Approximately Adam: Hope Versus Fear

March 05, 2006
Hope Versus Fear

It's 2:49 am. I'm sitting in the dark of the bedroom that I have occupied since my bed had bars and my wallpaper had choochoo trains. I was sitting in the same place under the same conditions yesterday this time. Yet yesterday I was filled with despair. Maybe not at 2:49 am; maybe I was still comfortably distracted by the latest "Battlestar Galactica" episode. That's one of the great qualities of entertainment: distraction and escapism. Tonight I have just finished watching the feature length documentary on the story of Rent. Earlier I watched the movie with my mother, certain she wouldn't get it or worse simply wouldn't connect with it — I was, needless to say, pleasantly surprised.
The cumulative experience is the better, bolder achievement of entertainment: reflection and connection. Last night I looked to entertainment to ignore or put off my problems. Tonight I looked to entertainment to confront and reassess my problems.
The night as a whole was an experience in validation. Just when I felt sure that I'd blown another friendship, sheer persistence kept it at the very least flickering. Last night, I went to bed feeling one of my best friends was no longer capable of connecting or emotionally understanding problems of others that didn't directly involve him. Tonight, after a night of IMing with others, a window pops up. I was on my way offline; I thought about ignoring it, being petty and impatient. I felt sure I was going to get sucked into a two-way barrage of self-centered bitching. Instead, he just wanted to know if there were any updates on the car wreck. It was a simple brief question, and yet it was one that reminded me how wrong my assessment of him the night before had been. No matter how much we all get sucked into our own problems, the spark that originally connects us flickers on.
The more the world breaks me down, the more battered, confused, and self-conconcious I get, the more I find myself returning to trust, faith, hope, and yes - love. The more angry and mean I am at my worst, the most optimistic and caring I am at my best (sometimes even in spite of myself). Everytime bass music pounds through my apartment ceiling or some asshole lights up their cellphone in a movie theater and I become infuriated at their discourtesy, the more I validate the childhood qualities that keep me from being one of the same. Everytime I dismiss someone as a fag or a dyke or a kike or a nigger or a spic, the more I slam against a world view that bars me from engaging them first and foremost as a human being with hopes, desires, strengths, weaknesses; inevitably I come to feel towards them all of the hatred or love that they deserve above and beyond cultural differences that seem impenetrable. As I grow increasingly unstable and self-defeating, the one thing that has remained constant is that I am utterly incapable of being apathetic. I can't settle into a comfortable intolerance because I can't stand the idea of not engaging any new presence in my life - even if the presence is offputting or irritating.

^{posted by Adam at 03:15 |}

0 Comments: