For starters, I want to apologize for my last post (and for the blank post which followed, which was my failed attempt to erase the original post). The feelings I expressed were genuine at the moment I expressed them, but I had no right to post them publicly. And now, given a recent personal change for me, I am afraid that those of you who know me may misunderstand my meaning and intention in creating and erasing that post. Most significantly, however, posts like that undermine the foundation of this blog: an individual perspective which exists meaningfully within a larger discourse. When I write, I want to write about things that speak to other people and to which they may also speak; with that post, I was merely recording an inner dialogue, feeding a personal fire. I am aware that I have lit and stamped out many personal fires in life and in this blog and that I will probably continue to do so, but maybe the more I fess up, the less frequent this habit will become.
That's the thing about humility: it requires not only complete awareness of one's own fault/rejection, but also public acknowledgement. I do not mean public on a large scale; I mean telling a close friend or family member that you've screwed up or that you've been rejected. Both of these things hurt and are hard to admit, but something happens to us when we bring them to light. In that moment, we exist completely in the exchange between ourselves and those in whom we confide. We abandon pride, or ego, which houses our identity. As the mediator between the id and super-ego, the ego is also responsible for defense mechanisms; the id reacts viscerally, the ego obeys the id and the super-ego punishes the ego with feelings of guilt or shame. When we do wrong, we are aware at the level of our super-ego that we have done wrong (guilt), but our ego rationalizes. Because the ego is the foundation of identity, we adhere to these rationalizations in order to maintain a sense of self. On the other hand, when we are wronged, we are aware at the level of our super-ego that we have been wronged/rejected (shame), and our ego represses or denies the rejection. When we are wronged, we don't try to maintain our identity - we try to abandon it because we cannot separate our identity from the rejection of our identity, and rejection is unacceptable. As such, our identity becomes unacceptable. In both instances, our egos prevent us from acknowledging the truth. Here's my hypothesis: I believe it is impossible for us as individuals to remove ourselves from our own egos, recognize and disable our own defense mechanisms, and thus learn from our own mistakes/rejections. We must expose our guilt and shame to someone or, better yet, someones, in order to grow in a positive direction. Incidentally, I also believe that until we expose both guilt and shame, that growth is incomplete.
I am a different person than I was a week ago and than I have ever been because I have now admitted both guilt and shame to people I trust. Some differences are routine and trivial: I am listening to albums I haven't listened to in a long time and avoiding others that had been in my car player for months. Others are routine and significant: I no longer speak to a person I had spoken to daily for months. But one is a veritable paradigm shift: I am aware, for maybe the first time in my life, of how damn lucky I am. I reached out and found myself enclosed in arms, lifted until I felt I was flying but still grounded. I reached out to several people I knew and trusted and was reached out to not only by them, but also by near and complete strangers who could not have possibly known that I needed their hands too. I never understood before why people say they are "humbled" by their achievements, and maybe that is because all of my previous achievements have fed my pride. I now realize that my greatest achievement is my humility. It is a small and tarnished trophy that will shine more and more as I continue to trust myself and others to acknowledge and accept me as I am. But no matter how brightly that trophy shines, it will remain small. Like us, dear friends. Like us.
Friday, July 8, 2011
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Friday, June 3, 2011
The Collectors
Last night I watched one of my favorite films, Everything is Illuminated, with two of my favorite people. The film is based on the novel of the same name by the very talented and unique Jonathan Safran Foer. At its most basic level, the story is about a young man, presumably Foer himself, who collects things to memorialize deceased family members and who embarks on a journey to "collect" the memory of his grandfather, about whom he knows very little. But this journey is not an archaeological dig, a hunt for objects which will fit neatly into Foer's plastic bags stowed away in his leather fanny pack. Foer is instead searching for a person: the woman (Augustina) who saved his grandfather, who was Jewish, from Nazis in the 1940s. When Foer and his traveling companions find Augustina's sister, she tells them the truth: Augustina died to protect Foer's grandfather. Her death on his behalf allowed him to escape anti-Semite Ukraine and marry Foer's grandmother, and by extension allowed Foer to exist. Forgive my shallow analysis of such a rich and complex work, but I now want to use what I have said to reflect on our motivations for "conducting rigid searches" and on how the trajectories and results of these searches shape and illuminate us.
