Humans are adaptable creatures. This is usually cited as a great strength of our ridiculous species, a reason for hope and even celebration as we embark on conquering new vistas and narrowing distant horizons. And yet there are great drawbacks to our adaptability. We are able to justify horrendous atrocities to ourselves in the name of adjusting to a new set of circumstances, always with that watchword of “survival” as the ultimate goal, either implicit or explicit. Nearly every wrong you can think of has been committed in the name of survival, of adapting to or creating a new better reality, of protecting someone from a possible allegedly greater wrong.
As I confront the daily struggle to survive amidst my new set of circumstances, amidst the leaden weights that have been dropped from the clear blue sky upon me, I feel most threatened by the idea of becoming someone I don’t want to be. I am all too aware of the fact that I’m capable of adapting to this new reality, of finding a way to merely adjust and survive and see this through to the other side. But it’s terrifying and dangerous. I don’t want to watch myself transform, in the name of surviving, into a jerk, an asshole, a terrible person. And it’s all too easy to see how it could happen. I could become callous, diffident, uncaring, indifferent to the feelings and tenderness that got me into all this mess in the first place. It is perhaps the almost universal gut reaction to this kind of cataclysmic romantic rejection to go out and destroy other hearts, to rend people in two in the name of vindication or justice. I don’t even know how to help myself. And it is this, more than anything perhaps, that inclines me toward ending things instead of seeing how I can survive.
Of course the conundrum has another side, namely that ending things itself would be an even graver insult to the hearts who remain as recipients for my own care. And that still holds me back, ties me to the unimaginably painful mast of this tempest-tossed limbo I traverse each day. But each evening as the mast splits in the storm, forcing me over backward in spine-rending acrobatics, I wonder whether this sacrifice is worth it. How long can I watch my vertebrae shake and bifurcate without hardening my own heart? How many bones do I have to lose before I become someone I can no longer respect? I spent part of the last year being proud of myself for the first time in my life. Is it worth living if I can never get back to that place?
In the meantime, the backdrop for this debate remains the back rooms and spare couches of the loving local friends who are all too willing to put up with my drifting, shiftless state. Days of the week, days of the month, it all slides by in a gentle unnoticed rain. August 2010, the all-time low, the new standard for devastation in my sad little existence. How unfathomable, how rare, to have to suffer through this alone, still at a distance, waiting humbly and quietly, though of course tearfully too, for the prodigal wife who just won’t come home. Who has endless little practicalities and plans and even beach vacations between her and the reckoning with what she’s wrought.
Do something for the future every day, my friend says. Yes, but. What is the future? Why is the future? Who, most importantly, will be living in that future? Do I even like this person who could possibly survive this calamity? Do I want to see this through and find out who emerges from that rabbit hole? What if that person looks back and laughs at me now, wonders how I ever could have cared so much about anything as to get this caught up? This is how villains are born. This is the backstory on the sophisticated character studies of those capable of the worst actions. I fear my own future, even more than I fear the pain it will take to get there.
There are two ways of looking at morality in the world. At least through one lens of slicing it. You can follow Hippocrates and say that one first ought do no harm. The logical conclusion, ultimately, is that a person sitting alone in their room doing nothing for a lifetime is doing more good than those following the more action-oriented American ideal of flailing about wildly with good intentions and hoping some of those land in the right direction. Do, do, do says this latter perspective, and ultimately the good you do will outweigh the ill. I have always been more with Hippocrates on this one, but never had to witness the provocative hypocrisy of those who feel that they can use as a platform for good the worst possible treatment of another human being.
Lonely empty room of nothing, here I come. Here I am. I may never do again, but at least that puts me ahead of harm.
