Oh, Politics

This Regina Spektor song speaks rather bluntly to how I feel about the American Presidential Campaign just now:

 

 

‘Tis the season. The season of politicking, campaigning, debating and opinionating. Also of satirizing, mocking, and tossing one’s hands up in frustration.

I find it all very problematic because I am, by nature, a pessimist and a cynic. And I do not approve of being a cold-eyed cynic, though I often like it and somehow continue to be one in spite of my disapproval. I often find harbor in playing ‘devil’s advocate’ and this can be of concern at times because it is so very easy to mask real opinions and real concerns within the ready ability to speak with the mouth of the opposition.

Here is the trouble with creatures like me that are simultaneously so cynical and so black-and-white; it is not that we can’t change or refine our opinions. It’s that we cannot hover between them. Ambiguity is intolerable. Half-answers are despicable. Vagueness is a harbinger of death. No, really.

The temptation becomes to combine the pessimism with the ambiguity and create an uncompromising stance out of that. (This, I think, is what Black-and-Whites are prone to do, because uncompromising stances are the key). It looks something like this: put confidence in no one, expect no improvement, cast a doubting eye on all reports of progress, deem one option the evil and the other the lesser of two evils, all is entrenched, all is rutted, it’s all the same. Trust no one. Hope for nothing. Believe not a word.

Even though this is how I often feel—and even though these sentiments are frequently valid—I think it is evident that this is a bad road. Not that politicians are deserving of the trust and belief they’re often accorded, but a wholesale reversal of this doesn’t function either. Switching from rose-colored glasses to blackened ones doesn’t make you see better: it makes you see hardly at all. Yes, you will see the genuinely existing flaws, but you will also fail to see any viable truths, however few and far between they may be (see…still a cynic).

We all have to live with the fact that we are biased. We approach from given angles. We possess pre-existing perspectives. No matter how are we try to edge out of them, we just edge into a different angle. It’s still an angle.

So even though I feel like Regina Spektor is on point, and boy do I love shouting those lyrics, I don’t want to close my eyes and throw the whole game. You work for what you get…then you work with what you get, provided you keep your moorings the whole way through.

My Time is Not My Own: Belonging to Others

I have a very bad habit of reviews. I love them. They have to be pithy, critical and informative. I sometimes even read reviews for books I have no intention of reading simply because I enjoy the clever commentary that swirls around them.

One such book touted a number of interesting themes and I was considering reading it. But I began to wonder if this book was for me when the many reviews talked about the heavy central theme spoken through the mouth of the book's protagonist to the effect of: "I am my own" and "Above all else, I must retain myself"'

There are so many directions from which I disagree with this theme. It's supposed to mean independence and all that jazz. But it doesn't. Not in the long run. I have a couple of examples for why:

In Dance

There is a scene in the film Center Stage (yeah, I know...poor acting, but great dancing) when one of the dancers--who has been trying so fiercely to maintain her independence--is told by an instructor to let her center go and the movement will flow naturally. She does. And it does. Her unwillingness to yield herself fully to the dance, by not being humble and yielded to anything around her, impeded her ability. When she gave that up--or, in other words, got over herself--she was finally able to reach her potential.

Perhaps I've read into it too much, but she didn't give up her strength, skill or convictions. Just herself and any damaging notions thereof.

In Song

"You can't break that which isn't yours"

This line, from the Regina Spektor song titled Apres Moi, has always struck me entirely independent of its context. I love the song as a whole (which is dark and foreboding) but this line is something other.

It's true. It's such a terribly basic principle. Brittle grips break. The more tightly and desperately you hold on to something, the more it slips through your fingers. The best friendships (as my mom has often advised me) are the ones that you hold with open hands.

Same, then, with yourself. When your sister calls, you belong to her. When someone asks for your help on the street you belong to them. In those five minutes you are paying for groceries, you have been effectively given to the cashier. You're theirs, whether you like it or not.

Rest assured that we all end up belonging to many things and people. When we do it willingly, instead of doling out ourselves like a favor, it coincides with a level of freedom that those clutching to themselves with both hands can't have.

I suppose I can see how 'self' is an appealing anchor as opposed to 'others'. But it's all going to get tossed and battered in the wind unless you have an anchor that's better than either of those options. In case I sound coy, I mean God precisely. Attached to him, we don't ever have to worry about running out of ourselves on behalf of others.


'Me-time?'


No. My time is not my own. I am not my own. That's the goal, anyhow. I like rough goals. As Anne of Green Gables would say, they give me a thrill.