It fascinates me how easily we live as if certain things are real, whether or not they actually are.
These could be presuppositions about life, reality, and the way things work, opinions about how situations work themselves out, learned reactions to the flavors of happenstance — all of which we inevitably collect through life and keep/discard according to their worthwhileness in our eyes, all of which we carry about us with the messiest combinations of pride, shame, joy, guilt, sadness, and hope.
The fact of this collection of “as-if’s” is not that surprising, really.
But what astounds me is the number of things we tell ourselves to live with, or to live as things to live by, without sufficient reason or necessity.
This thought came to me as a gut reaction to something my aunt said as we discussed car purchases last week. (If you are reading this, auntie, know that I quote this for illustrative purposes as well as for my own entertainment; I do not intend to make a spectacle out of your opinion, though it may seem that way by the end of the post.)
She asked me how in the world I expect to take care of a baby in the car as I drive stick.
I told her that, given that I am still very much single right now, plus living a life not well-suited for child-rearing anyways, it would be at least a few years before I would face such a dilemma (if it is even one).
My aunt shook her head, saying I never know when that would happen.
I laughed again — “not know that life-partnerships take time to grow into, and that babies require nine months to come into existence?” — and said I have no intention of making decisions today as if I am in situations I may be in years down the line. Maybe my future forecasting is weaker than what my aunt liked to hear, but it seems silly to not drive a stick shift today (and for the next few years) because that same thing would make life more difficult in a particular version of a potential future of mine.
The logic simply does not compute in my brain. Sure, I respect the right of others to have their own opinions (though at times this respect is rather tenuous), but I really cannot respect every opinion just the same. Not all thoughts are created equal, after all. They simply are not.
Since that exchange some days ago, I have been wondering why some people would think and make decisions like that. Am I missing out on wisdom of such depth my naïve twenty-something mind is incapable of grasping?
It is as if there is a default setting in us that demands for control over our perceptions of environments and situations around us — we would rather live in fantasies we can alter and manipulate than accept the messy unknowns and cannot-controls of what actually is.
I once heard somewhere that, unless we actively think differently, we tend to choose a definite evil circumstance over an uncertain or unknown outcome.
When we write that out in black and white, it seems obvious that such an approach is illogical at best, destructive at worst. But I think it tends to be more true than we would like to admit — for myself, I know I gravitate towards that train of thought way too often.
Some things make sense to “live as though” in our day-to-day due to their inevitability, even if not presently true or real for us. Remembering that you will die — at any moment of any day, at that — and living with that meditation regularly (if not constantly) in your mind is reasonable and powerful, because — you guessed it — you will die. Taking care of your mind and body as if they could break and grow old is sensible, because they will deteriorate; by taking this approach to decisions big and small, you may even slow down the process a little.
But to make decisions as if you are a married woman — with kids, to boot — when you are a single woman feels off to me; as does “sacrificing” the things you love and desire for the job that is supposed to allow you to have those very same things; as do other decisions of that nature where you force a mindset into a time and place where it honestly and clearly does not belong.
…I think this turned into a rant again. Oh well! I have no excuses, no apologies. This blog is the best place I could find to formulate half-decent responses to inflammatory remarks friends and family make to (or about) me, without being disrespectful to them in-person. One must takes inspiration in whatever form it chooses to come in, I suppose. Besides, thanks to this approach my prose becomes more lively and impassioned than the apathetic pontifications I allow myself to publish from time to time. Either way, you are welcome.
Anyways, just yet another reminder to be careful of the “as-if’s” you live by. Thank me in the afterlife. 😉