Still my old self. Ready to knock one back.
— Seamus Heaney
That one must follow the heart’s desire has been acknowledged as an unsullied truth. It is a tenet of an idealist vein, which presupposes that humans bear a core of truth in them. A person who takes the wager with this wisdom is regarded as either “untarnished” by another idealist or as “starry-eyed” by a self-identified pragmatist. I will borrow a tad of the pragmatist’s view and claim that this wisdom is inevitably subject to the test of endurance while a person participates in the concerns of life. Surely, contemporary life presents its specific concerns. Plus, every person has a unique dynamic of concerns. Nevertheless, the sacrosanct truth of chasing one’s passion can be probed and tested in an investigation that is not necessarily cynical or facilely instrumental. It is the investigation afforded by life itself.
Life presents a dizzying plethora of lives to observe and witness. The virtue of observation is the ability it affords in learning from someone or something apart from the self. My fault during my younger years was my inability to take cues from other stories and lives. Innocence – or naïveté, and the reticence of my youth no longer suffice as an excuse for my adolescent shelteredness. Thus, I did not enjoy any one of life’s inexhaustible stores of stories – not even the cliché that people must follow their dreams, in order to assuage my fear and push my limits. I did not follow my heart’s desire. Despite this, I have had my own life as my specimen, so to speak, that I can look into. Meanwhile, I have shelved my heart’s desire along with the murmuring dreamy counsel that I should have followed my heart. Unconsciously, I have put to the test the staying power of this persistent murmur.
While my own life may present its own insight, the lives I have glimpsed betray commonalities that may be placed into provisional types. One type is those who have followed their passion, and in so doing, suffered pain, poverty, and at some point, social indignity. While the poet Edgar Allan Poe may be the epitome of the suffering artist, others, in less dramatic ways, have suffered the deprivation of comfort in order to satisfy the heart’s calling. Fulfilling the artist’s dream may entail other deprivations. The family’s approval and support, the insurance for one’s future, the promise of the instituted ladder to climb and its illusion of stability are commonly denied of an aspiring artist. In extreme moments, an aspiring artist may experience the shame of deprivations. After all, a less-than-refined appearance and wobbly life do not easily invite people’s respect and confidence. In such moments, it is easy to fall into the pit of self-pity. Yet, sheer strength of these dreamers eggs them on in the face of many severities.
Another type is those unable to follow their passion on account of their responsibilities to their family. These repressed dreamers are denied even the wager that those who follow their passion can take pride on. Surely, gloom creeps into this path. After all, to sacrifice one’s inner calling incurs pain. However, other pressures impinge on this repressed dreamer: the expectation of family, sense of filial duty, experience of physical poverty, and even a kind of native levelheadedness. No longer the center, the inner calling is overtaken by these pressures. The benefit or basic relief reaped from the satisfaction of these demands becomes the substitute stuffing for the void left by the sacrifice. In this instance, the repressed dreamer deliberately goads and reminds the self to take pleasure in the relief and substitute benefit. One becomes an accountant by necessity – counting and cataloging each material relief and benefit.
A third type is those whose passion has found a niche in the current socio-economic system. Also included are artists, whose type of artistry draws quantifiable market, some commercial currency, or satisfies a supposed collective need such as culture. I leave to the specialists the information of what makes these artists publicly successful. Nonetheless, situational support, on-point timing, a level of persistence and talent converge magically creating the luck of these self-actualized artists. The harvest of these happier artists varies: some degree of public following, fame, recognition of efforts, even monetary compensation. Their passion has been the source of their self-actualization, and perhaps, their livelihood to boot. Nevertheless, acclaiming their good fortune entails the risk of inadequate insight into the tougher, subtler parts behind the evident glimmer. The idea of sacrifice and hard work has been too familiar that it is in danger of superficial understanding and mere lip service. Personally, I find it hard to discern what the public confessions of successful artists stand for or convey about my anonymous, quotidian life; or, if their success stories necessarily elucidate what is attainable in the world. Anyhow, what success is may be more complex than what the exemplums can contain.
