The Brooksy Paradox
It's interesting how obsessed we are with discovering the "incorrect" ways to be human. The list of behaviours that we shouldn't engage in seems to grow day by day and contradictory dictums only muddy the waters even more. Some people, myself included, we like things to be clearly defined: these are the rules of the game. Break the rules, bad things happen. Stick to the rules, good things happen.
Now, of course I know that this isn't really how the world works. Yet there's a part of me that operates under this assumption. It is often this same part that generates feelings of frustration and indignation when things don't work out the way they ought to or when an alternative set of criteria for living correctly are suggested.
I have trouble processing the chaos that lies beneath civility, both societal and my own. Infidelity, greed, zero-sum thinking, drug addiction, etc, etc. No doubt this attitude is the remnant of my Roman Catholic upbringing (or indoctrination). I suppose that this is why our religion needs a Hell: to assure us that these indiscretions do carry consequences, whether in this life or the next. And they are therefore classified as incorrect behaviours (or "sins") based on whether they lead to Heaven or to Hell. Talk about circularity.
I've been working on a song that expresses my frustration with all the ways I should act in the context of dating. Admittedly, I have a penchant for falling for a woman when I feel chemistry. When I fall, I fall hard. The last time she was the first thought that popped into my mind in the morning and my last thought at night. I was 100% needy. I needed to interact with her.
This is "incorrect". The correct way is to be aloof, to live your own life and explore your own passions and live the life you dream for yourself not dependent on the love of another. To be needy carries the consequence of her dumping you, which to be fair, is what happened. Maybe it was the tiny box of chocolates I bought. Maybe it was the small Christmas present. Maybe I texted too much. Maybe my frustration could be sensed through the phone screen. Incorrect behaviour, consequence.
Or rather than this neat, linear tale of cause and effect there's chaos and humanity. The "ick" perhaps, that unexplainable instinctual and final turn off. Unexpressed fears or frustrations from the other side (after all I held back from expressing my frustrations, so why shouldn't this be the case for her too?) The point is there are myriad variables, all interdependent. One's past affects one present, which becomes one's past affecting one's present...
Our actions are generated by a process that is infinitely deeper, more developed than our nascent rationality. Is it any wonder that it looks like chaos to the part of our mknd that has evolved to process, and has to digest piece by piece? Rationality is like eating a meal one mouthful at a time, never seeing the dish and then being asked what animal you just ate.
Yes, an alternative viewpoint is to see chaos as fluidity, to realise that you are free to act as you see fit. The obvious danger here is that one chooses to be a Napoleon as Raskolnikov did in Crime and Punishment. Nevertheless, this realisation can be a tool that enables one's liberation from feelings of frustration, indignation and moral claustrophobia. Yet it also feels like being a prisoner who, after serving a 50 year sentence, finds himself overwhelmed in a world he cannot understand.
