Be Ourselves

I must first say, however American and idiosyncratic this sounds, that it feels amazing to be back on my laptop, my generation's source of identity--where we filter the abstract influx of media messaging with our tabs and bookmark bars. That said, I am once again excited to share a post from one of my favorite sites, Brain Pickings, talking about 20-year-old Hunter S. Thompson's advice on living an authentic life and basically, not giving a fuck. Enjoy.

To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles…”
And indeed, that IS the question: whether to float with the tide, or to swim for a goal. It is a choice we must all make consciously or unconsciously at one time in our lives. So few people understand this! Think of any decision you’ve ever made which had a bearing on your future: I may be wrong, but I don’t see how it could have been anything but a choice however indirect — between the two things I’ve mentioned: the floating or the swimming.

The answer — and, in a sense, the tragedy of life — is that we seek to understand the goal and not the man. We set up a goal which demands of us certain things: and we do these things. We adjust to the demands of a concept which CANNOT be valid. When you were young, let us say that you wanted to be a fireman. I feel reasonably safe in saying that you no longer want to be a fireman. Why? Because your perspective has changed. It’s not the fireman who has changed, but you.

Every man is the sum total of his reactions to experience. As your experiences differ and multiply, you become a different man, and hence your perspective changes. This goes on and on. Every reaction is a learning process; every significant experience alters your perspective.

So it would seem foolish, would it not, to adjust our lives to the demands of a goal we see from a different angle every day? How could we ever hope to accomplish anything other than galloping neurosis?

The answer, then, must not deal with goals at all, or not with tangible goals, anyway. It would take reams of paper to develop this subject to fulfillment. God only knows how many books have been written on “the meaning of man” and that sort of thing, and god only knows how many people have pondered the subject. (I use the term “god only knows” purely as an expression.)* There’s very little sense in my trying to give it up to you in the proverbial nutshell, because I’m the first to admit my absolute lack of qualifications for reducing the meaning of life to one or two paragraphs.

To put our faith in tangible goals would seem to be, at best, unwise. So we do not strive to be firemen, we do not strive to be bankers, nor policemen, nor doctors. WE STRIVE TO BE OURSELVES.

But don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean that we can’t BE firemen, bankers, or doctors—but that we must make the goal conform to the individual, rather than make the individual conform to the goal. In every man, heredity and environment have combined to produce a creature of certain abilities and desires—including a deeply ingrained need to function in such a way that his life will be MEANINGFUL. A man has to BE something; he has to matter.

As I see it then, the formula runs something like this: a man must choose a path which will let his ABILITIES function at maximum efficiency toward the gratification of his DESIRES. In doing this, he is fulfilling a need (giving himself identity by functioning in a set pattern toward a set goal) he avoids frustrating his potential (choosing a path which puts no limit on his self-development), and he avoids the terror of seeing his goal wilt or lose its charm as he draws closer to it (rather than bending himself to meet the demands of that which he seeks, he has bent his goal to conform to his own abilities and desires).

In short, he has not dedicated his life to reaching a pre-defined goal, but he has rather chosen a way of life he KNOWS he will enjoy. The goal is absolutely secondary: it is the functioning toward the goal which is important. And it seems almost ridiculous to say that a man MUST function in a pattern of his own choosing; for to let another man define your own goals is to give up one of the most meaningful aspects of life — the definitive act of will which makes a man an individual.

A man who procrastinates in his CHOOSING will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance. So if you now number yourself among the disenchanted, then you have no choice but to accept things as they are, or to seriously seek something else. But beware of looking for goals: look for a way of life. Decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a living WITHIN that way of life. But you say, “I don’t know where to look; I don’t know what to look for.”

And there’s the crux. Is it worth giving up what I have to look for something better? I don’t know—is it? Who can make that decision but you? But even by DECIDING TO LOOK, you go a long way toward making the choice.

I’m not trying to send you out “on the road” in search of Valhalla, but merely pointing out that it is not necessary to accept the choices handed down to you by life as you know it. There is more to it than that — no one HAS to do something he doesn’t want to do for the rest of his life. 

-----Hunter S. Thompson

A Reflection:

            Why is it that us creative types feel so much more inspired when we are in the midst of turmoil or ‘newness’? Coming home I am faced with ‘the OTHER EYE’ and all its buzzing questions grounded in our societies’ idea that plans equal wellbeing.

The only hard part is that I spent all of my time in India denying plan making, surrendering to the wave of life before me—and it worked. So the part of me that found peace in not knowing and simply living is being marched to the guillotine by those American scripts, “What will you do next? What is your plan? School or work or boyfriends or babies?”

 I feel like this urge to ‘have our shit together,’ makes people negate the space for confusion and the unknown in our lives. No wonder artists drink. I welcome this space as a transition, but also as a progression. I believe that unknown is powerful, surrendering to it opens yourself up to the possibilities of unexpected beauties. While in India this perspective was respected by my fellow comrades and travelers, in America people just think I am smoking too much weed.

            Before I got on the plane from Mumbai, a friend of mine quelled my worries, “Kendall, you are going home, there should be nothing scary about it. Everyone has to at some point, its good for the soul. If you don’t go home, you’d be running away from how you’ve changed.”

            And I realized, without going home, the baseline of living, how else would I be able to measure and appreciate the growth?

            Amidst all of this readjustment, I can’t help but wonder, ‘are we so preoccupied with ‘who’ we will become that we forget to BE OURSELVES?’