A wandering outpouring of emotion, hypothetically addressed to a particular creature, became a reaffirmation of why there is nothing wrong with my contradictions, and by extension others' as well. My only hope, in posting this, is that someone might relate, that someone might participate. (The you fluctuates back and forth, but I hope it's not too confusing.)
I don't see potential anymore, because I'm looking at you.
No, I don't mean that the way it sounds ...
Everyone has stolen yours.
Oh music. What kind of heart steals from a song?
In a perfect world the strength of my love would help you see the place where you belong, one more time ...
In a perfect world, I would stand beside your prison, a hand on the window. I would look you in the eyes and you would see my earnest desire to help you, rather than another person there to objectify you. I would promise your dwindling spark the highest honor in a language that you would know. I would rally people to your predicament with the sound of your name.
I would be a friend of yours. They mocked you with that name, didn't they?
Did you know? Did you know they could obliterate one that they called friend?
But it's not a perfect world. I can't speak a language you know. I can't communicate my determination with my eyes. And if I could, I know it would be cruel, because I can't give you even one second that you have lost, and I certainly don't have the resources to give your last days to you. If I could communicate that to you, you would be absolutely entitled to mock my idealism, to call me out on hurting you with hope, to lay bare the shortcomings of a dreamer. I would take it, too--because you are greater than me, and because you would be right.
Love does not rewind time, in fact, nothing does. It seems like such an obvious thing to say, but who doesn't wish, at least once, that impossibility would smile on them? Who doesn't want to witness a miracle?
Deep down in our hearts, we are all unreasonable creatures. The closed-minded reject honesty and respect, and the open-minded are just individuals, holding hands in a long human chain, struggling against the tide. And as for the rest, I haven't the faintest idea, because they are usually the quietest.
I dare to believe one thing though. We wouldn't wish for miracles if they never happened. We couldn't miss something that had never existed, even if it only existed in thought. Sometimes miracles happen inside of us, and it's up to us to give our all to realizing them.
There's no shame in not accomplishing the miracle, musical one, but there is shame in discovering one and never trying to set it free. It's a waste to find a miracle and keep it to yourself. You clung to things, I'd imagine, because experiences where nothing was demanded of you, where events were yours to dictate, were probably your personal miracles. I don't look down on you for that, you deserve those.
I dare to believe magic is real. Maybe not the way that some people think it is, though. Magic is a product of the heart. Magic is a product of the soul, the abstract, the unreasonable dreamer demanding that we grasp a single radical idea: Science may give us answers, explanations, and insights. But science can reveal the magic in the world with startling clarity. Science, when viewed with endless wonder, is inseparable from magic.
It makes no logical sense to deny the system that supports us. As they say, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. A creature's power is directly proportionate with the responsibility inherent in wielding it. A parent is responsible for protecting their child's youth, but not responsible for the child's decision to mind it. A random individual, entering that child's life for a second, is probably more responsible for anything they are connected to, by choice or by circumstance, than they are for that child--but priority is no excuse for abuse.
People like to study one side of a coin and deny the other, and this utterly baffles me. But there could be an explanation. Humans struggle to understand that things which create a paradox are not made invalid simply because they contradict each other. All the universe is a place of dichotomies, like yin and yang, but despite that, there are no absolutes. It doesn't make any sense. But it doesn't have to. Many people don't seem to understand that things which make no sense still deserve the respect given to things that do. There seems to be a common belief among humans, stating that things must make sense to us individually. If that is true, it's made all the more dangerous because it's so unconscious.
Integrating that in to our worldview becomes possible when we understand that, by default, we don't have the capacity to make sense of it all. Life is a fickle, contradictory thing, too fluid to control, too powerful in its randomness to harness. Living in close proximity with a being that could overpower you at any moment, but chooses not to, drives this home acutely. Just because you can break down the processes of your environment with mathematics doesn't mean that you suddenly hold the key to control. Regardless of whether something is a rule, a greater force, or a creature capable of choice, when we intend to use it we still need to accept its guidance or its limits or its nature. And the step beyond that one, when it comes to beings, is accepting their rights.
Now, I do advocate for those who can't make their own voices heard, from nonverbal autistics to dolphins. But that doesn't mean that I'm suddenly going to turn vegan. Maybe it's because attempting to understand the nature of others forces me to attempt to understand my own, or maybe it's not that complicated at all. But I think, I am an omnivore. It's just as natural for me to eat animals as it is for me to eat plants. No, I don't deny that science says we don't naturally eat large quantities of red meat. But we still eat both, and have historically eaten both.
