For the rest of today I have inwardly fumed about my failure instead of being happy with my success. Like a stone thrown into a river, that thought pattern created ripples and I came to understand I've been doing this my whole life. Instead of feeling satisfied and acknowledging opportunities for improvement, I think of things only as I believe they should be and punish myself long and hard because I think I've fallen short. I can't begin a piece of writing just to see where it goes and enjoy the ride. I hone and polish every word in search of some impossible and unknowable ideal. In doing that I choke the life and soul out of it, and rob myself of any joy that may come from the act of creating.
Rather than reflect on the last eighteen months and acknowledge all the progress I've made since my mother died, I dwell on the reason why I had to make those changes and feel miserable and alone. I would like to think of myself as a phoenix rising from the ashes of a life altering tragedy, but that's hard to do after nearly forty years of looking through the wrong end of the telescope. I can do things today that would have seemed impossible to me a year ago, but I rarely celebrate or give thanks for that because I'm too busy obsessing over what I haven't yet done, or believe I can't.
To flog a not quite dead but not at all well horse, I'm convinced that if I ever let anyone outside my family get close enough to love me, I'd spend so much time taking the relationship apart to see how it works that I wouldn't be able to enjoy it for what it was or give my all in return for the affection offered. My old buddy Socrates is reputed to have said 'the unexamined life is not worth living', and I'm beginning to realise the same could be said of a life that's both overexamined and underappreciated.
Because it's human nature to categorise and to label, I've given my tendency to dissect and examine every little thing a name. I call it 'writer brain', and its most obvious symptom is a chronic inability to live in the moment. Seldom can I relax and let myself take pleasure, or any emotion, in anything because there's always a corner of my mind that demands ''what am I thinking right now? What am I feeling? How would I describe this? What would character X, Y or Z do in the same situation? Why?' On and on it goes. Questions without number and self-criticism without end.
Rather than reflect on the last eighteen months and acknowledge all the progress I've made since my mother died, I dwell on the reason why I had to make those changes and feel miserable and alone. I would like to think of myself as a phoenix rising from the ashes of a life altering tragedy, but that's hard to do after nearly forty years of looking through the wrong end of the telescope. I can do things today that would have seemed impossible to me a year ago, but I rarely celebrate or give thanks for that because I'm too busy obsessing over what I haven't yet done, or believe I can't.
To flog a not quite dead but not at all well horse, I'm convinced that if I ever let anyone outside my family get close enough to love me, I'd spend so much time taking the relationship apart to see how it works that I wouldn't be able to enjoy it for what it was or give my all in return for the affection offered. My old buddy Socrates is reputed to have said 'the unexamined life is not worth living', and I'm beginning to realise the same could be said of a life that's both overexamined and underappreciated.
Because it's human nature to categorise and to label, I've given my tendency to dissect and examine every little thing a name. I call it 'writer brain', and its most obvious symptom is a chronic inability to live in the moment. Seldom can I relax and let myself take pleasure, or any emotion, in anything because there's always a corner of my mind that demands ''what am I thinking right now? What am I feeling? How would I describe this? What would character X, Y or Z do in the same situation? Why?' On and on it goes. Questions without number and self-criticism without end.
I need, as the prayer says, serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and wisdom enough to know the difference. I would also benefit from talking with someone in a professional capacity about this, but the only person I ever trusted enough to do that has moved on and I no longer know where to reach her. A fellow Metallica fan, she once told me 'no matter how bad you think what you've written is, it will always be better than St Anger.' It's hard to argue with that.
You have obviously long been intrigued by the claim, attributed to Socrates, that the ‘unexamined life is not worth living’.
ReplyDeleteWhat an absolute and uncompromising tone of language, ”not worth living”. Why have we as a society not set the bar lower and simply declare that an examined life is better than the alternative? Perhaps the quotation was framed with a fair measure of rhetorical flourish. On the other hand, what if the words were meant to be taken literally at face value? What could lead a person to say that yours or my life is not worth living? It is impossible to know exactly what Socrates had in mind. After all, he is glimpsed but darkly through myriad competing lenses tinged by the thoughts of those seeking to 'discover' him. And I am not educated enough to clarify the image. Instead, I seek an understanding of what the claim might mean in order to be compelling to me. This understanding is, unsurprisingly, an unoriginal form of humanism.
Although it seems rather obvious, I think that the key to understanding Socrates’ claim is to recognise it as being addressed to those who participate in human Being (a form of ‘Being’ distinctive to humans). For Socrates - as for many others then and since - human Being is marked by the capacity to transcend instinct and desire and to make conscious, ethical choices. This is not to deny that instinct and desire have the power to shape human behaviour. I would suggest that one can make sense of Socrates’ claim if it is understood to mean something akin to – those who do not examine their lives - make conscious ethical decisions - fail to live a life that allows them to experience being fully human.
It is all about decision-making, not the past.