Borrowing Umbrellas

I used to write let­ters to myself on New Year’s Eve, to be opened a year and a day later. These exer­cises in intro­spec­tion were frus­trat­ing, at best, full of half­hearted opti­mism that in the ensu­ing year I would some­how finally get my shit together and be the kind of per­son I wanted to be: stop play­ing so many video games; con­fess my love to my middle-school crush du jour; read fewer nov­els in math class; write more; have less stuff; be part of a com­mu­nity other than the tiny one I cul­ti­vated for myself. Every Decem­ber would end in dis­ap­point­ment, know­ing Jan­u­ary would bring fresh tes­ti­mony of my fail­ure to be a decent human being. So one year I gave up in favor of drink­ing cham­pagne and goof­ing off with good friends. It wasn’t a big deal. I was too exhausted for the annual ret­ro­spec­tive and unwill­ing to unseal yet another auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal indict­ment. I released myself.

It is a trait com­mon among my peo­ple — and I cer­tainly share it — that no mat­ter how much good we do, it never feels as though we’ve done enough. I am lucky at the moment to feel merely inad­e­quate, merely lazy and hyp­o­crit­i­cal and com­pla­cent about my own con­tri­bu­tions to the world, but I have known the crip­pling doubt, the des­per­ate need to do more, that from time to time over­bur­dens us all. We may be thor­oughly inept at per­suad­ing our­selves that we’ve man­aged to eke out an exis­tence that may not bal­ance the scales but at least doesn’t tip them too far in the wrong direc­tion, but we do a bet­ter job of per­suad­ing each other of this. I think we’re all pretty good at help­ing each other carry these fail­ures; call it relent­less kind­ness, rad­i­cal for­give­ness, grace, or sim­ply the fatigue of know­ing after end­less search that there is noth­ing else to offer but ourselves.

In moments of self-judgment I crave those reas­sur­ances but at the same time I have an insa­tiable appetite for the judg­ment itself. It feels cleans­ing to acknowl­edge how far below my stan­dards I fall. Hav­ing expec­ta­tions doesn’t count unless I’m grit­ting my teeth and strug­gling to meet them. Who bet­ter to eval­u­ate how I’m doing than the one who spends all the time inside my head? My peo­ple are well-meaning but not omni­scient. I trust them because they refrain from plat­i­tudes and their sen­ti­ments are unvar­nished, but what do they know about how fiercely or pathet­i­cally I have raged against the ills of the world? What does any­one else know about how well I’m liv­ing up to my poten­tial? But then again, what do I?

photo credit: Chris Dev­ers

Of course, once you intro­duce poten­tial, the game is over. I am an incor­ri­gi­ble rel­a­tivist, which means for me there is simul­ta­ne­ously always room for improve­ment and no hope of ever influ­enc­ing the com­plex set of sys­tems that gov­ern our exis­tence. Given either start­ing point, I can point the way to futil­ity in alarm­ingly few moves. It doesn’t mat­ter whether I’m meant to influ­ence the sys­tem, guided by a divine hand or voices in my head or the flap of a mosquito’s wings in China. The sys­tem is the sys­tem either way, and we’re all stand­ing under the same sky, eye­ing the same dark cloud, and most of us never remem­ber to bring an umbrella.

I’d say we should all give our­selves a break, but I know it doesn’t work that way. And sure, there’s some­thing greater than the sum of our parts in the way peo­ple carry each other’s loads. Usu­ally the only thing that keeps me from gorg­ing on self-doubt is the energy it takes to hud­dle under a bor­rowed umbrella and patch the more egre­gious holes. The down­pour drowns out all but the loud­est truths. One of them is that the world is bro­ken. Another is that it’s a gift to take care of each other. Next time it might be your turn to bring the umbrella.

Every two weeks some friends and I cre­ate new posts on the same topic. This week’s syn­chroblog posts — about hunger — are listed on our group blog, The Cre­ative Col­lec­tive. Please read them all.