The Privilege to be Oneself

The Privilege to be Oneself

Samuel Bird

My eyes darted across his face, looking for any hint of him hating me. With each glance of his eyes, tensing of the brow, and angle of the mouth, he spoke new volumes into existence. Could he do it? Could he see further into my soul than anyone ever had and not look away? Would he flinch, refuse, or be afraid? Would there be something at the core of this thing I was and made myself that he would even admire or value? In the modern sterility of our relationship, I was the client, and he was the professional. His concern could be genuine, but it always had to be one step away from me, to maintain his professionalism. He could look into my soul, but it was unbecoming for him to shrink from fear or jump for joy. I was able to tell the story without focusing on it, and more on his reception. With each line, he moved closer to the edge of his seat and tried to control his face, which only sought to confuse my understanding of such. “We didn’t eat much, least of all me. When I was ten years old, I could reach my hands around my stomach and touch the tips of my fingers together on both sides.” I said as I wrapped my hands around my waste. “I’m not well now. From years of fear my stomach has burned and churned until it is will likely be the thing that ends my life. Funny, I fought so hard to keep him from killing me and thought I got away, but I guess in the end he beat me enough in my mind to eventually win.” I continued to talk, and he continued to listen like no one ever had. I can talk while I think about other things, and I remembered what he had said before and was likely thinking while he heard this. “It involved you, but it wasn’t about you.” He would often say. He was right that it was comforting to hear that the horrors were random and meaningless. This removed a sense that I had caused them. However, in taking fault, he took power and I felt that perhaps I couldn’t control the next horror either. “I wish I could tell you the starvation and cold were the issue, but our ancestors could live through that. What really eats up my soul the most, is that I had to do every bit of this...” My layers of awareness slipped from me as I became nothing more than this thought. “Unloved!” He leaned forward. “I wish I had a time machine to find that child and stop it. You deserve so much better and I wish I could have helped you.” I looked away and thought for a moment. “Actually, I don’t want you to have been able to do that?” “Why? Your life has cost you so much?” I tried not to cry as I realized how small I was and how much I had been blessed with. “I...” My voice cracked and my tears misted. “I guess that tells you the price of admission.” 

The existent fact can be broken up between beings aware and beings unaware. This can also be seen as conscious entities and unconscious reality. These are the existent facts. We approach the world as this thing that is related to it, but markedly and materially not the same. For this reason, there is exclusion at that point in the world and to what degree we see. We can either turn over a stone and admire the little creatures beneath the rock, or stare up at the sky. We cannot do both. Any given scene to perceive is at the cost of another scene that could have been perceived. If you lay on the ground to see the insects in the moonlight as well as the stars, you would see both, but it would change the way you would see either. The totality of the scene would have different emergent properties of meaning as well as beauty. What we are is limited in scope such that we have to refuse the one to magnify the other. Perhaps there are countless songs, foods, and scenes to intake, but there is a limit on how much we can, and overdoing so can make the relative value of the next meal or tune less rich. For this reason, we are constantly forgoing the one to possess the other. As I will speak on later, this is akin to where in the world we wish to be. Based on that, we will get a series of variables, only at the expense of others. It is this near arbitrary refusal of one that makes the vibrancy of the other. This has been your life. You have refused the one good for the other. Perhaps rampant drunkenness would have it’s modes of perception that could be beautiful, but the value of perceiving from a clear mind may be more valuable to you. You only have, in terms of what you do not. Every bit of meaning is a derivative of its contraries exclusion. You have forgone and for that reason, you have been able to really and truly possess. 