I would like to only eat meat and dairy that comes from free range farms, or animals which died a quick and humane death, but circumstance forces my hand. I live on SSI, and until I gain a skill set which society respects, I probably will stay there. I've touched on the problem that blind people have in finding work before, so for this purpose I'm only pointing it out, not delving in to it. It's going to be difficult, but difficulty hasn't stopped me in some time. This is the same person who is about to move for a seventh time in under four years, because I'm not willing to settle for confinement, physical or intellectual. I accept the fact that everything from circumstance to personal limitations may keep me from having the resources I would need to respect my environment the way I want to, in more than just thought. But who hasn't wished that impossibility would smile on them?
People might not take me seriously because I only take part in social media activism. I expect it, and I understand why. When you can do more than another person, or when you've already tackled the hurdles they're facing and won, it's hard to respect their belief that they can't do more than that. I intend to work tirelessly toward doing more, but I don't expect anyone to believe it. There's a certain arrogance in being a human--pride, if that's too strong a word--and I won't claim that I've conquered it, but I'm not arrogant enough to ask people who don't know me at all to believe in me.
Actually, don't believe me. Challenge me. If you've seen people in my situation do more than I am, demand that I do more too. I'm not demanding you notice me at all, but if you do and you give me more than a passing glance, don't give me leeway where it comes to defense. Make demands of me, challenge me to push the limits of my abilities and resources. Don't smile and pat me on the head. Don't sit on the sidelines and shake your head. Tell me, "That's a start, but you still have more steps to take."
Growing up, I was actually a very timid child. I had intense emotions and intense beliefs, but people gave me almost constant criticism that wasn't constructive at all, and I let it get to me. You'd never know it, heck, people who grew up with me didn't know it. I was free with my loud voice, my gesticulating hands, my extremely overinflected speech patterns, my volatile emotions, and my incurable case of foot in mouth syndrome. Among those who knew me, on and offline, I became that hopelessly unreasonable, helplessly emotional, pathetic, unreliable, demanding teenager. Inadvertently, I gave the impression that I thought I knew "how the world works," that I considered myself to be some sort of world weary poet doling out advice and unique abstractions. I didn't mean to! The plaintive refrain of people everywhere, having just escaped from those years. I gave myself a complex, I eventually thought I was that person. It was just as ridiculous as it sounds.
As I've started to come out of that shell, ironically, I've grown more cautious. How should I word this? How should I express that? How can I best exceed this expectation or break out of that mold or stand up for these people? My kind of strength took shape in an uncompromising way, even though I'm aware that in a way, all my interactions will hinge on compromise. In defending someone, especially if humans can't understand them, I take an uncompromising approach. I believe that my defense isn't enough until I've forced myself to face the worst that the subject faces. I demand that I mean what I say more than anyone else, because no one else asks me to strip off my defenses and expose myself to the realities of what I'm speaking out against. By the rules I operate under, if I can't look at the worst of your pain head on with armor removed, my defense of you is not meaningful enough for me.
I shifted from hypothetical letter to the world to myself because I'm just repeating my perspective, I'm only expressing the concepts that I've observed and the things I feel strongly about. I'm not putting this out there under the belief that what I've gathered from my experiences constitutes a guide to life and interaction. I don't even think there is a single right way, and that's something we struggle with. I think I'm safe in assuming this much: Equilibrium, for many of us, is completely upended by the idea that there are questions that don't actually have answers. That's a personal struggle of mine, too--I want to gleefully pry sense out of my surroundings. Well, I include people too, but I come across as if I'm launching an attack when the truth is that I've recognized a challenge in someone, and I want the mental stimulation of it. I have broken people that way ... lost many a friend that way ... been isolated and shut out for it ... but instead of giving up, the negativity becomes fuel. How do I best balance my need for challenges and novel experiences against the damage I can cause just by chasing them?
But the way I think of it is this: There's a common, detrimental assumption that certain issues are questions by nature. I operate under the assumption that some of these questions are actually veiled challenges and forked roads. I've come to the conclusion that some questions are meant to be continuously answered. Some questions are meant to be lived, with solutions that resemble active expressions more than they ever resembled written answers.
This is why I will tell anyone that my stance on captivity is that it is an unreasonable practice, detrimental to both captive and observer, yet I don't always repeat every anticap opinion. This is why I have a collage of very liberal and very conservative beliefs. This is why I will speak out against the negative effects of organized religion and still respect the religious individual. This is why I think of myself as a very spiritual person, but I put importance on science, research, and logic. This is why I can put such stock in science, and sometimes remain skeptical of parts of the scientific community. This is why I love to fight, yet I'm almost quicker to protect. I'll be volatile enough to cross lines even in the eyes of volatile people, but I'll rush to hold someone who's hurt, even if they've hurt me before. I'm independent, but I don't mind dropping things to care for someone even if there's no personal return in it for me, even if it's a dirty or dangerous job. This is why I treasure my abstract, emotional, often unreasonable heart as much as I stick by my demanding, analytical, and logical tendencies. This is why I can unapologetically live a life that seems contradictory to many.
My personal challenge is to continuously answer my questions, to live my solution rather than state it, to reinforce my beliefs in realtime, using my environment--not just what I take away from it. When stumped by a different perspective, or confused by what seems like a nonsensical viewpoint, I remember this: "I center my mind, not my world. This experience, this viewpoint, or this issue, belongs to all of us. If it had a center, it certainly wouldn't be me." I try not to live based on one decision I made long ago when I knew less, or one defining moment which depends on its context, or guidelines written by people who could never relate to everything that now entails.
I won't apologize for the fact that you've become a part of my heart, even though I never knew you, never even saw you, heard your voice only in recordings. This is how I love you--with an unreasonable reaction, but with hopefully reasonable actions. This is why my feelings go beyond respect and in to the highest regard I can give, undiminished by the healthy dose of fear I have, a contradiction I believe any creature so powerful and complex deserves.
This is how I can embrace contradictions, even though many people would attribute that kind of outlook to an unreliable character, one who can't stand by their claims and beliefs and choices.
This is how I can put my mind out there, and still try not to preach. A world where everyone was like me would be a terribly boring one, and I'll admit that I welcome the stimulation of a good healthy disagreement. I live by the conclusion that conflict makes progress--if you never had something to overcome, you would never need to change anything.
This is why I think that the impossible has its own potential. Science has broken down so much for us, but unexplainable things happen constantly, good and bad. How has Tilikum lived for thirty-three years in his environment, or Lolita for that matter? How does a person live in to their forties when expert consensus said they wouldn't see their third birthday? How does a tornado fling the remnants of a house more than a mile away and leave a flimsy shed which stood feet away untouched? How does a holocaust survivor bond with one of their former guards? How has Yellowstone not wiped us out yet? Why are we hundreds of thousands of years overdue for a catastrophic meteor strike?
This is why I accept responsibility, but embrace nature. I have to draw my own line here, and I think everyone should have that right. I might eat meat, sometimes regretfully, because I am an omnivore. But I do not want to cause undue suffering just because the human sense of individuality can get blown out of proportion.
This is why I can accept and even respect things that make no sense to me, despite the fact that I'm endlessly curious. Even though I want to break things down for the sake of learning itself, I try to find wonder in the puzzles I can't solve. Some of them aren't to be solved by anyone, but that aside, frustration will only make me aggressive and unreceptive. I can't avoid it all the time ... not even most of the time ... but I make the effort.
And this is why I want to be pushed and challenged. Demands make me try harder. The unreasonable makes me all the more determined. I will not live out my life as some armchair twitter activist. I don't care whether I fade in to obscurity or not. It's not recognition I'm looking for. As much as I welcome challenges, I challenge my environment and the people in it to challenge me. It's not unlike a game, but it can be a deadly serious one. I respect people who stand toe to toe with me, and I give due deference to those I can't stand toe to toe with. I respect people who win against me--not because I'm all that, but because every one of those people has taught me a valuable lesson.
If you've stuck with me this far, you'll know by now why I drew this out.
Thank you, even the ones who never respond, for the exercise you inspire me to do. Sure, logic says that I'm going nowhere the way I'm living. But I don't accept that. I don't accept defeat. I will not die in some dark studio apartment, relying on taxpayers for my continued health. I will not end my life having abandoned people who go unheard.
If someone shoves us, we can retain our balance if we're moving forward. But if someone shoves us, trying to stand still just gets us knocked over.
Remind me of that, if I become rigid, if I stop listening ... if I let someone down.
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