What are you looking for right now, and how are you going about looking for it? If you are looking for love, which seems to be our primary concern as human beings, what approach are you taking? Maybe you are looking for certain qualities in a partner; you may even have a list of requirements by which you rate potential mates. This approach doesn't seem to have a high success rate, but I don't think that is because having standards is a bad thing. The issue is one of depth. If you look for traits (or the absence of traits) in other people without considering why you value (or abhor) that particular trait, and without considering how that preference has shaped you, you will end up with myriad filled plastic bags that obscure rather than reveal the answer. I realize that "answer" is overly simplistic because finding love propagates a journey filled with questions and littered sparsely with answers, but the questions seem more luminous, less threatening, when we aren't traveling alone. Anyway, let's say you decide to do a little soul-searching in order to understand why you are looking for whom you are looking for: where should you start? Foer writes that "everything is illuminated by the light of the past," and I agree. What has worked and what hasn't in your past relationships? Try not to dismiss or rationalize or reimagine. I think you will find that telling yourself the truth and living in that truth will illuminate you in a way that attracts people - not just potential mates, but potential friends as well. When you know yourself, you allow and invite others to know you.
If, while reading that last paragraph, you were thinking "but I'm not looking for love!", then I must admit that I am delighted that other species are now able to access and participate in the blogosphere, because you aren't human. No matter what you are looking for, dear friends, you are looking for love in some form. If you are looking for a career, you are looking for a place where you will feel accepted and valued by others in addition to a vocation that utilizes your particular skill set. If you are, like Foer, looking for clues about a family member, you are motivated by love of that person. If you are looking for fame and fortune, your heart is waiting patiently for you to return home, get your bearings and set out again. That we will never travel without baggage should not discourage us from traveling. We humans are the collectors, after all. We accumulate, sort, compartmentalize and organize. We count and recount, we let the dust gather and we brush it away. I love us for doing these things because it means we are alive and we know we are going to die, but we don't want to die so we fill our walls and our closets with tangible memories that affirm our own tangibility. These walls and these stacks are our fortresses, our defense against what lays on the other side of life. We don't have to tear these fortresses down: we just have to let ourselves out and let other people in. The light may very well blind us.
What are you looking for right now, and how are you going about looking for it? If you are looking for love, which seems to be our primary concern as human beings, what approach are you taking? Maybe you are looking for certain qualities in a partner; you may even have a list of requirements by which you rate potential mates. This approach doesn't seem to have a high success rate, but I don't think that is because having standards is a bad thing. The issue is one of depth. If you look for traits (or the absence of traits) in other people without considering why you value (or abhor) that particular trait, and without considering how that preference has shaped you, you will end up with myriad filled plastic bags that obscure rather than reveal the answer. I realize that "answer" is overly simplistic because finding love propagates a journey filled with questions and littered sparsely with answers, but the questions seem more luminous, less threatening, when we aren't traveling alone. Anyway, let's say you decide to do a little soul-searching in order to understand why you are looking for whom you are looking for: where should you start? Foer writes that "everything is illuminated by the light of the past," and I agree. What has worked and what hasn't in your past relationships? Try not to dismiss or rationalize or reimagine. I think you will find that telling yourself the truth and living in that truth will illuminate you in a way that attracts people - not just potential mates, but potential friends as well. When you know yourself, you allow and invite others to know you.
If, while reading that last paragraph, you were thinking "but I'm not looking for love!", then I must admit that I am delighted that other species are now able to access and participate in the blogosphere, because you aren't human. No matter what you are looking for, dear friends, you are looking for love in some form. If you are looking for a career, you are looking for a place where you will feel accepted and valued by others in addition to a vocation that utilizes your particular skill set. If you are, like Foer, looking for clues about a family member, you are motivated by love of that person. If you are looking for fame and fortune, your heart is waiting patiently for you to return home, get your bearings and set out again. That we will never travel without baggage should not discourage us from traveling. We humans are the collectors, after all. We accumulate, sort, compartmentalize and organize. We count and recount, we let the dust gather and we brush it away. I love us for doing these things because it means we are alive and we know we are going to die, but we don't want to die so we fill our walls and our closets with tangible memories that affirm our own tangibility. These walls and these stacks are our fortresses, our defense against what lays on the other side of life. We don't have to tear these fortresses down: we just have to let ourselves out and let other people in. The light may very well blind us.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
The Payoff
I am not surprised that my most-frequently-read post so far has been "Why We Need Each Other," and it is also not surprising that this post took the least amount of time to compose. I have a tendency, as evinced by my previous post, to seek and engage with abstract material. This tendency may make me seem stuffy, intelligent, detached, or any combination of the above. My natural inclination toward detail, combined with a three-year love/hate affair with academic writing, accounts for this tendency. With this post, I want to convey with absolute conviction that this admittedly affected style is not where my heart or my message really lies. I told a friend recently that the trouble with blogs is akin to that of a photograph: it is a snapshot, a still of a kinetic something that cannot be restricted to a frame. A writer always starts with an idea, and that idea shapes everything that follows it. But the origin is not really the idea; it is the writer's frame of mind at the instant the idea is conceived. Here's the problem with that: we artists (I think that includes all of us whether we realize it or not) create most when we experience negative emotions such as anger, fear, resentment, loneliness and sorrow. We feel a need to escape or block these emotions, and art is a viable conduit. Think about your old journals, for instance. Were you more inclined to report positive or negative events and emotions? When we are happy, we want to live in that happiness rather than write, sing, paint, etc. about it. Let's reevaluate.