A classificatory rumination like this is naturally with the risk of oversimplification. This cannot be emphasized enough. Misrepresentation lurks, even misunderstanding. Yet, it may be said that humans in contemplation sometimes stumble upon some order or some pattern, even if impressionistic, which helps them make a conscious step. So I venture into distinguishing a last type. The last type is those who have managed to heed their inner calling, though in constant danger of not being able to do so, with plenty of negotiation, adjustment, even delay and modification of their needs and expectations. These daring dreamers take on the challenge of juggling varied and opposed needs. With enough balance of romantic ether and levelheadedness, they work, press, cast to be practicable their personal passion in order to juxtapose it to supposed practical demands like filial duty and monetary need. In so doing, personal standards and values are constantly questioned and tested when an adjustment of need and expectation is pressing. Crucially, this process involves a constant readjustment of one’s perspective. Self-doubt of possibly being a sell-out or a fraud is an interior battle. The relief is that one is eased of the charges of delusion, selfishness, pride and vanity by which the idealists are hounded. And undeniably, even if an idealist is willing, negotiation is a hard feat to achieve by itself. Cleverness, resourcefulness, endurance in waiting, and great timing – in levels almost Odyssean, need to be learned and practiced. It may be argued that more exertion is put forth by a negotiating dreamer than by an idealist dreamer. An idealist dreamer may be accused of having become lazy for no longer being stirred to reevaluate ingrained standards. In contrast, the negotiator takes the task of working out one’s own core and supposed roots, transforming it, and subjecting it to doubt as well. The dreamer especially the idealist is reminded that possibly, the heart’s desire is not an unchanging essence; and that possibly, the ideal is changeable and subtly flawed rather than permanent and singular.
~
Typically, we experience one aspect of modernity as the wrestle between internal needs and external structures. This is further fueled by the modern ethos and mandate of individualism, which retains at base the idealism and romanticism that have given birth to it. Thus, we are compelled to live a personal truth. We are convinced that it is one of the privileges of living in a modern, and supposedly more evolved, time. However, the paradox to this supposed ideal of self-actualization is the infiltration of the idea of success. Inevitably, success is socially determined. That is, our success is declared by other people; we cannot claim it for ourselves. Success needs proof, often provided by society. The paradox of modern individuality is that this individuality that must be actualized must be unique; yet, it must be simultaneously in agreement to and in satisfaction of the standards of the instituted social systems. This is success. And an institute-determined standard of success becomes legitimate and socially accepted since approval by other people is undeniably a human need. Social approval is yearned for by everyone, even if covertly, even if ostensibly resisted. The proviso, then, is that there are special bodies in society instituted to declare success on one’s individual work. Indeed, added to the burden of the suffering artist is lack of social approval, alienation and at times, exclusion even from peers. Edgar Allan Poe during his lifetime comes to mind again. It turns out then that the idealist’s credo of following one’s passion has a covert clause. One’s inner truth must find a society. Not just any society, but one with a clout and impact. Then, the merit of one’s inner truth is answerable to, or is subject to the prevailing standards of this social circle. One’s inner truth is answerable to something other than itself or its supposed uniqueness. More often, it is answerable to a living society, living people and whatever partialities they may share and brandish about. By itself, this answerability to a society already entails a struggle. Approval of social circle eludes, may come then go. It is the toughest to attain because it can be finicky, and fickle. Rewards are hard to imagine, for the forms they can take are uncertain. Self-actualization is a hope, not guaranteed. Monetary security is a sacrifice one must be willing to make when it proves an impossibility. One may dream of far posthumous acceptance, but one must dream first of a level of talent like that of Emily Dickinson; or at least, of a peculiarity that will match the peculiarity needed by a future crowd; and in reality, one must dream also of a considerate executor who will be able to preserve one’s work.
Because complexities can demand much but proffer no solution, sometimes, the easiest and simplest sense one can hold onto is: one must do what one feels must be done. Effort without regard of results. Work for the love of the work is the only life-vest a person with little fortune can hold onto. Again, one trudges the suffering artist’s path. Who knows, by luck or miracle, one may happen upon the happier artist’s path. If one chooses to negotiate, then one must read into and presage probable results; thinking of results becomes a need for survival and longevity. Fifteen years after graduating from college, I still hear the hum that I must follow my inner calling. After all, that we must dream and believe is one slogan on repeat on public media. And perhaps, the romantic, idealist and individualist vein in me is lodged deep. Thus far, I have only been doing trial sprints instead of “chasing my dream,” as the expression goes. Despite that, interestingly, I have already found myself many times in three of the four paths I mentioned. I have suffered, counted consolation, and sneaked into negotiations. Indeed, my life is no inspiring tale of special feat. My most brazen claim is that I have been learning to observe life. And bit by bit, I have been attempting to learn witnessing other lives, and attempting to think from their lives besides my own. If only I could learn to witness, then that would already be an invaluable boon by life itself. For someone who is a commoner and not successful by any standard, slowly learning to witness is a boon of life unexpected.
Murmurings and Mimicries 