A Fall From Grace

Someone recently referred to me as having had “A fall from grace”.  To say that someone has had a “Fall from Grace'' is a very unforgiving and conditional term.  Isn’t grace only something God can grant you?  For a person to say that means that makes them inherently judgmental and full of ego; megalomaniacal even.  It is designed as an insult which presumes that the “fallen” even cares about the opinions of others, popular or otherwise.  In fact, I have never heard this term used self-referentially in any way other than sarcasm.  My feathers remain unruffled.  Gracelessly so, apparently.  But then again, I never understood people who continuously put importance anywhere more than it needs to be; self included.‘Consideration of self’ is substantial enough. 

But still, I regard myself as a person with a healthy ego. Recklessly so, possibly.  It is hard to maintain consistent and unequivocal objectively flawed authenticity, and not go mad in the process; although I deal with it sensibly.  Empathetically; I would like to think.  I think the key to my success is my few deep (but not too deep) friendships, and engagement far enough between that it allows for healthy self-reflection and knowledge of oneself.  I love all mankind in a way that is rooted in solidarity of our collective suffering, but maintaining relationships on a regular basis works against my stoicism and single parenthood.

I also feel an apathy for most things “adult”.  I have no patience for politics.  End war already, we have the answer to the renewable energy problem, we have the cure for cancer and we all know 9-11 was an inside job as was the hit on JFK.  Facts. I would not even know what “well informed” would look like in this world of “deep fakes”, “fake news” and “New World Order”.  If shit goes “Tit’s up”, I am gratefully not on any phone trees.  I wont see it coming.  The kid’s have it so good.  Ignorance is bliss.  It is not that I do not want to be 'well informed', it is just that in order to do so, I must keep unlearning and relearning informational systems and processes.  Science will continue to advance until one day we get biblically wiped out in a wiki-leaked deluge; resetting all society and upsetting my already fragile grasp on reality.  

I would much rather be at “the kids” table anyway for the simple fact that kid’s have an innocence and simplicity that I find…safe.  My fun loving nature creates the erroneous perception that I am somehow stupid.  I am naive in some objectively irresponsible ways, but I am not stupid.  I am willfully ignorant for all the reasons I mentioned before, ending in prophetic apocalypse - but I am not without the capacity to comprehend.  Besides, I have been on the insufferable end of adults who alway want to be the most clever in a room - and I detest clever people.  Most resort to snarky witticisms, thinly veiled prejudices and criticisms, and animated wild gesturing to overtell the most mundane stories. I try, when possible; to meet a person’s magical child as fast as I can, so I know how we can be most authentic past the bullshit facade of a good 401k or whatever they think would passively (or passive aggressively) inform the room of their successes.  I like to ‘find the fun’, the truly “unadulterated” fun and figure out the best way to provoke and prolong that - to "stay where the fun is".

I am, therefore; a lot of different things to a lot of people based on where and how they store their magic.  A lot of things to a lot of people, yet important to no one.  I have no master, not even myself.  It is liberating.  It works for me.  It is contrarian without my meaning it to be so.  I do not know another way.  I dwell in the negative (not the positive) spaces.  A shadow cast by the prodigious figure of Order and equally as menacing a threat of mutiny. There is a murmuring chaos in me that crescendos in direct proportion to the “order” without.  I will not wait in the queue to be the next lamb to the slaughter.  I will need to leave this earth as I came into it, kicking, screaming, poorly planned and involuntarily.  

I have early seen behind the curtain of the beast system, and I decided then to fight back.  Like roaring back into the face of a rival lion.  And I know I am not the only one.  I have been in the confidence of those who also speak in hushed tones until a trigger word is uttered and in the end it is me catching myself mid-sentence realizing that I am speaking too loudly about secrets and science fiction.  How did I get here? What was I roaring about? Where was the cut off point to our candor? How much am I supposed to pretend to not know?  Was the other lion even roaring or was it just me the whole time? Maybe there is no beast?  Who was I speaking to? Has it just been me this whole time? 

With the amount of gaslighting I have undergone as a part of cultural conditioning, at this point; it feels as if it has just been me rocking myself back and forth self-soothing in a cluttered corner.   

Ironically most conspiratorial conversations start with a bit of introspection stating: “Is it just me or…?”.  In my youth, those conversations were among friends beginning with : “I wonder what would happen if…”.   In this manner, my life has been a psychosocial experiment gone awry.  An exhausting array of near escapes and divinely scripted disasters.  I would be lying if I said I did not feel some satisfaction in my ability to find balance in the random assortment of my precariously off kilter life experiences.  A life made all the more complex and unsteady with a child, two dogs and two birds.  My contentment is not in the sordid satisfaction of “getting away” with something, it is more like “I tried something, failed; and it didn't kill me”.  If I do that long enough, I think that is still considered some kind of “life” having been lived. 

I think even in hindsight, I can honestly say that most of it has been a life worth living, if only lived by the logic that I am not dead yet.  I existed.  There is proof.  I imprinted, if only by way of my son.  I tried and that deserves some merit.  Any success I have in life may actually be in “The Trying” (referenced in the same tone as the horror film "The Shining").  I do that well; the “trying”.  I did my best given the fucks I had at the time.  It feels weird to say that as an inherent truth and self-confession.  It is not saying that I did not care or gave no fucks. What it means is that I did the best with the care that I had.  There is a big difference in the rephrasing.  I did my best, period.  I cared, period.  I gave all the fucks I had. Every one of them.

As a person with an deeply depressive personality it is hard to care overly much about societal expectations and norms.  It all feels orchestrated and moot. The systems has been decided upon and there is no stopping that train in motion. Besides, this is my life to live as I choose.  Make deliberate mistakes, I say.  I am going to make them anyway, so I might as well make them worth it, well calculated or not.  In looking at my life you would think that I thought there were no consequences and that I was horrendously bad at math with the myriad of miscalculations.  But I compute numbers differently than others.

My idea of “success” has a low bar, and staying alive is an exhaustive hurdle even for that level at times.  It is, therefore; no wonder that Maslow’s hierarchy for me remains unsatisfied, being another pyramid scheme where we scramble over ourselves and each other to reach the top, crabs in a barrel. Actually, it remains “unsatisfied”, except to say that I tried and it did not kill me.  I have spent a lot of time on the lower rung - in survival (mode) of the fittest - simply out of  the love of trying new things. Most people just choose something that they are good at, or at least that pays well and follow that to retirement.  But what if you try something once, hate it, try it again and love it?  I reckon by the third time, you will have had time to assess whether or not you truly like the thing and why by examining the differing context with which the ‘thing’ was experienced - the probability of gaining concrete self-knowledge increases the more times you try the “thing. 

Therefore,  I will try anything thrice, based on the sheer logic of it - and if I divorce myself from the weight of ego and do a detailed assessment in terms of any physical risk that might be undertaken by way of a cost benefit analysis; I would actually say that trying is the only motivating factor in my life. It makes life worth living.  It is in the trying and not in the mastery of any one thing, unless it presents itself organically in search of a new ‘trying’ (e.g. to "try" walking, one must first learn to crawl) Many people are no longer interested in “trying” because it denotes a humbling need to start at a distinctly new beginning.  To kneel at the feet of your novice self.  Oh! But what better way to be revived!  Born anew and baptized in the virgin waters of ineptitude.  So fall from grace, I say. Fall and crawl all the way to the other thing that needs "trying".  #nofilter