When I named this blog "The High Price & High Payoff of High Sensitivity" (was I high when I came up with this? kidding), I didn't even know what the payoff was. I thought I knew, of course. I thought it was a kind of detached wisdom, an advanced understanding beyond the grasp of those who simply *scoff* live their lives without worrying if they are doing it correctly. How interesting that I believed the payoff of high sensitivity was in reality insensitivity, that I believed the payoff canceled out the price, leaving me with a clean blank slate upon which I could record "high art." The truth is that the payoff of high sensitivity, of anything for that matter, is the same as the high price, and realizing this is realizing happiness. Do not reduce your sensitivity to a detached awareness of , and by extension an ironic insensitivity to, those around you; instead, allow yourself to feel for others and express those feelings as you see fit. I think you will find, as I am more and more every day, that the people you let in will also let you in. And these relationships will bring you unbearable joy and unbearable pain, and yet you will bear them. Your sensitivity is a burden and an asset all at once, and these two conflicting properties will not balance each other out. Anyone who has ever loved knows that the good times are just as heavy as the bad. Here's to hoping that, as the Beatles sweetly sang, we're gonna carry that weight for a long time. As for my blog, I'll do my best to carry it with a little less weight and a lot more heart. Thank you, as ever, for reading.
When I named this blog "The High Price & High Payoff of High Sensitivity" (was I high when I came up with this? kidding), I didn't even know what the payoff was. I thought I knew, of course. I thought it was a kind of detached wisdom, an advanced understanding beyond the grasp of those who simply *scoff* live their lives without worrying if they are doing it correctly. How interesting that I believed the payoff of high sensitivity was in reality insensitivity, that I believed the payoff canceled out the price, leaving me with a clean blank slate upon which I could record "high art." The truth is that the payoff of high sensitivity, of anything for that matter, is the same as the high price, and realizing this is realizing happiness. Do not reduce your sensitivity to a detached awareness of , and by extension an ironic insensitivity to, those around you; instead, allow yourself to feel for others and express those feelings as you see fit. I think you will find, as I am more and more every day, that the people you let in will also let you in. And these relationships will bring you unbearable joy and unbearable pain, and yet you will bear them. Your sensitivity is a burden and an asset all at once, and these two conflicting properties will not balance each other out. Anyone who has ever loved knows that the good times are just as heavy as the bad. Here's to hoping that, as the Beatles sweetly sang, we're gonna carry that weight for a long time. As for my blog, I'll do my best to carry it with a little less weight and a lot more heart. Thank you, as ever, for reading.
Monday, May 9, 2011
What We Can Change
"If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the 'Fuck you' signs in the world. It's impossible." Holden Caulfield, The Catcher in the Rye
The public bathroom is perhaps the most salient analogy for real life. We would rather not go in, but we inevitably do - we have to go, our kid has to go, we need to wash our hands - and upon entering, we are often assailed by unusual smells and sounds. As if all this isn't enough, there are also the inspirational quotes on the stalls, instructing us about the finer points of human anatomy and reminding us that we are idiots, skanks and all manner of other honorable things. Sometimes the smells and sounds are less noxious and the writing on the wall reminds you to tell your mother you love her, but you still feel trapped, uncomfortable. Life is this way, is it not? The smells and sounds are metaphors for nature, that which happens to us; the words are what we do to ourselves and to each other. We cannot escape either force, and thus we feel trapped. No matter how tolerable life is, we still regard it as something to be tolerated. And tolerate it we must. For us highly sensitive folk, who have an especially low tolerance for situations in which we have no control, this task sometimes seems impossible. Of course, even the most sensitive person in the world must acknowledge that nature is superior to and impervious to the desires of man, and thus it is not nature that we seek to change or erase; rather, we seek to change other people. The truth is that changing other people, one person or all people, is just as futile as changing nature.
