets all clustered together in three signs. This, tradition has it, makes me a passionate idealist with an analytical outlook and a rare specialist, to say nothing of my tendency toward neuroticism.

Guilty as charged.

An odd combination of determination and hesitancy, optimism and fear, self-esteem and self-loathing, sociability and shyness, has brought me to where I am. The question for me of late has been where, exactly, that is.

The year 2000 was a shotgun year - I could stare down the mouth of January and see straight through to the back of December. I could fire a bullet into one end of the year and out the other, with little matter between them to impede its flight.

Be that as it may, it was also a year of epiphanies, two of which were particularly important. I didn't change myself a whole lot this year, but I drastically changed the way I perceive the world. I have become more productive. I have become more realistic. I have died and risen. It was not a change for the better, but then, one cannot fight change too hard and expect to live. So I am a prisoner of war, content to live out my life in the camp that is - the world as it is.

The grandest epiphany came in the evening hours of the sixth of August. I always had truly believed that there must be, at some level, a mechanism by which cosmic justice were ultimately exerted, all wrongs ultimately righted, and all those in suffering ultimately compensated. A corollary of that belief was that, through perseverance and passion alone, I could be the channel and the instrument of that salvific force. On this August night, some folks were gathered on what was supposed to be a celebratory occasion, and in one final confrontation with a dear friend, it became evident that this belief, one of those most central to my worldview, was simply and terribly wrong.

My journal entry the next day read, in part:

I knew Mr. Cahill was right from the moment he said it, but his prescience and perceptiveness continue to amaze me; for there is indeed no bigger cynic than a disillusioned idealist. And right now, I am a disillusioned idealist at rock bottom. No one's getting any better.

I'm in a perfectly good mood, though, because I am finally liberated and that feels like a quadrillion bucks.

Jenn and I agreed that we, like most others in The Group, whatever the hell that undefined term means, are cowards, and always shall be. Certainly that "Give in to love / or live in fear" stuff isn't quite that simple. In fact, I think it's a dichotomy that doesn't exist. RENT ain't gospel; it's RENT. You can give in to love, you can live in fear, or you can choose any of the many paths in between that involve choosing love, not giving into it ... and on and on. Those lines apply to starving artists dealing with extremes of experience, not suburban kids trying to generate workable philosophies of life.

Oh yes, Division Bell. It has 10 tracks. Track 8 has been the past two years. This weekend was tracks 9 and 10. I mean, the lyrics and sentiment are perfect for what has been happening. And now is the time of reckoning — track 11. We had High Hopes. Finally, at rock bottom, they are completely dashed.

The night of the sixth was epiphanic in the grandest and most literal sense. After it, my life will never be the same. I will never again feel the wonder I could feel before that day. I doubt that I ever again will believe in people as only a Romantic can.

In more recent months, it has become apparent to me that I cannot realistically live as I want to right now — and that I can eventually live in a way that's half as good as I want to. No one has explained this to me in the terms I understand it, and few understand what I really mean by this. However, several people have been instrumental in quite unintentionally reminding me of various tenets of the doctrine of quiet underground resistance, and to them I am thankful.

For now, this second realization means kicking back and doing my damnedest to repress, in part, my very nature, seeking not to change the world but only to change myself and those around me. This will have to last for a few years, until I establish myself in a position where I'm an independent, "employed," "educated" member of "society." I acknowledge the potential benefit to be derived from the time of waiting; a wise man once told me, "The key to healing the world is in healing yourself." Nick calls this "stability in change." I call it annoying. We're both right. And I'll admit, for all that it ticks me off ... it allows me to reclaim a bit of childhood. It allows me to speak and understand as a child again, if only in part, and if only for a little while.

Here in the West, it usually begins and ends with the Bible, and so it is with this year. I did not realize until now the importance, beauty, or truth of those famous words from Corinthians.

Honesty is such a lonely word
Everyone is so untrue
Honesty is hardly ever heard
And mostly what I need from you

— Billy Joel

I have come, at long last, to the conclusion that I was right from the first about honesty. Hiding the truth only draws out the misery. We're taught from the time we're very young that it's good to tell some white lies. If a lady asks if that dress makes her look fat, say no. If general, if someone asks you a question, say yes if you mean yes and no if you mean no, but yes if you mean no but wish to be polite.

