Be a Captain, Not an Owner

Sorry for the delay on this one, but this blog is much harder to write for than thebiblicalatheist.wordpress.com.  This one requires something of me I do not think I’m all that qualified for — giving advice.  At least, that’s what I thought, but after reading more and more blogs like this one, I realize it is not so much about giving advice as reflecting certain lessons learned.  I worried that I might at times be inconsistent, and the task of creating some unified life manual was paralyzing, but, as Emerson said (yeah, I’m a dork, but I love this quote) “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”  I realized I could contradict myself (though I don’t think I do here) so long as the contradiction leads to a greater understanding of my thoughts.  So… yeah.  All that was said to cover my own ass.  At the end of the day I don’t know if this is a contradiction of my last post or if it matters or if anyone reading it should give a damn what I think about anything… but you’re here so you might as well go on.

I have heard the following philosophy far too much lately, and I’m getting sick of it.  “Hey, it’s your life, do whatever you want,” or, “Hey, it’s my life, I can do anything I want with it.”  Sure, that’s true.  You can do anything you want with your life, but I’m sick of people thinking that because they can do anything they want with their lives, they should do anything they want.  The fact is, it is your life.  Of course it is, and you can do anything.  But is this the end of your thought process?  Is this the end of your grand philosophy?

Here’s the thing.  My life is my own, and for that reason I cannot do anything I like with it.  Or rather, I have to make sure the reward is worth it before I dub anything “worthwhile” that might adversely affect the other people in my life.  If I want to go write racist novels in Mississippi, which I don’t, I have to make sure that an abandonment of my family (and my morals for that matter) is worth it to me, that it somehow benefits my life, rather than just myself.  Our lives are our own only in so much as we are the people tasked with living them, but our lives are the products of so many people, put together by more parties than we sometimes care to acknowledge, how can we claim we have carte blanche regarding the decisions we make?  How can we claim, as I too often hear, that no one has a right to question the decisions we make?  I admit that not just anyone can ask these questions, but, for most of us, these questioners do exist, and it more often than not behooves us to listen to these select people.  Does this mean we have to take their advice?  No.  But to disregard the questions altogether because they do not come from the mouths of a husband or wife is a mistake, not to mention disrespectful.  Somehow it has become en vogue to think the only people who matter are the people who matter most, and I simply do not understand it.

Whenever I begin to think this way, that anyone who disagrees with my decision can go to hell, I think of the situation this way.  The pilot of a plane is not the owner.  What I mean by this is that the pilot of a plane is in control.  Technically, he can do anything he wants to do and you and I are going along for the ride.  But the pilot has people for whom he is responsible, and he must weigh the welfare of those people, as well as those who are responsible for him (his employers), against his inclinations.  It would be silly to think there has never been a pilot who has thought “Man, I would much rather take this flight to Bermuda rather than Anchorage,” but the fact is he is not the owner of the plane, and there are too many people who would be hurt by his action to make the detour worth it.

And the previous example is why the captain gets all the glory.  He is given absolute power over the well-being of his passengers and crew and, despite this God-like power, will always try to get you to your destination.  The owner can do whatever he likes and, as he is beholden to no one, get away with it.  It is the captain who must show restraint, conduct himself with honor, and benefit those around him before himself.  Now, were there a reward great enough for that captain to make that detour, he would, after long deliberation, have to do what he thought was best, but the true captain, the person for whom the profession is not a job but a calling, will never make a decision which only benefits himself.

So stop telling me how much your life is yours and no one can question what you do with it.  The truth of the matter is your life was given to you, either by God or by parents, and then was made better by those who cared about you.  Your life is shared with them, and until you stop considering that fact a hinderance and realize just how liberating it is, you can never be a captain.

So I guess this advice stuff is easier than I thought.  Defending it… we’ll see.  Remember (like I have to remind you) that I don’t know anything about anything.  I just write stuff down and you can read or not, I can honestly say that as much as I thank anyone who reads it, I care much less than I do with thebiblicalatheist.  Thebiblicalatheist is meant for entertainment above information, and so I have to keep things creative and funny and whether or not I do that is directly reflected in how many views a post gets (and thank you so much for the success so far… way better than I would have ever imagined).  With this, I’m just trying to get to know myself a little better and (shocker) get advice in return from those who have made my life better.  Writing is how I make all those free-flying half-thoughts in my brain make sense, in so much as they do.

Agree or don’t… just please comment.

Live Your Own Damn Life

Hey look!  Another blog!  2007 is awesome!  I hate blogs that document a person’s life.  Those Generation Me assholes who just want you to know they were out last night and had an imaginary threesome.  That’s not what this blog is.  It’s just that I realized I had more to say than I could say on my humor blog, thebiblicalatheist, and I thought maybe I could help people going through the kind of oh shit I’m supposed to be a grown up… now what things I was going through.  So here it is.

