I Will Not Die

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One of the most frequent things people I’ve met as an adult have advised me to do is this: “Dude, calm down.”

A grave misunderstanding

What seems strange to me each time I am told some version of “Have some patience” is that most of the time, I’m at a loss because it seems, at least on the surface, that the people telling me to slow down, don’t fully comprehend just how relaxed I often am. They don’t see me when I’m reflecting on life, don’t see me when I cozy up with a cup of coffee in the evening, don’t see me sitting out under the azure dome of the night listening to the crickets and assimilating my presence with the presence of nature. They rarely see the philosopher in me.

Instead, they see me in the trenches. They see the bloodied, battered me, the scarred and fighting version, they see what might appear to be a crazed villain. They see me and find astonishment when they hear my cry for war. They see what they think is blood lust, vengeance, violence, and terror. They see a madman.

But I wear two hats. And I wear them very comfortably. The things I find in the evenings, lead me to my actions by day.

And I’m okay with that.

And I think you should be okay with that.

And I think that if you predominantly wear one hat instead of two, that you should try on a second one.

I also believe that the sources of the hats we wear at any given moment have clear origins, have clear reasons, and I think if we examine those origins and understand those reasons, we can all get good at wearing different hats; we can all become both philosophers and warriors.

Know exactly where you came from

When people I know see my persistence, my seeming impatience and the rigorousness and eagerness with which I pursue my aims, they are often taken aback. But these are also the people that know my life more intimately than what simply reading my story could let them know. Besides just reading it, they got to see it. And when they try to comprehend my intentions in light of the sometimes shocking history they got to witness first-hand, they often seem to think, “Dude, calm down.” They imagine me birthed in a hell, one that I’ve since emerged from, mostly unscathed, and they think that I should look over my shoulder, see the ashes, and be glad that I no longer creep through the rubble of that forgotten city, that prior life.

But that opinion is actually an injustice. It’s a violation of my right to live and to grow. It condemns me to a life that will always be measured by a comparison that was no invention of my own. It makes me live my future as a measure of my past. It’s a reminder of “my roots.” It’s a subtle suggestion that there are limitations to what we can each achieve as human beings, limitations granted us, as birth marks.

And so this is the first hat: it’s a glance backwards, it’s the use of one’s past as a measure of one’s success in life. It’s a very valid recognition of the strides one has made by making a comparison to where one has come from. And like I said, it’s valid. It makes sense. It’s okay.

But it’s insufficient. It’s condemning. It forces upon the meager successes in life, a humility they do not always fully deserve. It makes of men, mice.

Know where you want to be going

After we take inventory of the distance we have come, I think it’s permissible to abandon it from time to time. This is when I cast it aside and pull up my sleeves. It’s when I stripe my face in red. I take a new inventory. We can make an objective assessment of our true talents, the talents whose origins lie not in the past but sit nicely in a timeless universe whose measurements can be made against life itself and not an individual’s life.

Objective talent cannot be measured by anything but objective measurements. It’s when I observe these objective measurements that I summon a growl. I switch hats. Unbounded from the joys that I should acknowledge from a measurement of history, I am free to gain ground at the speed of light. So I’m off to the plains.

And so this is the second hat: it’s a glance forward, it’s the use of one’s future as a measure of one’s success in life. It’s a very valid recognition of the strides one has made by making a comparison to where one intends to go. And like I said, it’s valid. It makes sense. It’s okay.

But it’s also insufficient. It trivializes the distance we have come so far, it forces a monumental set of instructions that have no bearing in our histories. However, it makes of men truly born as mice, men again.

The new, dual perspective is born

Both insufficiencies are solved when we augment them with each other. To know where we came from is half, to know where we’re going is the other. It’s a recognition that history has it’s place, and that recognition puts it in its proper place. It’s also an abandonment of history. It’s a refusal to acknowledge that human virtue can be bounded by a birth, and that acknowledgement is what unbinds our births.

So as I go along my way, I light that path with a lamp that measures life against all life, but, I never forget the quiet little woods from which I first emerged…

I go back there from time to time, when it’s quiet out, when I sit under our single azure dome. But as the dawn arrives over the horizon, I am reminded that each day is in fact a new dawn. And under that light of each new day, I forget my past and blaze on off under the blazing sun; I chase on off after my dreams…

It’s when I fully become both a philosopher and a warrior…

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Dereck :: Aug.17.2008 :: Motivation :: 5 Comments »

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