Lone Wolf
A few weeks ago, I left the life that I had cultivated in Santa Barbara. I did this knowing that I probably wouldn't be returning to that life ever again, and with a heavy heart. Naturally, like any person facing change, I resisted and heavily challenged the wisdom of this decision in my head and heart. But to paraphrase the old Magic 8-Ball: all signs were pointing to "yes". And by "yes", I mean "get out now".
When I left my job, people asked me where I was headed next, and what my plan was. My response was honest: "I don't know." I quickly learned that people are incredibly uncomfortable in the face of this kind of uncertainty. I'm tied to very few people, own very little, and have an oddly simple lifestyle; I'm incredibly fortunate that I have the freedom in my life to make this kind of move.
In the short-term, I decided to head to Arizona. I had a grandmother in the final stages of dementia, who had recently entered hospice care, and I wanted to spend some time with her. When I arrived, I went to see her; she actually recognized who I was when my aunt told her I had come to visit. "Jimmy!" she exclaimed excitedly, looking up at me from her wheelchair with her prototypical, energetic cheerfulness. In subsequent visits, she failed to recognize who I was. A week after I arrived, she passed away.
I've been living alone for the past week, which is a new experience for me. Freed from work, and the pressures of social media, for the first time in a long time, approaching any kind of computer is completely optional for me. After having been a software engineer for years, this is a blessing. I've surrounded myself with books, and am sincerely grateful for the time I've been able to spend seeking wisdom from paper and not any kind of screen.
I'm confronting the question that I imagine strikes everyone at some point in their lives. As you grow up and become an adult, you naturally have to put aside parts of yourself; you take on characteristics that allow you to become enmeshed with other people and in the culture of the world. Here's the question: where does the true me end, and what I've turned myself into begin?
Ruminating on this, I've come to wonder if this question is even worth exploring. I'm not convinced that any of us have an identity that is truly separate from our relationships with others. Am I anything other than what I've become in the context of the other people in my life?
Relationships have always been a struggle for me. Perhaps I overvalue my sense of individuality, but I'm extremely wary of letting my own identify be defined in opposition to anything else. The world is full of people who will approach you and attempt to bond with you over what they perceive as a common enemy. People in churches will bring you into the fold so you can talk about how much better you are than people who don't share your religion (or worse, people who don't share the same denomination.) People in political groups will attempt to bring you in so you can talk about how much better you are than the "other guys".
Those are extreme examples of large groups. Sometimes it's just a person approaching you and wanted to share a hatred of something. To paraphrase another example: "Having a job sucks, having a boss sucks, don't you agree? Corporate America sucks, don't you agree? Women are all after men's money, don't you agree? C'mon," they gently and subtly goad you, implying that you should agree so then they can draw a line between you and everyone else, and base your conversations on that. In the most egregious cases, the target of the gossip isn't another group, but an individual who's being singled out and excluded for some reason.
I certainly can't say I've never gone along with this kind of conversation; in my youth, desperate to make connections with people, I didn't refute the opinions of others; sometimes I shared them as if they were my own. But I didn't like they way they tasted, simply because they didn't represent me or how I really felt, so I abandoned them. I'm also not saying all people are like this, or that all people are terrible, but I've found it difficult to establish relationships with people if you shun this kind of thing, since most of us define ourselves by the groups we identify with, and the lines we draw between those groups and others. Common ground is shaky when it's based on a schism of some kind.
I believe it was Nietzsche who said that shared joys make a friend, not shared sufferings. Perhaps I've merely allowed too little joy into my life.
All of my adult life, I've tried to resist allowing myself to be defined this way. Here's a handful of examples: in high school, I bounced around between different social groups. I was in band for all four years, and while I had friends, I never felt I identified with any of the cliques that formed within that group. I joined theater as a techie for a couple of productions. For a stint in 11th grade, I hung out with the "freaks and geeks" and attended their parties. I shared a class my senior year with some of guys on the school's football team, and while I never really befriended any of them, I was surprised to find that I identified with their take on life more than anyone else's I had encountered in school.
In short, I never really felt I fit in anywhere. I also actively resisted the desire to become part of any one group, because my endless curiosity drove me to seek out the experience of being in other groups. I don't think this is uncommon for high schoolers, but I made an effort to do it in college and in my work life as well. As soon as I feel the "Gobble gobble, one of us!" chant arising from a group I've associated with, I turn to flee. I've been nothing if not avoidant.
This has been both a curse and a blessing. It leads you to feel extremely isolated, and doesn't allow you to feel that you belong anywhere in the world. As you confront life's challenges, you feel like you're walking down an empty hallway, unsure of where it's leading, and you have nothing else to guide you but the sound of your own footsteps echoing back from the walls.
At the same time, it's been incredibly valuable to get different perspectives on life from an extremely diverse set of people. I love connecting with individuals, and I love that I can try to see a person for who they are, and not merely the group they're a part of. When someone tells me their perspective on something, I can consider it fully, and still be aware that it's one perspective among potentially several others. When I hold an opinion in my head, I know full well that someone out there would disagree with me, and for good reasons; this has led to me seek alternate perspectives on things, and to seek to understand those reasons. In my better moments, it's allowed me flexibility when life demands it, and to avoid taking myself too seriously.
But still, there is the ever-present sense of loneliness. Perhaps eschewing labels and acceptance as part of any one group is eschewing any kind of identity that matters. To borrow from the Ubuntu philosophy: a person is a person because of other people. I might never decide to let myself get nailed down with certain labels, simply because many of these labels are divisive, and these divisions do more to hurt us and our humanity more than they do to help them. But to avoid making a choice is, as they say, still a choice.
