I had a great day. Then I had a shit day. I wonder what today will be.
I’m 44 years old. 16,071 days. 1,388,000,000 seconds.
I’ve had lots of great days. I think I’m supposed to say “I’m lucky” or something here, like it’s not my own fucking choice to have great days. Like I have no agency in my life and it’s all up to happenstance. That mindset really bugs the shit out of me — the idea that I’m not in control of anything. That I don’t so much find it as it lands in my lap or, oh well, I guess it didn’t so I’ll be sad and unlucky.
Nah, I refuse to accept that.
Certainly I’m not in control of all of my circumstances. I didn’t choose to be born into the richest nation in the world with all the extra chances I got. If I’d gotten to choose I would have made sure my parents were super rich rather than working middle class. I mean, if I’m in control I’m growing up on a fucking yacht.
Living is struggling to get control of your circumstances, and the hand you’re dealt isn’t your choice.
I will always struggle to control my life and circumstances, just like every other human in the world. There is not a single one of us that is in control. None of us, not Elon Musk nor a child younger than Squirt who’s already working every day in China just to eat. We all have bad days, it’s axiomatic. But some of us, in fact I think almost all of us, at least have the chance to find good days. We all have some control over ourselves.
That, too, is the human condition. That we’re in control of how we face the world. We don’t control the world, but the story of civilization is a story of growing agency. Never enough agency, certainly never complete agency, but some. Always some. And always ourselves.
You only lose it forever if you choose to stop looking. Your life is only complete shit if you choose for it to be complete shit. I refuse.
It is inevitable that you will lose some struggles. Inevitable that sometimes you’ll have to quit. You can find yourself in the middle of the ocean without a boat in sight and you can only swim for so long. Nobody can swim forever, but you can swim a lot fucking longer than your brain will tell you that you can.
Dungeon Crawler Carl is some silly shit. Talking cats with laser beams and tiaras. An AI with a foot fetish. It is also one of the best philosophical treatises I’ve ever read. It is one of the examples of why I love stories. It shines a spotlight on humanity. Carl has a saying in these books. A saying he tells himself at the darkest times in the dungeon he’s been thrown into for the entertainment of the intergalactic masses. It’s not what I say in my dark times, but it’s pretty damn close.
“You’re not going to break me. You might hurt me, or kill me, but you’re not going to break me.”
On the dark days, this is what I tell myself. This, too, shall pass. Right? This is a foundational concept of cognitive behavioral therapy — recognizing the transience of any particular feelings or thoughts but also recognizing that the way you’re thinking is incredibly important.
I’ve found it many times, and when I don’t have it I’m searching for it. It’s also impossible to define. Maslow called it a peak experience. Programmers call it flow. Psychologists use the term self-transcendence. The Greeks called it Eudaimonia. Buddhists call it Nirvana.
What I like about all of these, beyond the fact that you can write whole fucking books trying to describe what you mean and still fail, is that they all admit to it being a fleeting thing. This is not so much a destination as it is a thing you are always moving towards and cannot “reach” in the truest sense of the word. It’s like a mathematical asymptote - something that you’ll never meet.
The other thing I like about all these concepts is that it is understood to be mutable. One day it can just be holding a baby Squirt in my arms and reading out loud to him. Another day it might just be a beautiful sunny day and I’m holding Spouse’s hand. Or sitting on my porch with a book I just finished and listening to the rain. A highly impactful day at work. A quiet drive to the fish store. Every single one of these things can be the joy, and every single one of these things ends. Every joy is a promise of sorrow.
I don’t have a point here. I had a great birthday, then I had a shit day, and then I woke up an hour earlier with a storm in my brain so I sat down to write it out. That is something I can always control, just putting it on the page. So here I am talking about finding it, and losing it, and clutching to the reality that great birthdays come to an end and shitty days come to an end. Ups and downs are how you know you’re alive and it’s my choice which of them I’ll remember. It’s my choice to refuse to be broken. My choice to control what I can — which is only myself as best I’m able.
