Chop wood, carry water

"Before enlightenment: Chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment: Chop wood, carry water." - Zen proverb

So I went back home again. Many of you already know this, but some don't.

Here's the full story.

I went to the airport. I got on the plane, no problem, and I made it to China, no problem. I discovered that my language skills, while severely lacking, were enough for me to communicate with the taxi driver and to get to the university. I could even ask directions to the admissions office and get a dorm room in Chinese, with some help from an English-speaking student to help explain the documents I was signing.

In short, I was much more capable than I had expected. I got myself a dorm room, I enrolled, I had the schedule, I had everything fixed, and I was ready to move into my new room and unpack. So I opened my bag, and remembered that Sara had helped me pack, and I thought, "How would I get by without her? Oh- wait."

That was the first though. It was almost enough, but to be certain, I did some more thinking.

It eventually became clear to me that I had known all along what I wanted, but I had let my fears drown it out. Now, however, I wasn't afraid. I had faced my fear of going to China, and I knew - without a doubt - that I could do it. Which made me realize that the reason I didn't want to go wasn't only that I was afraid, it was also that I simply didn't want to.

So I went back home again. Now, it's the normal humdrum life for me again. Well, almost.

Chop wood, carry water.

Wanting and Fearing, part 2

“I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.” - J.D. Salinger

I wrote about wanting and fearing a while back. I think that post was rather vague. I'm usually vague when I want to talk about something serious. I want to do my best not to be vague now. I'll try not to get poetic, or rambling, and just get down to what I want to say.

What I want to say is terribly frightening to confess. I wouldn't confess it under any other circumstances, but now I'm in a situation where all my bridges are burned, all exits are closed. I'm cornered and I'm basically fucked anyway, so I might as well say it.

I'll start with the confession, and then I'll explain why. This makes for poor textual structure, but I think I need to get out and say it. Here goes:

Tomorrow I will have a choice. I can either board the plane, or I can not board the plane. Whichever option I choose, I will be chickening out. Whichever option I choose, I will be succumbing to fear. No matter what I do, it will be incredibly unpleasant.

Virtually everything I do is motivated by fear. “Pleasure” in my mind is essentially just the absence of fear, with all other qualities being secondary. Which means that, when I make a choice, I generally go with the less frightening option. This is basically true in everything I do. You'd be surprised, really.

Which means that, in the question of going to China, I'm not considering what I want. At all. I claim I do, but I don't, because what I want is so tiny and insignificant compared to what I fear. So, on both sides of the argument, I have fears. On the “dont' go” side, I have a multitude of various fears – most pressingly, the fear of the unknown, but also, the fear of losing everyone I love. This is, I suppose, not very rational. What if everyone forgets me? Unlikely. What if everyone dies in a fire? Then I'd likely die in the same fire if I stayed anyway. An irrational fear. But fear, like want, doesn't have to be rational. We want because we want. We fear because we fear.

On the “do go” side, I have, most pressingly, the fear of losing everyone I love.

That is to say, I'm afraid that if I don't go, I will lose everyone I love. Because I'll be letting them down. I'll be letting you down.

This reasoning does not seem strange to me, because my most guiding, tangible, strong fear is the fear of being abandoned. It's always present, and it's always ridiculously disproportionate. This is the hardest part to admit. Even now, I'm afraid to say it – just writing it, even though nobody can even read it yet and I could just delete it after it appears on the screen. I always, always, always fear this. You think I trust you? On good days I do. On bad days (which is most of the time) I'm convinced that really, you only stick around because you haven't got an excuse to ditch me yet. No matter who you are. If you know me, it applies. It has applied since the day I met you.

And what better excuse to ditch me can you find than “talked all about China for several months and then finally chickened out and didn't go”? I think it's a pretty good excuse. It tells of a person who is all talk and no action, an overblown, self-important jackass who doesn't perform when push comes to shove. It's a classical trope.

Which is why, no matter what I choose, I'll be a coward. In the end I'm going to choose whichever option seems less frightening. I'm not sure what that's going to be yet. I've been pushing the choice until now, always leaving the back door open, desperately hoping for some third alternative, something which doesn't blind me with sheer terror. There doesn't seem to be one. I'm cornered.

Fear is all I have.

The Facts

The facts were these:

That gmail appears to be accessible from China, as long as one accesses it via an email client and not via a browser. I have set this up.

That I will probably obtain an additional SIM card in China to be able to do local calls cheaply - exactly how to do this I haven't quite figured out, though. Maybe I'll have to buy a new phone again, anyway.

That I have made contact with a potential roleplaying group in China, but I don't really know the details yet.

That parting with Sara feels like cutting off an arm. Seriously. It's nauseating and physically painful.

Those are the facts.

Eat. Breathe. Reproduce.

I know it isn't a particularly strange approach to the meaning of life. The theory of evolution has been suggesting this as the "meaning" since, well, since it was invented. We're here to eat, to breathe, to reproduce. We're here to propagate the species.

But I wonder - and this is what bothers me most about the theory of evolution - is that really it? I can live without a grand, cosmic plan, that doesn't bother me. I have no issue with a life in which we create our own meaning. Trouble is, are we really? Isn't there a grand meaning, one we didn't sign up for but got nonetheless? If the meaning of life is to maintain and create life, doesn't that make it all just a grand pyramid scheme in which we're forced to participate? "Sell our product to three of your friends, so that they can sell our product to nine more people, so that they, in turn, can sell our product to..." - "Create at least one new person, so that it can create at least one new person, so that it, in turn..."

Sure, we can try to screw the Grand Plan and just our own thing - we can declare, "I don't want children", and we can even kill or castrate ourselves, thus messing up the entire plan. But can we ever really escape? How do we know that our actions, intended to subvert the Grand Plan, aren't really serving it, by removing unsuitable elements from the gene pool? It may seem paranoid, even insane, to worry about the principle "Eat. Breathe. Reproduce." ruling our lives, but it bothers me. It bothers me because it seems so cruel, so ultimately tragic, that all the beautiful things in life should evolve as completely trivial side effects to a machine that was designed and optimized to eat, shit, and fuck.

"But why should that be a problem?" you ask, "Why can't we just enjoy the side effects, now that we have them?" - well, we can. And that is, after all, what I spend most of my time doing, so I don't have any particular problem with it, at least not one I can easily describe. But somehow, on some level, it feels wrong. It makes me feel like I'm a man who believes himself to see fairies and dragons where really there's only the cold, hard walls of his cell in the asylum. No doubt that man is happy, living an adventurous, exciting life inside his head - but he can't help but doubt, wonder, pick at some thoughts that shouldn't be picked at, secretly suspecting that whatever he believes, the cell is actually real, and the dragons actually aren't.