I Am Me.
Caution: Passionate blog including a couple of f bombs. Read at own discretion. Why do we as a society embrace the ideals presented in movies such as Braveheart or Dead Poet's Society yet continue to live in our conformity?What is it that we are trying to not conform to, yet fail daily at being mavericks?
Where did we go wrong in our culture that work and money and power and popularity are of greater importance than family and friends and love and adventure?
I mean seriously. Think of how many times we have put off people in our lives because we had to work. We had to work because we had to have money. We had to have money because we had to pay our bills and because we wanted things. We wanted money so we can have power and adventure.
My life was far more exciting when I was penniless.
We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, "O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?" Answer. That you are here - that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play *goes on* and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?
What will my verse be? My entire life I have tried to figure out what that verse is. People have told me what my verse should be, but if I wrote those words then it would be plagarism. I must find the lyric myself.
We grow up in a defined world. Go to school once you're five years old. Graduate high school. Unless you want to be a loser, go to college. Graduate college. If you want to do something great, go to grad school. Become a doctor. If not, get a good job, marry a good girl, settle down, and start a family.
Noble pursuits.
How boring would this world be if everybody followed that basic outline for what life should look like? Yet, when any of us deviate from the plotted course of our American lives, even people that we do not know are made uncomfortable by this.
I play poker to pay my rent. I wrestle with ideas of ideology, philosophy, theology, and love.
Yet I am a gambler. I am counter-culture. I am against the grain. I make people uncomfortable. Just take a look at my comments on my private blog here.
Now, I'm not trying to defend myself or anything, but I am the only person that I really truly know anything about, so I might as well use what I really know as an example for something that I am trying to learn about.
Not one member of my family is really comfortable with the idea of my playing poker for a living. I'm pretty sure that my girlfriend isn't completely comfortable with it. My ex wife was not. Many of you think that I need to go to gambler's anonymous and get my life back on track.
What the fuck is back on track?
Something is missing here. Why do I get over seven thousand hits per blog that I write? Why are we as a culture so fascinated with the mavericks of the world yet so afraid of them at the same time? Why do we feel such a need to herd those who have left the fold back into a nice, neat, line? Why do we love heroes such as John Wayne, Wyatt Earp, or Bret Maverick? Why do we love Tom Brady or Peyton Manning so much? Why do we embrace so many actors and actresses whom have become famous because of television?
Because really it's all the same ol song and dance. We have a cultural paradigm that you need to connect the dots in this order to be successful. There are a few people like those mentioned above, fictional or not, who are extraordinary examples of those who have succeed outside the system - and we are envious.
Yet, if that person is not a superstar, then we are still wary of them. Curious enough that we often know the details of their lives better than we know the deatils of some of our friends and family, yet critical simply because they make us uncomfortable.
What is success? Why do we even want to be successful in the first place? Where did we go wrong as a society that we ever began to put things like family behind things like work? What made us conclude that there really is a set value system within this world that we are all held accountable to? Why is the businessman on Wall Street more successful than Bill who runs the Range at Slab City? Why is the kid who graduated college more successful than the kid that didn't?
I'm trying to think of what is my point in this whole ramble and I really don't know. I'm exploring this in my own head, heart, and soul as you are reading these words on your computer screen. I don't know. But what I do know is that I was never designed for college. I was never created to sit in a cubicle. I am blessed with a personality that naturally rebels against authority and I believe that to be a good thing.
Why cannot we explore who we are without encountering the scrutiny of those who claim to care about us?
Now, don't get me wrong (remember, this is a free flow of thought, not an essay on a topic). I am all for accountability. But I want to be held accountable to what is right like my friend Kristin did to me this summer, not to what somebody else thinks is right for me.
And deep down we all know what is right. We all know that happiness, romance, adventure, love, and family is what is right in this world. Whether or not you believe in God or not, I would conject that most people would agree with that statement.
I don't know shit when it really comes down to it. What I do know is that something isn't right with the way things are going... and that's what I want to fix. Every moment of our lives is a line in the verse that we are writing in the great performance that is this life. It is not in the future, it is not something that we are to prepare for, it is something that we are to live .
And it is different for every one of us. Right now I am a writer. Tomorrow I will be a traveler and a boyfriend. Wednesday I'll be a poker player. No single thing defines us or who we are. I also don't believe that the entire collection of things we do, believe, feel, think, see, hear, smell, taste, touch, or want can define who we are. We as human beings are so beautifully complex that we cannot be defined by terms that can be put into words. We come close with poetry, music, art, romance - but we can never fully capture that which we are lacking. Definition, direction, who we are.
I am me. Plain, simple, me.
On bended knee is no way to be free
Lifting up an empty cup I ask silently
That all my destinations will accept the one that's me
So I can breathe
Circles they grow and they swallow people whole
Half their lives they say goodnight to wives they'll never know
Got a mind full of questions and a teacher in my soul
And so it goes
Don't come closer or I'll have to go
Owning me like gravity are places that pull
If ever there was someone to keep me at home
It would be you
Everyone I come across in cages they bought
They think of me and my wandering but I'm never what they thought
Got my indignation but I'm pure in all my thoughts
I'm alive
Wind in my hair I feel part of everywhere
Underneath my being is a road that disappeared
Late at night I hear the trees they're singing with the dead
Overhead
Leave it to me as I find a way to be
Consider me a satellite forever orbiting
I knew all the rules but the rules did not know me
Guaranteed.
- Eddie Vedder
posted by Devo @ 1:40 AM
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