I’m tired of being told that I’m flawed; that some medication or some new view of the world would make me once again a functioning component of a larger machine. I’m tired of trying to mold myself into a component of this larger machine without even knowing what the machine’s actual purpose is. I’d rather be a flawed component of a machine than a functioning one without knowing what the larger machine is meant to do. For it could very well be doing something that I would never want to be a part of, ever. I’m equally tired of the view that it’s the fault of the society around me that keeps me from being a functional and useful component. This view – this cop-out – is as tired itself as I am of it.
As children, we’re taught that we should have a purpose, and a set of goals, or even just one grandiose goal that we sacrifice all other past and potential goals for. We stop ourselves from even thinking about the other ways we could be directing our lives because the very act of thinking about these things causes us to stray from the path we’ve set ourselves on. Why? Because we are pressured to do so. Because time is scarce, and because we can’t waste it. It doesn’t seem logical that anyone chooses one particular path because it’s the best thing for that person, or because it’s their “calling”. No one with any amount of cognitive ability is able to determine what might be a better path to take than any number of other paths, simply because one’s ability to gauge his own abilities is limited; and one’s ability to guess the events that will surround his own life are even more limited. Both of these do not just contribute to an individual’s success in a particular field or pursuit, but by all means entirely dictate it.
If someone wants to truly make an impact on the world, he has to be open to the inevitable fluctuation of the circumstances around him, even if it means that he will have to revise his plans. He has to be open to being wrong. Otherwise he runs the risk of picking something that ten years down the line is so obviously irrelevant to the paradigm in which he lives that he can no longer justify taking any action to further the end that he has, for all those years, solely had in mind. Logically, the wise thing for him to do (if he really wants to have a positive effect on the world) is to be willing to shift gears if circumstances suggest that he should; but this again goes against the notion that has been ingrained in his mind: Stick to your guns and follow your dream. The subtext, and the small-print, is this: “Stick to your plans, even if your dream no longer has any bearing on the world around it.” Otherwise the individual is rendered nothing more than a willing hypocrite.
To live in a way that leaves open the possibility of this necessary changing of courses, even at the risk of this aforementioned hypocrisy, perhaps one must take care not to neglect a number of backup plans that he may have had in mind. He must avoid neglecting several things to the point where, if it so happens that he has to switch gears and start on down another path at some point (whether it be for financial reasons or because he has convinced himself or been convinced that his offerings in some field are naught), he is not yet so far behind in another field or pursuit that there is no point in changing his course and attempting to do something else.
The natural fear, then, is this: What if he has already traveled so far down one path, with such staunch determination, that in all of the other possible routes he might have taken he would have to just beginat the trail-head if he began something new at all. Then what does he do? Does he stay on the path he’s on, regardless of how irrelevant it may be and regardless of how futile he deems his efforts in that given area, or does he switch to a new path, in which he may very well have little or nothing to offer just because he has been busy pursuing something else (just because he has been wasting his time all of these years because he failed to recognize his “true calling”)?
Either way, the man will be deemed a failure, entirely because of external factors beyond his control; and additionally (what might have turned out badly has instead turned out horribly) because he has thrown himself so blindly and ardently down that former path.
The same may be said of relationships, or of a man who dives headlong into a marriage. A passion for one thing, and a determination to make that one single thing the focus of all of his time and all of his energy, may be the very thing that renders him a failure not just in that relationship but also in all of the other relationships that he might have pursued had he been viewing things a bit more clearly and not been stuck in the “wrong” relationship. But, I swear, there’s no way of knowing that might have been the right choice except in retrospect. The biggest human fear, pertaining to this, is seemingly the inevitability of realizing that one has made the wrong choice. Perhaps even worse might be the prospect of not being sure that a choice was wrong, but spending all of one’s hours just wondering whether it might have been.
Our society is not really conducive to a man who wants – who really truly wants – to maximize the degree to which he might be able to benefit the world. Thus this world breeds individuals who are forced to shut off that part of their mind that even cares whether or not they benefit the world, rendering them crude, primitive, selfish animals. Those who might have been the most passionate contributors are at risk of being rendered stagnant or tormented just as a result of having been unable to choose between multiple passions, or as a result of having decided to blindly throw themselves with all of their faculties into one thing just because they wanted to know what would happen when they truly cared about something and pursued it. What happens to those other things that these unfortunate individuals once also cared about? Is the passion for these other, conflicting pursuits redirected? Or is it just obliterated? If the latter is the case, then can these people really say that they are throwing all of themselves into their respective chosen pursuits? Isn’t it perhaps better to pursue several things with a great deal of passion than to just snuff passions for things that take time away from one chosen pursuit?
Human beings are equal parts primitive animals, acting on instinct and passion and smooth, functional mechanical components. Perhaps they are not innately these things, but they are forced to be not one but both, simultaneously. The two do not make sense with one-another, and cannot be reconciled. And yet we are given no other option. Lucky is the man who is able to be a smooth, operating component of a larger machine, by way of which he is able to understand both his purpose and his usefulness in the world, who also is able to approach the prospect of being a mechanical component with full, unfaltering and undivided passion and determination. I do not know how to be this kind of a person, and I am left with nothing but a nagging awareness of the faulty nature of that mechanical component which I embody (or those numerous mechanical components which I attempt to embody, alternately or all at once, to less of an extent than might be desirable). Time does not allow me to turn myself into a passionate, functional, interchangeable part of a larger machine, just because it is scarce. And yet the tragic point to be made with regard to this is that it is this same scarcity of time that has embedded in me a strong passion to be a determined, ardent mechanical component: Not several, but just one; and one that functions to its full capacity even if it is required of me that I sacrifice all of my other inclinations to be other parts, corresponding or conflicting. The scarcity of time has rendered me simultaneously passionate and scattered; determined and stagnant; inadequate and idealistic. Yet I can’t do anything else but spend my time trying to be a more functional part of a larger whole, even though I have no idea which part of the machine I might be best suited for, or what the function of the machine as a whole might be. I’m too busy thinking about whether or not I even want to aid in the functions of this machine to figure out which part I should be.
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