We’re all mad here
13 March, 2021
“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where–” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
“–so long as I get SOMEWHERE,” Alice added as an explanation.
“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”
“Alice in Wonderland” - Lewis Carroll
Hey, you’re a real person. Living in the world, buying groceries, embarrassing themselves in front of strangers and whatnot. I got a question for you and your tribe – how do you guys make decisions on a daily basis? Like a) or b), black or white, right or left, open or closed, book or podcast? HOW, HUMANS?
Decisions always line up like dominoes in my head, like a slim trail of gunpowder setting things we’ve never seen ablaze, changing the direction of winds we’d never feel, closing doors we never knew we’d want to walk through. The smallest choice sometimes felt like playing chess with the universe. And man, I’m terrible at chess.
When I was a kid I wanted to be a writer, a scientist, an archeologist, shop-owner, lawyer, dancer, mechanic, hacker, journalist, curator, art collector, editor, writer again and every time I heard of a new profession I changed my mind. I still don’t have a favourite colour. Movie. Book. I get caught in cobwebs of wishful thinking and warped in slogans without sense. Be yourself. Yeah cool, can you introduce me, like?
When I decided to apply for Oxford two months before the final deadline, my tutor told me I wouldn’t get in because there were kids that had been getting ready for this since they were 10. I was like “man, I wasn't goin’ to no uni when I was 10, ain’t no teachers for bein’ badass bby”.
[Don’t worry, my double-negative ass didn’t get anywhere near the hallowed grounds of this superlative smarts-maker. Obviously. Think I might be banned from visiting ... anyway]
But think about it though - because. Not just “who” but “because” they had been getting ready for this since they were ten. Because they knew who they were when they were ten. (Whom?) Because they knew who there were going to be. And I wanted to be everything. With glitter on top puh-leeese nthnkukbye.
But ya can’t do that. Being everything takes time mere mortals can’t afford, so unless you can pull off some Dorian Gray stunt and spend the rest of your ageless life learning every trade in existence you gotta pick a life and stick with it, my friend.
A vocation. Vociferous, drastically definitive, systematically stubborn, fanatically focused. And fabricated.
It’s the illusion of a choice. Like, no 10-year-old wants to spend their 20s ignoring party invitations because “omg I just have to finish that tome of David Hulme’s Treatise of Human Nature”, are you kidding me? Not many toddlers around asking to live off of Red Bull, scouring over stock market spikes either. But maybe their mum does, or their bff or that really cute guy/girl in school who they, like, so wanna impress for reasons that will be thoroughly examined in long sessions with a therapist later. And so, commitment comes before consideration. It’s impulsive, impetuous, ignorant and blissfully unaware of the chain reaction it’s set in motion.
Won’t you guide me, omniscient sensei, save me from my fallacious ad hoc ways. Give me your formula and I’ll be your Archemides. Tell me the way and I’ll carry you, whether I wither or waltz up those mountains, and fly our flag of arbitrary achievement.
“Researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours. […] ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert—in anything.”
That’s Malcolm Gladwell, “Outliers”. Yeah, I just synthesized a 320-page heavily researched masterpiece into a single quote. Y’welcome.
But even master Gladwell can’t do much to prepare me in picking my purpose. I don’t think you understand, Malcolm, it’s not the walking that scares me, it’s the direction. It’s the doubt, the dubious determination, distracting itself with excuses. Dancing at the edge of volcanoes, drifting along with the current, cracking at the seams, giddily sampling sensibility and recoiling in disgust.
And jobs are just the tip of the bloody iceberg, baby. Flats, friends, financial investments, favourite colour of fruit loops? Every choice embedding itself into your body like a bruised bone, like second skin masking all the yous that could have been. A self, oversaturated, praying someone restores me to factory settings.
I had a whole paragraph here on Erving Goffman and his book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life and how he argued our decisions are rarely our own. How we behave out of trained instinct and anticipation of our audience. Our actions – artificial, arranged only by circumstance, by conscience, contrast, context and everything in between. But I’m so good at synthesizing smart people I don’t think I need to add the quotes. Definition is external, let’s leave it at that. So what does that leave us with, what is a “me” when you peel away the outside layers of influence gung stuck to our elbows and eyeballs?
Let’s consult some more poorly paraphrased wisdom. Successful, famous, game-changing people’s stories often come down to two things – a) right place at the right time and b) long-term commitment to a chosen objective.
Riddle me this though - do you commit to things that are right or do things become right because you’ve committed to them? Do you follow or lead? Do you know or guess, retrospectively refitting questionable decisions to a coincidentally winning path? Do you sink and redefine depths as the destination? Are you chicken or egg, my dear, and what, pray, is the fucking difference?
Are you happy?
Was that ever your goal?
And for every ‘correct’ decision there seem to be at least a dozen little cosmic trolls, hiding in the very small font, ready to soil your serendipity. I, you sane sane folk who appear unconcerned by this vicious injustice, have given up. Take me, tiny trolls, and bury me in blind pride and pointless regret. Screw certainty, shower me with questions - god gave us google, gossip and at least one best guess (as well as Sophia, the artificial intelligence, who will rule us all soon and none of this would matter anyway.)
All calculations and credible coincidences have led to nothing but dizzying confusion. All attempts at chess-mastering this game have me disjointed the way you feel after after repeating a word over and over again until it loses all meaning.
And in the spirit of effervescent wisdom and poetic nonsense I leave you with some words from the master:
“Considering the circumstances there is no occasion for a reduction, considering that there is no pealing there is no occasion for an obligation, considering that there is no outrage there is no necessity for any reparation, considering that there is no particle sodden there is no occasion for deliberation. [..] The whole thing is not understood and this is not strange considering that there is no education, this is not strange because having that certainly does show the difference in cutting, it shows that when there is turning there is no distress.”
Gertrude Stein, “Tender Buttons” (yeah, she’s talking about food there but I think it still works… I know, I love her too)