So, there's this cartoon...
Apr. 20th, 2013 02:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avevale_intelligencer...about how the infinite possibilities each day holds should stagger the mind. (Originally linked to by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ysabetwordsmith, whose take on it was...rather different. Post here.)
What a load of twaddle, eh?
For one thing, infinite possibilities are a myth. Yes, at any moment a grand piano could materialise out of thin air and land on my head, and it could be lacquered in any combination of infinite gradations of colour. I could catch some debilitating disease, and any particular one of billions of germs might be the one that deactivates my heart. Or if you insist on being positive, I might at any point find a suitcase full of laundered drug money, and some of the notes might not be marked. Life in general, though, is a process of narrowing down. Each choice we make limits our future options, even though it may seem to us that they're opening out. I move to Westbury, and that decreases the likelihood that I will get run over in London (or find a suitcase of drug money). I fail to get a job today; tomorrow I will be a day older and less employable, and there will be fewer jobs. True, when I first started out my options might have been infinite. Then I uttered my first word, chosen from millions of random syllabic configurations. My first word could never be anything else. The narrowing down began.
And this (despite the way I make it sound) is a good thing. Nobody wants infinite possibilities, not if they really think about it. Most people want to be alive tomorrow; that's a huge swathe of possibilities chopped off right there. Most people want to keep their limbs...their loved ones...their homes...their books...their sanity. As we get older, it becomes more and more obvious that what we really want, as opposed to what we'd like to think we want, is that each day should be more or less like the last, or at least not too much worse than. That's not a bad thing to want. Continuity is not a cop-out. Comfort is not contemptible. For one thing, it gives you the freedom to think in a way that pain, poverty and constant threat don't.
And that is why...that is why you should watch what you write in case some future employer might read it. Why you should cut your hair, and wear a nice shirt, and polish your shoes every day. So that you can have that future of reasonable comfort and continuity, waiting for you down the line for just that moment when you realise that that, and nothing else, is the pot of gold you've been looking for. That is why "FUCK. THAT. SHIT." is a stupid thing to say.
Of course I'm generalising, and exaggerating. We do like some variation. Adventures can be nice, as long as there's home to come back to at last. Each of us has a thing she dreams of doing, and if life does offer you a chance to do that thing, then you grab it, obviously, and take whatever rough comes with the smooth with a good grace. And boredom, that luxurious indulgence of the otherwise unthreatened, is not a pleasant thing and can lead to injudicious and precipitate action.
And--and here's the real point--it may be stupid, as I said, to dismiss the appeal of comfort and conformity, but some people who aren't stupid at all do derive satisfaction from facing a certain amount of discomfort, overcoming a degree of threat, and it's a damn good thing they do, because that's how we find new things and learn and grow. They may not really want infinite possibilities (six cubic feet of air around your head suddenly transforms into pure chlorine) but they are willing to embrace the idea of possibility. They do it for the rest of us. They live dangerously, refuse to conform, eschew comfort, often thanklessly and sometimes to no apparent purpose that we can see...
...but that's the mistake we make, because this is the real meaning of "infinite possibilities." The possibilities are also people. Where we go wrong is in thinking that the kind of people we are, or even more strangely the kind of people we think we ought to want to be, are "right" and other kinds are "wrong"; that it's cowardly to want to be comfortable, or strange to want to be yourself; that we are failing somehow if we don't spend every day looking for something new to do, or that we're traitors if we fail to fulfil our family's, or society's, expectations.
No kind of people is right, or wrong; good, or bad; successful, or unsuccessful. It's what we do, it's our actions, the choices we make, that fall into those categories. We are who we are. Infinite possibilities, slowly narrowing down year by year, choice by choice, to the one eventual 100% certainty...but all in different ways.
Now if we could only build a society that way...
ysabetwordsmith, whose take on it was...rather different. Post here.)What a load of twaddle, eh?
For one thing, infinite possibilities are a myth. Yes, at any moment a grand piano could materialise out of thin air and land on my head, and it could be lacquered in any combination of infinite gradations of colour. I could catch some debilitating disease, and any particular one of billions of germs might be the one that deactivates my heart. Or if you insist on being positive, I might at any point find a suitcase full of laundered drug money, and some of the notes might not be marked. Life in general, though, is a process of narrowing down. Each choice we make limits our future options, even though it may seem to us that they're opening out. I move to Westbury, and that decreases the likelihood that I will get run over in London (or find a suitcase of drug money). I fail to get a job today; tomorrow I will be a day older and less employable, and there will be fewer jobs. True, when I first started out my options might have been infinite. Then I uttered my first word, chosen from millions of random syllabic configurations. My first word could never be anything else. The narrowing down began.
And this (despite the way I make it sound) is a good thing. Nobody wants infinite possibilities, not if they really think about it. Most people want to be alive tomorrow; that's a huge swathe of possibilities chopped off right there. Most people want to keep their limbs...their loved ones...their homes...their books...their sanity. As we get older, it becomes more and more obvious that what we really want, as opposed to what we'd like to think we want, is that each day should be more or less like the last, or at least not too much worse than. That's not a bad thing to want. Continuity is not a cop-out. Comfort is not contemptible. For one thing, it gives you the freedom to think in a way that pain, poverty and constant threat don't.
And that is why...that is why you should watch what you write in case some future employer might read it. Why you should cut your hair, and wear a nice shirt, and polish your shoes every day. So that you can have that future of reasonable comfort and continuity, waiting for you down the line for just that moment when you realise that that, and nothing else, is the pot of gold you've been looking for. That is why "FUCK. THAT. SHIT." is a stupid thing to say.
Of course I'm generalising, and exaggerating. We do like some variation. Adventures can be nice, as long as there's home to come back to at last. Each of us has a thing she dreams of doing, and if life does offer you a chance to do that thing, then you grab it, obviously, and take whatever rough comes with the smooth with a good grace. And boredom, that luxurious indulgence of the otherwise unthreatened, is not a pleasant thing and can lead to injudicious and precipitate action.
And--and here's the real point--it may be stupid, as I said, to dismiss the appeal of comfort and conformity, but some people who aren't stupid at all do derive satisfaction from facing a certain amount of discomfort, overcoming a degree of threat, and it's a damn good thing they do, because that's how we find new things and learn and grow. They may not really want infinite possibilities (six cubic feet of air around your head suddenly transforms into pure chlorine) but they are willing to embrace the idea of possibility. They do it for the rest of us. They live dangerously, refuse to conform, eschew comfort, often thanklessly and sometimes to no apparent purpose that we can see...
...but that's the mistake we make, because this is the real meaning of "infinite possibilities." The possibilities are also people. Where we go wrong is in thinking that the kind of people we are, or even more strangely the kind of people we think we ought to want to be, are "right" and other kinds are "wrong"; that it's cowardly to want to be comfortable, or strange to want to be yourself; that we are failing somehow if we don't spend every day looking for something new to do, or that we're traitors if we fail to fulfil our family's, or society's, expectations.
No kind of people is right, or wrong; good, or bad; successful, or unsuccessful. It's what we do, it's our actions, the choices we make, that fall into those categories. We are who we are. Infinite possibilities, slowly narrowing down year by year, choice by choice, to the one eventual 100% certainty...but all in different ways.
Now if we could only build a society that way...
no subject
Date: 2013-04-21 11:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-22 01:39 am (UTC)