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.