Since I was 13, I’ve had the feeling, one I can’t shake or name, that it is immoral for someone as fortunate as I am to be so frequently unhappy. This feeling is the ghost that animates this blog. I have learned to live with this feeling, its thrashing and reveling, in public and private, its phases of virulence and remission, as a kind of soul-work for my un-religious self.
The religious person, I imagine, has made peace with the morality of his moods in a way that I never have. I could say, defensively, that I don’t choose to feel rotten and resentful, the way people choose to steal cars or cheat on their taxes, so I shouldn’t feel bad about my feelings. But I suspect that my resenting of life, and then my guilty and earnest and futile effort to stop, has warped my choices and actions; that a spiritual exhaustion from all this may have let me steal from and cheat the people I’ve known.
Now I see this person, this person of faith hearing me, responding in two ways. The first is through a television screen, an old bulbous glass one with dust I can see in the afternoon glare, and he says to another character, “One of the people you’ve cheated, [pause], is you.”
I’m sorry to write that, but like most of us, I’ve wasted too much of my life watching television.
The second response, from an imaginary real human listener whose good faith I accept, is to touch my shoulder and say that I don’t have to be this way. He tells me why I’m a decent person in spite of myself, that I’ve done right and loved and been loved and deserved it. And I can choose to do better, to persevere, to rise higher.
But I fear, when I try to remember my life, that some sensitive inner assembly, some cochlea in the soul, is numbed or missing in me. (My hearing has always been lousy. I find some notes are painful or inaudible– the higher ones, of course.)
And now I see neither my notional real friend nor the one from TV. Now I am at a small steel-legged desk, with a printed sheet in front of me, looking like a ballot or an SAT. I am offered two ovals and asked to choose. Shall I…
( ) PERSEVERE: Walk away from your worries in a march toward your goal.
( ) PERSEVERATE: Worry your worries, your feet will go where they’ll go.
I fill in the second oval completely, as I do every day.
***
There will be three kinds of stories here. The first category is for commentary on the culture we share. I say that we share it because the kinds of culture I write about – photographs, politicians, buildings, toys, songs, money – will be familiar, though I hope I can at least surprise you a little.
We also share our powerlessness over most of the culture we get exposed to. We can turn a radio off or on, but our ears will still be subject to one bullhorn or another. Maybe we can share some ways to cope with that.
The second type of story here is about my own experience as a perseverant. If the first category is about culture – life that’s been boxed up and passed around – the second group is about what can’t be boxed or shared, except as a first-hand report from time served in a life. This is a record of a different sort of powerlessness, in that we are not at the mercy of people whose motives we can learn – we are subject to the motion of human time itself, a movement corporeal, social, and mortal, whose meter we follow without knowing the tune.
“Vain is the word of a philosopher by which no mortal suffering is healed.” – Epicurus
The third sort of story comes from the person I imagined earlier, the stranger who puts his hand on your shoulder and means it when he consoles you. Our good fortune is as real as our suffering. Part of my fortune, of what I’ve gotten though I did nothing to earn it, is material security and free time to wonder. The rest of my fortune is in people who love me, and the notes of sublimity in our culture and my experience. These stories give my gratitude as a means of consolation, for both of us, I hope.
Thank you for letting my words be something else that you and I share.
The Perseverant 
I suppose that it is now my turn to keep up my end of the bargain. Well done. It occurs to me that our writing objectives and foci overlap…you just write better than I do.
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It is a shame that you and live so far away from one another, as I could imagine many good conversations over a beer or three. Over things we agree on and things we don’t. I look forward to reading more here. And I will try not to be that guy on the dusty TV. 🙂
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Timeliness is not one of my strong suits, but never let it be said that I don’t eventually say what I feel needs to be said.
This is beautiful, and bold, writing.
This thing that you can’t shake or name is an ingredient in so many works of enduring literature. And it’s more prevalent than our culture likes to admit. Why else would works that are several centuries old, continue to be required reading in high school? Because they are still relevant. They are part of the human condition.
The religious person’s struggle with it is no less complicated than that of a person who does not profess a faith. In a way, that person’s faith adds another level of complication. Think about how far the science and study of mental health has evolved in the last hundred years. Then, consider whether or not religious understanding/study of mental health issues has kept pace. It varies widely. And some who are struggling with feelings of sadness or bona fide depression or some other challenges may be made to feel that it is a character flaw, or a lack of adequate faith, that they struggle with these things. And why do they not have a strong enough faith to lift them out of those dark places. Double whammy. Faith does not always provide more answers. Sometimes it only yields more questions.
And yet, like so many other things, we as a society continue to attach a stigma to this “thing.” A stigma that labels it as a character flaw or a sign of weakness. When really, to function when the un-nameable is screaming in our faces, actually takes a great deal of strength and courage. Daily. Moment to moment.
If you had asked me 20 years ago, as a college grad, what I thought would happen in the world in the next 2 decades, I would have never thought that we would have elected an African-American president, and that we would have a viable female candidate for the oval office. I would have never imagined that we would be having some kind of public, social conversation about bullying and how to reduce it and mitigate its effects on our young people. And on and on.
i would love to see, in my lifetime, a public conversation about the un-nameable. A normalization of that which many people experience, but few feel comfortable to discuss outside of a close circle of friends, or the therapist’s office. That it is not a weakness or a character flaw. It is part of life, and a part of being human. And if we could have that conversation, how would that re-calibrate our own perceptions as to how we relate to the rest of society?
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