As of the time of this writing I am a writer only in the strictest sense.  I write, therefore I am a writer.  I do not get paid, but this is an old story among those who would call themselves “artist” (though I don’t).  That said, I write for more than vanity, writing creative content for a toy company in exchange for the hope of a future paycheck, and for The Free George, a local online magazine here in upstate New York, and I do that in exchange for a byline and the title “Assistant Editor”.

Most of my work with the latter publication pertains to cultural and literary events, reviews of books and readings and the like.  I am one of a team of smarty-pants writers hoping against hope that an editor or publisher might stumble upon our work, cry “genius!” and validate our existence, or maybe that’s just me.

The vast majority of the events I cover cater to the vast minority of readers and I’m okay with that — I’m part of that vast minority — and so when I was asked to cover an event for someone I had never heard of, I was not surprised.  It’s what I do.  I try to make you care about that guy you never heard of.

I emailed my editor to say I would cover the show, and I did so for two reasons, one of which is simple.

I am not (nor do I think I ever will be) rich enough to turn down free passes to anything.  That’s the simple reason.

The second reason may be just as simple, but it does require some explanation.  I have just turned 26 and I haven’t done shit.  In an effort to keep your eyes from rolling back too far in your head (What, he thinks that’s old?) I will try to keep my reasons for this having been a difficult birthday as brief and interesting as possible.

26.  Should my fifty-year-old self walk through the door at this instant and slap me across the face for being melodramatic, I will remind him that the emotions he felt half his lifetime ago were real.  I will remind him how much it bothered him not to be able to stretch the truth and claim to be in his early twenties.  I will mention that he did this not out of vanity, not to get some girl’s number (he got married in his early twenties) but because he simply could not allow complete strangers to know that this part-time Borders employee, this amateur, fledgling-on-a-good-day writer, was old enough to know better.  Who’s going to find fault with a guy in his early twenties who has not started a career?  That’s what your early twenties are for.

But to be officially (two years ago) in my mid-twenties, to be a year away from my late twenties… I just had a different life pictured.  It was a life of safety and security, a life firmly entrenched in the middle class, the life of the tenured teacher, the loving father and husband.  I would ask nothing more of Life and in turn Life would ask nothing more of me.

Then one day, I, through no fault of my own, graduated college with two degrees, the most advanced of which I wanted nothing to do with.  At this point, Life began asking me all sorts of questions for which I had no answers.  Covering a wide range of topics, Life’s questions all began with Will you really…

Will you really be a good teacher if you don’t yet want to be one?

Will you really be a good husband if you try to be anything else?

Will you really be anything else if you become a teacher?

And finally: Will you really let your youth slip from your fingers because you were too scared to close your fist?

Which brings me back to the show I was sent to review, though the show in itself had little effect on me.  I had to arrive early to the venue because the press pass would be released to the general public if I did not show up to receive them two hours two hours before (it was a sold out show).  Having some time to kill after getting the tickets, I had brought Le Morte d’Arthur (yeah, I’m that guy) and my notebook.

I took a seat on the veranda, entirely alone, and watched the sun set behind Troy, New York.  High above the city, a place usually run down and never without the unending wail of a siren, Troy was transported in time to its heyday.  The din of traffic melted to a sultry hiss.  Winter seemed at last to have lost its grip on the weather, and so the biting chill of weeks before had just given way.  Sitting outside, an activity once likened to sliding down jagged ice, had now taken on the allure of slipping between fresh summer sheets.  Though the concert hall not twenty feet to my left was teeming with people, I was entirely alone.  Alone with my thoughts.

I began contemplating my life, wondering what wrong turn I had taken to not be living the life of my parents, who by my age had seen the world and were on their way to a life I always semi-subconsciously assumed I would live.  I wondered what some of my more successful friends had done right that I had done wrong.  I wondered if trying to be a writer was just about the most selfish, irresponsible, reprehensible thing I could possibly do to my wife.  And as the sun set, I had an epiphany, if not a particularly original one.  I realized then and there, sipping a Pinot Grigio, knowing that had anyone accompanied me to the show I would have ordered a beer, that I have to live my own damn life.

I realize this is hardly groundbreaking stuff, but while I had heard it before and even agreed with it, I never lived it.  The thing is, I know this to be true for some friends and family members as well, and I would imagine then that it is true for people I have never met, who might find their way to this blog and and at least consider the possibility that they have not been living their own life, and might follow me as I try to live mine.

What does living your own life mean?  I guess I’ll figure it out as I go, but I start with the idea that it entails taking responsibility for your decisions, the good and bad, firm in the knowledge that if your intentions are pure, if you work and dare like you never imagined you could, even those bad decisions will make life happen.