A big part of my philosophy is self-improvement. Maybe it stems from my early interest in buddhism or from reading books with an underlying current of anarchism during high school. I guess the obvious ones to point out would be “Siddhartha”, “A Clockwork Orange” or “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”. Hell, one could probably even throw in my politics – a 21st century blend of socialism and anarchism with a pretty substantial commitment to prefigurative politics/dual power. Y’know: building the world of tomorrow in the shell of yesterday.
That requires a hefty degree of criticism/self-criticism and the ability to change and adapt on a daily basis to shed learned behaviors and acknowledge privilege.
It’s hard, though, to draw a line between what you want to be and what you think people want you to be. Difficult, sometimes, when you’re dissecting yourself to know whether you’re using your own scalpel or borrowing everyone else’s hatchet. Moreover, the more you change yourself the more sensitive you are to others who are doing no such thing. If you’re not careful, it makes you intolerant or impatient or lack understanding.
People are just people, though. Perfection isn’t a destination, but an action; it’s a process. We’ve got to build one another, grow together and acknowledge that the multitude of different experiences and opportunities we’ve each had have brought us to different places at different times.
Too often do we expect everyone to be on the same page. Our culture is so homogenized that we have a habit of drawing all our conclusions and expectations with the same pen we’ve used to draw our own self-portraits. There’s no beauty in that. No challenge, either. It’s fiction, really, and leads us down a path of constant, bitter disappointment.
It’s better, I think, to find meaning in the process and find ourselves in the development of ourselves and others than to unwrap the people in our lives like pre-packaged gifts. Shaking and listening to these fragile packages and taking bets on what’s inside…