As I have said, the seperateness of our minds make us inherently lonely. I can give you the worlds that fill my mind, but you can never join me there in the remarkable world of signs and symbols. We can share the world and look at it, but our perception of it will always be off from eachother. Furthermore, I will always be alone from you. Your company can only go through so many levels before it is met by the fact that we are so exactly unique, that we are doomed to be alone. The edges of my soul are precise enough to never overlap or even approximate yours. I am unique. This uniqueness is costly. From it I get the necessary isolation from other minds. However, in that, it has specialty. If you go to sell me a quality good, you would be benefited to be able to add that it was one-of-a-kind. If it was the only one like it in the world, then there would be no way to acquire it anywhere but with you. This exclusivity makes it more valuable, as one has to purchase it now, or always forgo it. So it is true with you. You are so different from any other person, that it has been of great cost to you. You have partnered with others to make and share meaning, values, and percpetion, but you always did so alone. Though conscious entities are similar enough we can wonder whether it is more alike than different, there is certainly enough different to cost you. People will then find lazy ways to identify themselves with others in order to ignore that the they are so similar. We are the same race, sex, or idealogoy, so we must be the same. Your souls state makes you alone in its uniqueness, but there is certainly possible value in such. 

And what of the horrors? It is not just the opportunity cost of sacrificing the perception of one for the other, it is to intake all the low-value facts that come along with it. No matter which path you pick, belief you commit, or facts you fit, you will have to suffer for it. Curse not that which is your souls great committing. It is in this we bring about the fruition of the value offered in something, as we pour a portion of our soul into something. In doing so, there is something to hold our soul. And yet, we still suffer. Everything we do will lead to a new quality of, timing for, and variation of suffering. Some sufferings are just more valuable than others. Take being ill in bed. Would rather it be because of a late night of intaking intoxicating half-poisons that your body fights to overcome? Or, would you rather it be because your child is ill and your love to the child made you proximate enough to be ill? Make no mistake, you will never escape the vitriol, horrors, and misery. Wisdom is manifest, however, in what you willfully burden yourself with suffering for. You know all this, maybe not in word, but in instance. Everything you have done has led to a complex range of effects that have caused misery. These are outcomes you couldn’t have known as you don’t know all the facts about the world. For this reason, your life has been of great cost to you. It has taken all you have. It has pushed you to the point that all you could do was fracture and rebuild your psyche. It has stolen away countless wishes and dreams. However, it has also given you all that you have. Everything valuable comes from the opting into that same system that takes all values. It is only on the other side of the costly that we can acquire. With your life being of great cost to you, it has also been of great reward. Even if not proportional, the fact you pay good money for a meal can make it taste better. 

Now that we know what we pay into existence, namely by our exclusion, isolation, and horrors, what are we paying for? We are paying for the honor to exist. However, other things exist and pay no such price. Rocks never have to cry and lament, yet they can be. We pay the price for the privilege to be ourselves. This good is as valuable as its cost and enough to be worth the transaction. This is not to say that you are so much more special than anyone else. I think my age is full of people making up narratives for why they are so wonderful, and then being surprised when everyone is detached and narcissistic. What I am rather saying, is that the privilege to be any given person is wonderful. That is only enhanced by the specific qualities and facts that a certain instance of a person possesses. It may be nice that you have an honorable profession and it may be advancing to have a specific degree, but these are only values that seem like so much more because of how one is socialized. If you are a peasant in a farming community who gets to see the sun rise and fall each day, how lucky you are. If you are a prisoner who gets to feel the breath in your chest, how blessed you are. If you are dying of a painful ailment and get to look at existence in terms of its cessation, how privileged you are. On top of those, there is the character that you and God co-authored. I need to believe in God more than the facts seem to permit me. While one can always believe, they can always not. It is my necessity that is the tiebreaker, however. I need God in part to make sense of all facts by someone at least knowing them. I don’t need to know all the unknowable if someone does, and perhaps even cares for me. I need to know He watches and that He has His reasons for the horrors. I need God because of all that existence is not. However, I think perhaps I need God for all that life is. How blessed I am, that I get to be. No matter the fortune or happiness post that fact, what a marvelous fact. I need those ears that never rest to hear my gratitude. I am. All else, as far as I am concerned is only because of such. My being is so unique to never again be repeated, so I better revel in its distinctness. Furthermore, I so deeply value your existence, that I would then need ears to hear the praises that you get to be as well. It cost you the giving up of much, seeing the world because you aren’t a part of it, and every bit of pain and misery. All of such that you could be yourself. May I value this enough to give my net estimation? What a privilege you and I have, to be oneself.