I've learned that I will screw up; usually in small ways, sometimes in big ways. When this happens, sometimes I just have to run away and collect myself again. But nothing stops me from coming back to the table, putting my chips down, and playing the game. We are all human, we all have the privilege of playing this game with each other, and, win or lose, I've loved playing every hand that I've been dealt.
When I left my job, people asked me where I was headed next, and what my plan was. My response was honest: "I don't know." I quickly learned that people are incredibly uncomfortable in the face of this kind of uncertainty. I'm tied to very few people, own very little, and have an oddly simple lifestyle; I'm incredibly fortunate that I have the freedom in my life to make this kind of move.
In the short-term, I decided to head to Arizona. I had a grandmother in the final stages of dementia, who had recently entered hospice care, and I wanted to spend some time with her. When I arrived, I went to see her; she actually recognized who I was when my aunt told her I had come to visit. "Jimmy!" she exclaimed excitedly, looking up at me from her wheelchair with her prototypical, energetic cheerfulness. In subsequent visits, she failed to recognize who I was. A week after I arrived, she passed away.
I've been living alone for the past week, which is a new experience for me. Freed from work, and the pressures of social media, for the first time in a long time, approaching any kind of computer is completely optional for me. After having been a software engineer for years, this is a blessing. I've surrounded myself with books, and am sincerely grateful for the time I've been able to spend seeking wisdom from paper and not any kind of screen.
I'm confronting the question that I imagine strikes everyone at some point in their lives. As you grow up and become an adult, you naturally have to put aside parts of yourself; you take on characteristics that allow you to become enmeshed with other people and in the culture of the world. Here's the question: where does the true me end, and what I've turned myself into begin?
Ruminating on this, I've come to wonder if this question is even worth exploring. I'm not convinced that any of us have an identity that is truly separate from our relationships with others. Am I anything other than what I've become in the context of the other people in my life?
Relationships have always been a struggle for me. Perhaps I overvalue my sense of individuality, but I'm extremely wary of letting my own identify be defined in opposition to anything else. The world is full of people who will approach you and attempt to bond with you over what they perceive as a common enemy. People in churches will bring you into the fold so you can talk about how much better you are than people who don't share your religion (or worse, people who don't share the same denomination.) People in political groups will attempt to bring you in so you can talk about how much better you are than the "other guys".
Those are extreme examples of large groups. Sometimes it's just a person approaching you and wanted to share a hatred of something. To paraphrase another example: "Having a job sucks, having a boss sucks, don't you agree? Corporate America sucks, don't you agree? Women are all after men's money, don't you agree? C'mon," they gently and subtly goad you, implying that you should agree so then they can draw a line between you and everyone else, and base your conversations on that. In the most egregious cases, the target of the gossip isn't another group, but an individual who's being singled out and excluded for some reason.
I certainly can't say I've never gone along with this kind of conversation; in my youth, desperate to make connections with people, I didn't refute the opinions of others; sometimes I shared them as if they were my own. But I didn't like they way they tasted, simply because they didn't represent me or how I really felt, so I abandoned them. I'm also not saying all people are like this, or that all people are terrible, but I've found it difficult to establish relationships with people if you shun this kind of thing, since most of us define ourselves by the groups we identify with, and the lines we draw between those groups and others. Common ground is shaky when it's based on a schism of some kind.
I believe it was Nietzsche who said that shared joys make a friend, not shared sufferings. Perhaps I've merely allowed too little joy into my life.
All of my adult life, I've tried to resist allowing myself to be defined this way. Here's a handful of examples: in high school, I bounced around between different social groups. I was in band for all four years, and while I had friends, I never felt I identified with any of the cliques that formed within that group. I joined theater as a techie for a couple of productions. For a stint in 11th grade, I hung out with the "freaks and geeks" and attended their parties. I shared a class my senior year with some of guys on the school's football team, and while I never really befriended any of them, I was surprised to find that I identified with their take on life more than anyone else's I had encountered in school.
In short, I never really felt I fit in anywhere. I also actively resisted the desire to become part of any one group, because my endless curiosity drove me to seek out the experience of being in other groups. I don't think this is uncommon for high schoolers, but I made an effort to do it in college and in my work life as well. As soon as I feel the "Gobble gobble, one of us!" chant arising from a group I've associated with, I turn to flee. I've been nothing if not avoidant.
This has been both a curse and a blessing. It leads you to feel extremely isolated, and doesn't allow you to feel that you belong anywhere in the world. As you confront life's challenges, you feel like you're walking down an empty hallway, unsure of where it's leading, and you have nothing else to guide you but the sound of your own footsteps echoing back from the walls.
At the same time, it's been incredibly valuable to get different perspectives on life from an extremely diverse set of people. I love connecting with individuals, and I love that I can try to see a person for who they are, and not merely the group they're a part of. When someone tells me their perspective on something, I can consider it fully, and still be aware that it's one perspective among potentially several others. When I hold an opinion in my head, I know full well that someone out there would disagree with me, and for good reasons; this has led to me seek alternate perspectives on things, and to seek to understand those reasons. In my better moments, it's allowed me flexibility when life demands it, and to avoid taking myself too seriously.
But still, there is the ever-present sense of loneliness. Perhaps eschewing labels and acceptance as part of any one group is eschewing any kind of identity that matters. To borrow from the Ubuntu philosophy: a person is a person because of other people. I might never decide to let myself get nailed down with certain labels, simply because many of these labels are divisive, and these divisions do more to hurt us and our humanity more than they do to help them. But to avoid making a choice is, as they say, still a choice.
I've learned that I will screw up; usually in small ways, sometimes in big ways. When this happens, sometimes I just have to run away and collect myself again. But nothing stops me from coming back to the table, putting my chips down, and playing the game. We are all human, we all have the privilege of playing this game with each other, and, win or lose, I've loved playing every hand that I've been dealt.