Holden, and by extension J.D. Salinger, was right: we can't erase all the graffiti that demeans, enrages and saddens us. We can't protect our children from hurtful words, and we can't prevent our children from using them on us. And when it comes down to it, that's what we're really afraid of: being hurt. The beauty of bathroom stall slander, in its writer's eyes, is its ability to offend and instruct. Because it is not directed at anyone in particular, it will mean different things to different people. No matter how offended we are by what the words say to us, we are inevitably more offended by the possibility of what they say to other people. We are afraid an impressionable youth will be expelled for using the offensive phrase on his teacher, or worse, that it will inspire in him an overarching attitude of hatred which will then endanger lives, possibly ours. Perhaps I jump to extreme conclusions in my own analysis, but think about it: when we hear or see something that offends us, our anger extends beyond indignation at ethical misconduct. Although we recognize the words as a pathetic attempt to get a reaction and thus do not take it personally, we are afraid that other people will. Holden's desire to rub away the above-referenced phrase is closely tied to his desire to be the "catcher in the rye": he is not concerned with his own vulnerability to man-made evils, but rather with the vulnerability of the next generation, whose actions will also affect him. His desire to catch the children is undoubtedly noble, but it is not entirely altruistic. It took me a few readings of the novel to get that.
My point with all this analysis is this: we will never be able to control what other people do, and that includes slanderers and loved ones alike. There will always be evil, and all of us are susceptible to and guilty of carrying its torch. If you cannot quite convince yourself that changing people is futile (like me at times), remember that even if it was possible, it is not the right thing to do. We have to trust that people will choose good over evil, because if we don't, trust ceases to signify anything at all. We may feel trapped and lonely and uncomfortable, we may wish we could erase everything that offends or threatens us directly and indirectly, and we may wish we could catch those to come before they have a chance to fall. In the end, we can spend a lifetime trying to do these things, or we can spend a lifetime living. What we can change is our choice between the two.
The public bathroom is perhaps the most salient analogy for real life. We would rather not go in, but we inevitably do - we have to go, our kid has to go, we need to wash our hands - and upon entering, we are often assailed by unusual smells and sounds. As if all this isn't enough, there are also the inspirational quotes on the stalls, instructing us about the finer points of human anatomy and reminding us that we are idiots, skanks and all manner of other honorable things. Sometimes the smells and sounds are less noxious and the writing on the wall reminds you to tell your mother you love her, but you still feel trapped, uncomfortable. Life is this way, is it not? The smells and sounds are metaphors for nature, that which happens to us; the words are what we do to ourselves and to each other. We cannot escape either force, and thus we feel trapped. No matter how tolerable life is, we still regard it as something to be tolerated. And tolerate it we must. For us highly sensitive folk, who have an especially low tolerance for situations in which we have no control, this task sometimes seems impossible. Of course, even the most sensitive person in the world must acknowledge that nature is superior to and impervious to the desires of man, and thus it is not nature that we seek to change or erase; rather, we seek to change other people. The truth is that changing other people, one person or all people, is just as futile as changing nature.
Holden, and by extension J.D. Salinger, was right: we can't erase all the graffiti that demeans, enrages and saddens us. We can't protect our children from hurtful words, and we can't prevent our children from using them on us. And when it comes down to it, that's what we're really afraid of: being hurt. The beauty of bathroom stall slander, in its writer's eyes, is its ability to offend and instruct. Because it is not directed at anyone in particular, it will mean different things to different people. No matter how offended we are by what the words say to us, we are inevitably more offended by the possibility of what they say to other people. We are afraid an impressionable youth will be expelled for using the offensive phrase on his teacher, or worse, that it will inspire in him an overarching attitude of hatred which will then endanger lives, possibly ours. Perhaps I jump to extreme conclusions in my own analysis, but think about it: when we hear or see something that offends us, our anger extends beyond indignation at ethical misconduct. Although we recognize the words as a pathetic attempt to get a reaction and thus do not take it personally, we are afraid that other people will. Holden's desire to rub away the above-referenced phrase is closely tied to his desire to be the "catcher in the rye": he is not concerned with his own vulnerability to man-made evils, but rather with the vulnerability of the next generation, whose actions will also affect him. His desire to catch the children is undoubtedly noble, but it is not entirely altruistic. It took me a few readings of the novel to get that.
