sweet ’n’ sour tape #37: slouching towards bethlehem
Somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
- The Second Coming by W. B. Yeats (1919)
The hamster in a hamster wheel doesn’t know it’s in a wheel.
These rodents are blessed with pouches in their cheeks that let them store extra food, hind feet that let them run just as fast backwards as they can run forwards, and even the ability to remember family members they haven’t seen in some time. They have moods, can be trained to respond to their name, and even use their paws like human hands to grip food and toys.
For them, the wheel is a toy, past time, or exercise. It’s not a concept they care to be familiar with, nor do they need to. When they’re bored, it’s stimulating. When they’re tired, they hop off.
It makes me wonder, as athletic and simple-minded as these creatures are, if you forced them to stay in a hamster wheel with no escape, would they be able to stay sane longer than the average human? Would the hamster be motivated by the idea that hey, maybe the place I’m going to is really far, so I just need to hit survival mode and keep on running, while the human immediately understands the grave nature of the situation and resigns themselves to the slow, lurking, unequivocal death that awaits them?
Is there a point where each of these animal’s psyches align?
Is the dreadful paradox of stationary momentum an experience you can recover from, if some omnipotent being suddenly released the hamster wheel and allowed both animals to return to their previous life?
Would the hamster still remember its family?
I guess I understand now why they call it the rat race. Slowly but surely it strips you of all agency and turns you into a rodent, with the “light at the end of the tunnel” really just being the carrot on a stick to distract you from oblivion.
Can you tell the cabin fever is getting to me?
Succeeding in software requires a sound understanding of general coding principles and approaches, the ability to develop clean, well-tested projects that increase in difficulty to prove your “worth”, and of course, networking. All of that is doable to me. What gets to me is the time commitment. The hours that turn into weeks that turn into months of debugging, reading documentation, trying to find the most impressive, resilient, easily understandable architecture for your problem (which is like a Venn diagram from hell by the way), being stuck for 4 days trying to implement a feature and when you finally figure it out the joy is short lived because oh no, it’s already about to be the weekend and I fell behind on my other goals and the next week is starting.
All that work for something that isn’t even my passion, reaffirms my decision almost 5 (!!!) years ago now to say fuck it, this isn’t me, this isn’t what I want or need, I want to focus on creation that sparks conversations and improves and empowers lives, even if it’s just an anime on Netflix, or a season’s collection of clothes, or an album on Spotify. If I can design and make art that means something to someone else in a positive, helpful, or inspiring way. That shit is better than any high drugs could get you.
You know all this already though. So what am I getting at?
I’m in a position where I don’t have much to complain about. My expenses are taken care of for the most part. I have a car, an amazing girlfriend, great time-tested friends, and I live in a familiar, comfortable environment for free that I have to myself from 7:45AM–5:00PM every weekday. I drive to Dunkin’, grab a frozen coffee, come back and smoke a blunt, and then blast music or podcasts while I code and design things. It’s not a bad deal at all. I’m on the job grind and making good progress every single day. Social media lets me get my dosage of memes and news, iMessage allows me to be connected to friends like you who have moved or have different schedules, and my knowledge expands almost double in a span of a week — I’m always smarter than I was a week ago, and practically a genius compared to where I was two or three weeks ago.
My problem is that I feel like Reiner. Specifically, I’ve been thinking of that scene where he really buys into being a scout, and then Bertholdt triggers his memory with the phrase “We’re warriors, remember?”
And I do. That’s really my only issue. I remember a life full of creativity and excitement, soaking up as much good work as I could, hearing an idea in my head come to life, reveling in the process of perfection to craft the most emphatic, hard hitting music and visuals I could. Even sucking and improving felt so rewarding to me, I could practically feel closer to my goals even if I was still lightyears away. If anything I wish I did even more and took it less for granted. I had no idea what would come next, and how mundane and draining it would be in comparison. Sucking and improving is only fun when you give a fuck about whatever you’re trying to become good at. Otherwise, it’s an expected chore to help you reach the minimum standard demanded by your industry. Great, my program doesn’t crash anymore. So fucking cool right?
I feel like the typical, expected lifestyle in America is the red pill disguised as the blue pill. There is no explicit choice between both — that’s bullshit. If you distract people you can make a buck off them, and that’s the modus vivendi for all of corporate America. Lure ‘em in with the allure of upward mobility and contingent “benefits”, and then straddle them with debt, stress, and fearmongering to keep them in line, in control, and most importantly, in your pocket. The salary isn’t simply a paycheck- it’s a rain check that says:
“You don’t have enough of this right now to cover the buy-in and sit with us at the table. But hey kid, you live up to your potential and maybe one day you will.”
I remember who I want to be and everything I want to accomplish. I remember deciding to take a detour down my current path so I could get there effectively. I remember putting my dreams to sleep and promising that I would come back for them no matter what. But time. Time siphons the life and bonds of everyone it touches. And the clock still ticks in the matrix, as slow as it may seem. Drudgery begets questions like:
When I do become him, will it be the him I thought he was? Will the time I put in to afford the dream be repaid in full by its realization? I‘ve been waiting to “release” him upon the world, but who am I releasing? Is he really me? Or is he gone forever… just a warm, fuzzy portal to a time long lost tucked away in the back of my mind?
Luckily, our conversation today made me realize — you are always who you choose to be. Which means its your responsibility to carry that mindset wherever you go, whenever the time is, whatever the occasion (or job) is. I am a creator. I am an artist, a hunter, an uplifter. No title can bestow that upon me because I already know it. But every path has a price, and this is my method of paying it. And if that’s all it is, then that’s all it needs to be. Everything you do doesn’t define you, otherwise we’d all be awful people.
What’s important is the shit we’ve been spitting in these tapes… developing your understanding of yourself and then pursuing that to the fullest. An indomitable man is the most dangerous man there is. So you shut up and put in the reps you’re supposed to do, jump through the hoops until there’s none left, and embrace the evolution and experience that comes along the way. Whether that means reminding yourself everyday of what you’re missing or striving for, or reintroducing your passions into your life in the small amounts you can (which I think will be the approach I take for this personally), conviction is an active process so prepare to stoke the flames until you make it. The poem I quoted at the beginning has this other sick line: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.”
I’ll wake up soon, and when I do, I’m gonna rock the shit out of Bethlehem.
