Change

[lhexa]

I'm not worth reading about yet. This moment of a once-philosopher's life, a shameful and overly pained one, is no place to linger too long; the sign, standing by the road that dominates this desolate internal scene, says, "Wiser people than you moved on."

And why should my writing affect me less than it affects another?

Staying true to my past matters to me, but in moods like the present one moving forward and away from it matters even more. Personalities do change; I am evidence of that fact, though my development has been aided by an otherwise unhealthy emotional flexibility. Yet some of my worst qualities remain, still strong, well after first being unearthed and confronted: narcissism, arrogance, diffidence, silence, distance... none are tendencies which can be undone in a few days' work. Nevertheless, over time narcissism can be avoided, arrogance humbled, diffidence coaxed away, silence broken, and distances bridged; I can change.

I do not think I can rid myself of a certain cunning, vulpine fear, which argues: better to outwit pain than to overcome it. The suffering that has been overcome, forced down, and forced out will always return in another curl-up-and-cry day, albeit in a different form. But the clever response, which halts pain the more effectively the more intense it is, puts the feeling into words and allows it to stand exposed, so that both recurrence and rereading will make the words and the lessons more lasting. Perhaps others would favor other methods of moving forward, and write for other reasons; however, I find mediocre that writing I do which leaves me entirely unchanged.

Why remain in the shape impressed on me by the circumstances of my life? My childhood was too slipshod and amateurish in crafting me, an overambitious, underplanned, clumsily constructed and all too soon abandoned project in human life. The world as it is cannot complete me, but I can make my own attempt, and take myself forward into my dreams, even if they are ones I did not choose for myself. I would be my own journeyman's piece, evidence that I can do better. And I am rapidly approaching the beginning of a long nascency: others suffer through graduate school, but I'll come alive in it, chronicling what I can, learning with style.

How can I justify not rising up to my world as well, to find the germ of good present but dormant in every event, and let it grow in me? Any word ever said to me in affection was more than circumstance; those words pointed to something beyond, even as they pointed away from their situation, and thus perhaps went unnoticed by a mind too fastened to the present. There are so many good things to become, so many ideals presented to me piecewise by friends and mentors throughout my years, that to be defined exclusively by the first two decades of my life would be pitiful. Such definition is not inescapable.

One of the oddest literary conceptions I have is a form of writing which grows, lives, and even dies distinct within the confines of a single work, paralleling its author's transformations; such a kind of work befits a period of nascency. I would like a person reading it to be able to discern such things as: in this passage a common realization was reached, in this other one the point of frustration; here the author licked his wounds for a little while, before feeling strong enough to return to his life; in this paragraph something small, a grudge perhaps or an old preoccupation, died, and a new creature took its place.

I want to undo myself in writing.

Comments

[zacat.livejournal.com]

You seem awfully conflicted...

[celyddon.livejournal.com]

You have put into words what I have been pondering through my spirituality for years. And yet I have still not come to a satisfactory conclusion/way forward.

[lhexa.livejournal.com]

I'd like to hear more about that spirituality sometime.

The idea that personal growth should be completed concurrent with the full growth of the body is a severe mistake humankind has made, I think. That should be the time when a person's identity just begins to move towards its mature form, once the body is at its full capacities and the mind has a broad grounding of basic knowledge and skills to work from. Instead, people rarely get the option to develop anything more than a career, and most don't even get that.

I hope you manage to find a good way forward, too.

[broken-bokken.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth, you've never come off as arrogant to me.
I've always found the neat thing about living in the present is that it moves you forward by grace of time going on. But then, I'm lazy when it comes to letting life make my decisions for me.

[lhexa.livejournal.com]

That's because arrogance has been one of my more subtle qualities... during adolescence it involved studying all conceited and vain behaviors I could recognize and training myself not to have any of those habits. It was the sort of arrogance that makes a person think he's above arrogance, though I was still closed to others' advice. Thankfully, that quality is far more subdued nowadays.

Time doesn't seem to be as effective a medicine for me.

I don't think your life has been lazy or irresolute... socially and materially you might still be too subject to chance, but you've done a remarkable job in preserving a sense of ethics and dignity through trials that would have crushed another person entirely.

[wickedorin.livejournal.com]

I think I can relate to a lot of this. The first sentence seems to sum up quite a bit of what goes on in the back of my mind. Which may sound a lot more bleak than it really is. Helps to keep me going, anyway.

Now, as for a resolution... well, we'll see what happens.

[lhexa.livejournal.com]

...I don't follow.

[wickedorin.livejournal.com]

...I'm not sure I do either, at this point. That'll teach me to attempt a response when I'm that tired.