My point with all this analysis is this: we will never be able to control what other people do, and that includes slanderers and loved ones alike. There will always be evil, and all of us are susceptible to and guilty of carrying its torch. If you cannot quite convince yourself that changing people is futile (like me at times), remember that even if it was possible, it is not the right thing to do. We have to trust that people will choose good over evil, because if we don't, trust ceases to signify anything at all. We may feel trapped and lonely and uncomfortable, we may wish we could erase everything that offends or threatens us directly and indirectly, and we may wish we could catch those to come before they have a chance to fall. In the end, we can spend a lifetime trying to do these things, or we can spend a lifetime living. What we can change is our choice between the two.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
30 Before 30
Hello readers! I'm doing something a little different for this post, but I think it still ties in with my overall goal for this blog: to help myself and (hopefully) others negotiate sensitivity with the pressures that accompany ambition. We should not allow our sensitivity to prevent us from pursuing our goals. Half of the battle is knowing what you want to accomplish; that's where the bucket list comes in. My roommate Maggie and I decided to make lists of 30 things we want to accomplish by the time we're 30; that gives both of us about six years. The key to making a list like this is to take it seriously but not too seriously. I would recommend choosing some things you know you can accomplish and some things you would love to accomplish regardless of their feasibility. I hope that you enjoy my list and Maggie's list (link is below), and I especially hope that you make one of your own!
Emily's 30 Before 30
1. Work or intern for a publishing company
2. Make and keep 10 new friends
3. Find and keep a good man
4. Write a nonfiction essay I’m proud of
5. Get said essay published in a literary magazine
6. Place in a writing contest
7. Learn to play guitar tablature
8. Learn to play bar chords
9. Take the GRE
10. Take a road trip with friends
11. Volunteer again
12. Go to India for at least a week
13. Go to an Iron & Wine concert
14. Go to a Fleet Foxes concert
15. Read 100 books I've never read before
16. See the Sistine Chapel in person
17. Sing a complete solo in front of a group of at least 100 people
18. Take a hip-hop dance class
19. Watch all of Audrey Hepburn’s movies
20. Relearn some piano
21. Run a 5k
22. Complete and successfully adhere to a budget
23. Make an edible pie from scratch
24. Visit someone/people in my dad’s family
25. Visit my godmother in Dallas
26. Buy something really nice for my parents
27. Make 30 mixed CDs to give as gifts
28. Correspond in some way with Rob Sheffield
29. Ride on a plane by myself
30. Feel infinite
2. Make and keep 10 new friends
3. Find and keep a good man
4. Write a nonfiction essay I’m proud of
5. Get said essay published in a literary magazine
6. Place in a writing contest
7. Learn to play guitar tablature
8. Learn to play bar chords
9. Take the GRE
10. Take a road trip with friends
11. Volunteer again
12. Go to India for at least a week
13. Go to an Iron & Wine concert
14. Go to a Fleet Foxes concert
15. Read 100 books I've never read before
16. See the Sistine Chapel in person
17. Sing a complete solo in front of a group of at least 100 people
18. Take a hip-hop dance class
19. Watch all of Audrey Hepburn’s movies
20. Relearn some piano
21. Run a 5k
22. Complete and successfully adhere to a budget
23. Make an edible pie from scratch
24. Visit someone/people in my dad’s family
25. Visit my godmother in Dallas
26. Buy something really nice for my parents
27. Make 30 mixed CDs to give as gifts
28. Correspond in some way with Rob Sheffield
29. Ride on a plane by myself
30. Feel infinite
Sunday, April 17, 2011
The Pursuit
The Declaration of Independence tells us that we are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but I have never understood the correlation between independence and pursuit. Perhaps I am going about the whole thing incorrectly, but the act of pursuing happiness (more specifically, all those things which I believe will make me happy) makes me feel utterly dependent rather than liberated. Lately I have been feeling especially ruled by this impetus to chase, and the effects of obeying this impetus are a bit troubling to me. It's akin to being a passenger in your own car in that you have clearly given someone else permission to drive but you are acutely aware that you are not truly in control. The reality is that none of us are truly in control of our lives, a fact evinced by such events as the Virginia Tech massacre four years ago yesterday, Hurricane Katrina, the earthquakes in Japan, September 11, etc. Barring forces of nature and senseless acts committed by fellow human beings, however, we essentially map the trajectories of our own lives. I am interested in our reasons for mapping them in the countless various ways we do. I am interested in pursuing the concept of pursuit.
