Chided by my past

[lhexa]

After getting sick of sacrificing my weekend to Kant, I decided to go look through some of the old documents archived on my computer. What I found (the essay posted below) absolutely stunned me. Its arrogance was dismaying and heartening in turn. It was as though I had taken a moment there in my past to spit at the future, knowing that there would be much to condemn there.

I had turned fourteen about a week prior to finishing this essay; it was written for a class called "Writing on the Backroads," a class given during a "college experience" summer program I attended. I remember being a nuisance in that class, often refusing to do my assignments. The version I'm posting is the exact same one I read aloud at the end of that class, complete with the same grammatical mistakes and utterly silly "in my youth."

***

I have always had a passion for climbing trees. In my youth, whenever I thought it would go unnoticed, I would scramble my way up the nearest oak. Those short climbing sessions were the best parts of my day. The arduous ascent, which would seem to most people as a useless waste of effort, seemed to me as a gift from heaven. A feeling of ultimate liberation would overcome my senses and, for a brief moment, I could imagine myself in control of my own destiny, not caring or even noticing others' opinions. Myself, and the tree, were all that mattered. Sadly, my revelry never went unnoticed by the disciplinarian teacher, who would always snarl, “Get down from that tree right now, before you fall and get hurt!” I was never overly impressed with the slight risk of physical harm, so the teacher was always forced to resort to the more effective threats against my personal welfare. I despised them for it, the condescending teachers and sneering peers, despised them for depriving me of my enjoyment. But there never was anything I could do.

I dislike people who tell me such things as, “You need to get to work,” “Don’t act like a child,” or “Life isn’t fair. Get used to it.” However, as much as these people annoy me, I hate even more those who would tell me what I ought to do. Very few people see life not as cruel entity demanding hard work and excessive waiting to gain a mere thimbleful of enjoyment, but as a nearly indecipherable blending of opportunities calmly awaiting a questing mind. These few are nearly always ridiculed as being “different,” “idiotic,” or “insane.” The egoistic but obeisant majority, confident in their ignorance, point and laugh and say, “There’s nothing at all you can do about it, so why do you even try?” The answer is, we try because we want to enjoy ourselves, even at the cost of our “superiors’” illusions of superiority.

School, the repressively stultifying environment born from a demon’s nightmares, is the last place one would look for free-willed individuals. The dress code, like many other important parts of a student’s life, draws closer and closer to absolute uniformity with every passing year. The most rebellious of the school-goers complain and disobey but quiet down after the first few referrals. They think they think their own thoughts, but that is not the case. They ‘think’ what they are told and little else.

These same students are raised believing the time-old belief that work improves a person’s character and personality. They are told to set a distant goal and to not rest until whatever that goal is, be it a college degree, a good job and family, or retirement, is attained (at which time they must assume a new one). However, life is not a monumental obstacle course, but a means to attain happiness and freedom in all ways possible. Enjoyment can almost be by most people seen as an elusive spirit whose touch, sought after extensively but rarely caught, is life’s sadistic little way of making the individual continue working futilely.

Lunch, and the short time thereafter, is naturally my favorite part of the standard ritualized school day. Its time, which would normally be well spent climbing trees (the teachers wouldn’t notice at all), was useless due to the desolate blacktop and field, devoid of any trees or shrubs, a perfect monument to humanity. I could have joined the numerous masses of football and basketball players, but I view those sports as mindlessly violent pastimes. Instead I have taken to conversing with other social outcasts about pagan beliefs, sociology, and the nature of the universe, but even that is scarcely satisfying. There is a heavily wooded area beyond a chain-link fence, with mysterious shadowy paths, strange artifacts littered across the ground, and, most importantly, the huge branching mesquite trees. To pass that both real and symbolic fence is tempting, but impossible to achieve. Sometimes even I wonder why I try.

I have often heard of psychotically depressed individuals, who, unable to cope with the majority view of life, seek instead to end their own or other’s lives. These are the ones who, stuck on the sandy beaches by the river of life, have withstood fruitlessly the swift current of the river and have been caught helpless in that despair-filled place from which there is little chance of return. All this occurs while I drift lazily along the same current that snagged the innocent soul.

The victories for my reckless type of life are few, and grim ones at that. In my school, I am viewed as the weirdo, the misfit, the one who always argues, the rebel. In turn, I see them as the conformists, the social ideals, the suck-ups. For example, I was once in an English class where I was assigned a seat at the very front, the worst location for my ever-increasing paranoia. Not wanting to rob someone else of their lucky positions in the back row, I developed a simple, yet unexpectedly controversial, solution: I turned the seat around.

Murmurs of shock and outrage circled the classroom for the entire period. I was periodically forced into identical conversations until I could hardly stand it: “Why is your desk backwards?” “Because I like it that way.” “Why don’t you face the same way as the rest of the class?” ”I don’t want to.” “You’re supposed to be the other way!” “So?” And so on.

It is no secret that I take pride in my strange ways of thinking nor that it has often caused me great personal and social harm. Unlike the passive students, languid workers, and depressed maniacs, myself and the others who share my point of view won’t fall prey to the over-endorsed trap. I’ve climbed the tree, fallen occasionally, only to get right back up and climb it again, and I suspect I will be doing so for the rest of my life.