After spending so many years trying to become ever more closely engaged with politics and decision-making, and working so hard to understand the nature of power, it's all suddenly a little bland. Maybe it's the amount of news resources dedicated to such mind-numbingly boring topics as dog registration, the miracle of cold weather in winter, or soldiers who are, surprise surprise, tragically killed by a war, but I'm well and truly switching off.
I dunno, maybe it's just that cynicism is settling in in my old[ish] age, but whatever happened to all my dreams? It may have been the realisation that there is no way to change 'da system'. Or the marked lack of surprise I felt when I saw that the seat of power was on different days either a series of petty squabbles or a bunch of lemmings . Thing is though, I saw this a long time ago, so why the disenchantment now?
You know, I think the childish optimist in me has finally been broken?
Long ago I thought that people were basically good. I thought that if you tapped into the right kind of feel within people you could release that good. I thought that if you were the person you wanted people to be, they would echo your truth. I thought that being true, being conscious, was enough, despite all my foolish failings. I thought my failings would fall away in time, I thought my foolishness would fail in time. I saw all the ways in which badness perched within me, and I smashed them one by one. I starved my greed. I held my vanity apart till it withered. I ridiculed my envy. I suffocated my laziness. I tried to bathe in humility.
And in all these things I failed, because for each and every darkness I let light fall upon, for every moment of freedom it granted me, still there remained more. Always more. But I tried.
But is that ever enough? Can you ever truly be what you hold up as your own ideal? Ideals are beyond we mere mortals, leaving us only to ever aspire. Is enough to only sing what they call songs of love and healing unto things we can never be?
And that's the vacuum. I think that trying to aspire to some kind of excellent goodness is a little naïve, a little flakey. Some people are good, and it's right for them to maintain their positive, giving outlook on the world. People like that have carried me time and time again through the years, and I still hear every one of the messages they left me with. Sometimes it's just good to lean on someone, you know? But what I seem to remember about these kinds of people is that they just are. Perhaps they too battle with the desire to be a better person, but the ones I remember the most are those who just were.
The desire to make a difference the way these people do has left me though. Once I thought that I could be as true, but you can only be disenchanted so many times. God, the world is just so full of the unconcious, petty, venal, greedy and insane. The kinds of people who bring back to me all those things I thought I'd left behind. So again I ask you if it's enough? Is it enough to be the best man you can be in spite of the failings?
Perhaps it is. Perhaps all a good man can do is listen to all the white noise put out in the guise of information and truth. Keep learning to understand ever-widening circles of others. Keep trying to be true to the ideals you choose to represent. Discard self-abasement and just get on with the getting on. Finally shake out the last of the fledgling feathers.
Who knows, perhaps in time the circle will turn, the melancholy will fade, and the ideals will come back. Perhaps losing a little faith in goodness and seeing human darkness is part of the learning. After all, imposing an ideal on others, when I know I can never achieve it myself, is sometimes called arrogance. Interesting Catch-22 that one.