Ob-la-di, Omelas, Life Goes On.

[tablesaw]

Today, I was stopped by a policeman on foot, a few yards from the building where I work, who demanded to see my ID badge before letting me into my building. I learned later that there was (or they suspected there was) a man with a gun in a nearby building, which circumstance necessitated a police lockdown.

Yesterday, from the other side of the wide, dusty, white van in front of me, someone's fender exploded (or so it seemed from my obscured position), spreading itself and various other bits of hood and wheel across the five lanes. I drove around, without the time to look.

A week ago, a friend rear-ended another car, after he let his insurance lapse. About this time, his mother left town to attend the funeral of a relative.

And I'm mildly concerned, because I have to dispose of a traffic citation.

* * * * *

In "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" [broken link fixed, 9/29/10], Ursula K. LeGuin poses a society that is a Utopia beyond Utopia, at the cost of the inhumanity beyond inhumanity perpetrated upon a single scapegoat. In the past week, I've been casting it in terms of a single person's psyche.

Accomplished people stereotypically have "demons," personal traumas that are, somehow, at the root of their creation. I can understand this, personally. In the past, I had my own "demon," a sort of psychogenic tapeworm, that demanded accomplishment for its own sake. "Exorcising demons" is a wonderful conceit, but I find the tapeworm metaphor to be more accurate. One feeds it and feeds it and feeds it, and the parasite expands, while the food provides less sustenance to feeder.

I used to have an ambition to become famous, accomplished, respected by all. To make it to The Top. I don't quite know what I would have done there, but I definitely needed to get there. In many spheres (class, creation, love life), I constantly needed to do more and prove more, usually at the expense of more of my time, energy, health, etc. But I got quite a lot of things done.

* * * * *

And so, Omelas, considered not societally, but personally. Do people accede to locking away a part of themselves into the dark, denying it care and love, to try to create a fuel for their remainder? I think that many do, even those who never come close to accomplishment.

I'm at a moment of conflict. I am aware that I have "done" very little in the three years since I graduated college. But I feel happier than I ever have for that nothing. Creation is hard and without an ever unsatiable parasite driving me, it's hard to find the energy. If I will be happy whether I write or whether I read, why not read? There is still so much to be read, and I'm still happy.

Perhaps I feel that the purpose of life can't be "to be happy." That's too simple. At a quarter of a century old, I am happy, and that happiness is not a struggle.

And somehow, I long for that tapeworm or another or anything or anyone to answer the question: "What next?"

* * * * *

They go on. They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

— Ursula K. LeGuin, "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas"

Comments

[rfreebern.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean, about the tapeworm. I still feel the tug of that ambition to Be Someone, but less and less lately. I used to write down every idea I had, and struggle to try and finish as many of them as possible, and feel dejected when I thought about everything that I wasn't getting done. Lately it's been easing up, though. I think I'm realising that how I feel about myself is more important than how the world perceives me due to my accomplishments. (Hearing praise from the world helps with my own happiness, though, so a balance must be struck.)

I don't think "to be happy" is the purpose of life, because that can foster selfishness. I think it's something closer to "to create happiness," to strive to do what leads to a surplus of happiness among all those affected, yourself included. Once you've found personal happiness, shouldn't the next goal be to share it?

If you feel that you have achieved happiness, yet you still feel unfulfilled, doesn't that seem to indicate that you've only reached a plateau of happiness, and not the peak? (Not that I think anyone can ever really reach the peak.) At any plateau, you can either help others up or keep on climbing. Just standing around will get boring.

(I like the way you write.)