I do not want to live in New York City, and even if I wanted to, I do not think my personality or bank account are suited for it. Why, then, have I applied for publishing jobs smack dab in the core of the Big Apple? I don't know. Let me put you on hold so you can ask my boss, Pursuit. Pursuit says that I will not be happy until I find a career in a field for which I have an aptitude and a passion (apparently Pursuit likes to use confusing sentence structures), and all the editing/publishing jobs are in NYC. The truth is that I do not think I will get any of these jobs anyway, but now that I have gone and done the thing, I am inevitably invested in the possibility that I will. No one does something to get null results; action is predicated on the expectation of reaction, be it positive or negative. Something will change when I hear back from the companies I applied to: I will either prepare myself for interviews and reexamine the idea of moving or I will know that it wasn't meant to be after all. The key is that I will have learned something. If I had never applied in the first place, I would be left wondering if I was cheating myself out of a different, a happier, future. Thomas Jefferson was no fool. He knew that "happiness" needed a modifier, that even if we were entitled to it and were given it on a silver platter, we would not believe we had it anyway. We report to Pursuit because we, each one of us, chose him as our boss. We resist taking a chance on Chance because she works for, and against, everyone. Pursuit is a paycheck and Chance is the lottery. As Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes sings, "I'd rather be working for a paycheck than waiting to win the lottery."
The underlying assumption of this choice between Pursuit and Chance is that we want happiness. If we didn't want to be happy, we wouldn't bother working or waiting for anything. We wouldn't feel dependent or hopeful or in any way let down if our actions or inactivity resulted in a displeasing consequence. I don't think any of us want to live this way, even in our darkest moments. Unhappiness is closer to happiness than is apathy. As with all things, moderation is key. I know it's cliche, but it's true. Maybe our best bet is to employ both Pursuit and Chance and, in so doing, realize that in choosing which to employ, we assert our independence. In the midst of my pursuit of a career, a good man, a purpose, I will try to give Chance the wheel occasionally. The next time someone asks you "Who's the boss?", you may answer "Tony Danza" (because you are so witty) or "the pursuit." But it's you, dear friend. It's you.
I do not want to live in New York City, and even if I wanted to, I do not think my personality or bank account are suited for it. Why, then, have I applied for publishing jobs smack dab in the core of the Big Apple? I don't know. Let me put you on hold so you can ask my boss, Pursuit. Pursuit says that I will not be happy until I find a career in a field for which I have an aptitude and a passion (apparently Pursuit likes to use confusing sentence structures), and all the editing/publishing jobs are in NYC. The truth is that I do not think I will get any of these jobs anyway, but now that I have gone and done the thing, I am inevitably invested in the possibility that I will. No one does something to get null results; action is predicated on the expectation of reaction, be it positive or negative. Something will change when I hear back from the companies I applied to: I will either prepare myself for interviews and reexamine the idea of moving or I will know that it wasn't meant to be after all. The key is that I will have learned something. If I had never applied in the first place, I would be left wondering if I was cheating myself out of a different, a happier, future. Thomas Jefferson was no fool. He knew that "happiness" needed a modifier, that even if we were entitled to it and were given it on a silver platter, we would not believe we had it anyway. We report to Pursuit because we, each one of us, chose him as our boss. We resist taking a chance on Chance because she works for, and against, everyone. Pursuit is a paycheck and Chance is the lottery. As Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes sings, "I'd rather be working for a paycheck than waiting to win the lottery."
The underlying assumption of this choice between Pursuit and Chance is that we want happiness. If we didn't want to be happy, we wouldn't bother working or waiting for anything. We wouldn't feel dependent or hopeful or in any way let down if our actions or inactivity resulted in a displeasing consequence. I don't think any of us want to live this way, even in our darkest moments. Unhappiness is closer to happiness than is apathy. As with all things, moderation is key. I know it's cliche, but it's true. Maybe our best bet is to employ both Pursuit and Chance and, in so doing, realize that in choosing which to employ, we assert our independence. In the midst of my pursuit of a career, a good man, a purpose, I will try to give Chance the wheel occasionally. The next time someone asks you "Who's the boss?", you may answer "Tony Danza" (because you are so witty) or "the pursuit." But it's you, dear friend. It's you.
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