What’s interesting about my perspective in contrast with others’ perspectives is that perception is often a long long way from reality. And the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve really realized that my sadness comes from my idealism. That ultimately most people are innately pessimistic/realistic and accordingly don’t have a very high bar of hope. And since they work on a given scale of magnitude where the potential highs are flattened, they don’t get sad or upset or angry that often when things fall short. Because it’s not that much to fall short from. Whereas I, with my ideals and hopes and high standards, my real understanding of what humanity could be capable of if they cared, get pissed when things go awry.
It’s an important observation, and one that I’ve made in various ways, but I want to sort of bookmark the clarity of my understanding of it now. I slept a good deal last night for the first time in possibly weeks and I awoke in the sort of haze-state of first consciousness with a new depth to my understanding that other people are mostly just slogging through a relatively high concentration of mud and pragmatism and low expectations and accordingly find it easy to be happy with little things. Someone doesn’t look at them funny or says something nice and that exceeds expectations by such a degree that it puts them in a good mood. They can be happy and satisfied with less. They aren’t sitting around chalking up every subpar interaction and comparing it against what could be done. And, most importantly and contrastingly from me, they aren’t trying to mine every decision they make or experience they have for ways to improve in the future.
It’s this last bit that becomes the really damning thing. For by taking the perspective that living is serious business and that we’re on the planet to learn and grow instead of just muddle through and muck about, I end up disgruntled a lot more often than people who don’t expect much of themselves. And people can expect a lot from themselves in a given arena without trying to really thoroughly pump every experience and detail for information and potential progress. I understand more and more how deadly serious and debilitating and strangling my perspective must seem to people who don’t share it. When do I have room for fun?
But the flipside of all this, of course, seems to be the manic side, wherein I end up enjoying things in a purer, even more childlike way than most anyone I know. Most others seem afraid of expressing excitement or enthusiasm. And I think that’s related to the idealism too. If one doesn’t let oneself hope or dare to dream, then the potential ceiling on any experience is pretty low. It’s not that wildly captivating to get to have a good time, because that time is capped by the mucky muddly realities of the species and the planet. It reminds me of Russian and the fact that the word for happiness doesn’t have a permanent state – most folks are wandering around only hoping for fleeting satisfactions and thus can’t throw themselves into really enjoying them full-throttle in the way of a childlike idealist.
It’s easy to look at all this and say that I just haven’t grown up. That part of growing up is about moderating one’s emotional highs and lows or even the conviction or belief that emotions matter at all. But the ability to maintain childlike wonder, appreciation, hope, and idealism is what separates everyone I respect and admire on the public scene from everyone else in the world. Gandhi, King, and all the writers are people who objectively never grew up. They were visionaries, luminaries, people who could see beyond and above and had greater faith and higher hopes than anyone else thought practical. You can look at the lesson of their lives and say look, they just got a bullet for their troubles, proving that this is all mucky and muddly and useless. But I disagree. I think it’s clear that these are the only people who make our species worth discussing at all. Would that we could be judged by these examples rather than their assassins, rather than the practical doers who only aspire to sell out a little less this time.
I refuse to settle. Even if it kills me. If I die because of it, then I die once. But if I settle and compromise my ideals, I die every time I wake up and face a new hopeless day.