A friend made the astute observation the other night that the dynamic of a large group of friends of which I am a member is based upon two languages: the spoken and the unspoken. In every exchange, one set of things is said and another is meant. It's nothing out of the ordinary — it's to be found in every group every society.

Honesty offends people — particularly honest answers. But I've decided it's about time I started giving them, and giving them more or less unflinchingly. Part of the blowup of the sixth inst. was my affirmation that honesty is critical. People don't like to hear that. I swore then that I'd begin being honest, honest, honest. I've done pretty well, but I can do better. Much better, to the point where a lie will be stranger than the fiction it is.

I was supposed to have been a Jesuit priest or a Naval Academy grad

That was the way that my parents perceived me

Those were the plans that they had

But I couldn't fit the part too dumb or too smart

Ain't it funny how we all turned out

I guess we are the people our parents warned us about

— Jimmy Buffett

I realized long ago (as any of the recipients of an infamous e-mail that began with the words "relationships suck" will recall) that the monogamous, heterosexual, sexual mainstream is a dangerous and misleading normative influence.

This year, I had what is arguably my first "standard" relationship: one person asked another out, we went on dates, we did fun things together, we enjoyed each other's company, and eventually, as in the majority of cases, we broke up. (Still friends — yay!) I had always maintained that these "standard" relationships are not for me, so there was nothing really epiphanic about the realization that I should really look both ways before ever crossing Dating Street again. In the past, I have sworn that before I got involved with anyone again, I'd have a set of standards (yes, it's geeky - deal with it!) to describe what I think of romantic relationships. That may have been going a bit too far, but informally, here are those standards:

Dating is a really ridiculous custom. It doesn't mean much, if you think about it. My boyfriend will be my best friend, and I won't feel the need to make a distinction. My relationships are not binary. My relationships — all of them, but particularly the most intimate ones — will be characterized by complete honesty. Feelings are not to be spared at the expense of the whole truth about anything. Bottom line: relationships are relative, and there's no need to rush to put labels on them. It's more complex than that, and it has lots of implications I don't have to explore here, but that's the gist of it. It's not so bad.

It's my belief that the universe I live in is more or less non-sentient, uncaring, indifferent to my existence. I may be wrong, but all the evidence points in that direction. Nevertheless, I've said a lot about "profound fundamental faith" in the past, and I stand by it. To get by in this life, you need faith. It needn't (and, I'd argue, shouldn't) be faith in a person, a god, or anything else, but only faith in the now, in the future, and in the reality of change. Time and again I see it demonstrated in my life, and hear stories of the evidence in the lives of others, that to trust that'll it'll all turn out all right and work toward that end is usually the best you can do.

I defer to the words of a master, psychoanalyst Viktor Frankl, to express the point most clearly:

Don't aim at success — the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other then oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run — in the long run, I say! — success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it.

Know what you want, and work for it. Make no mistake, you must take action to get what you want. But, as Frankl so aptly explains, the stuff that brings the greatest and most authentic happiness is the by-product of a life well lived, not the end of a quest for that happiness.

There are always exceptions to rules like this. Science, for example, does not often permit of haphazard fumbling about for answers. But those who have to be wary of such exceptions already know they have to be. By and large, throughout most of life for most people, this is a very good rule of thumb indeed. As an acquaintance recently said, "Stop looking, and it'll come to you."

I think that's about it for this year. That's all that's survived in conscious memory until now, at least. Now that I have put away childish things, I must take care not to forget all that I learned as a child. And I believe more and more that the only way to do that is to learn it all over and over again — from children, of course. From the mouths of babes come the words of the elders. But that is the story of my future, which is another story entirely. Life is inane, life is insane, and most of all, life is great. With weak apologies to D. T. —

    It was my twentieth year to heaven
       Woke to my knowing from ego, and neighbour would
          And the muscle pulled and the heroine
       Priestess sure
    The mourning beckon
       With vodka praying and fall of train of thought
          And the end of seeing windmills in the mind's eye
       Myself to set foot
    That second
       In the now sleeping world and set forth.