Weird People
IF anybody out there is paying attention and has missed my presence here over the last few months, I apologize. Metaphorically speaking, I don’t “have internet” in the cave where I’ve been hiding and my devotion and energy level for journaling and blogging has been pretty low. The days are getting longer…some flowers are starting to poke through the dirt…so I am peeking out again. Well, here goes…something.
I cannot pretend to completely imagine what brings each person to read my rambling thoughts. You might have a sense of “displacement”–or brokenness–your self. You might be married to such a person, or in some other sort of “significant” relationship. You might have a broken and suffering parent, sibling, or child. It could just be peripheral curiosity–a sort of personality voyeurism. It is not my purpose to know these things; although I do sometimes wonder about them…obviously.
Within the past few weeks I have stumbled upon (as if there were any such thing as coincidence) the writings of Hermann Hesse. First, I wondered how his work had eluded me for all this time–why hadn’t I seen this stuff before!? Maybe things just happen when they’re supposed to happen. In any event, Hesse ably articulates and elucidates some concepts that have held my curiosity for decades now. The following passage–from the opening pages of “Steppenwolf”–really put some things “in order” for me. I have no desire to write a “book report” here, so I’m not going to “set this up” for you…just hit on the ideas that jumped out at me.
It was some remembered conversation with Haller that gave me the key to this interpretation. He said to me once when we were talking of the so-called horrors of the Middle Ages: “These horrors were really non-existent. A man of the Middle Ages would detest the whole mode of our present day life as something far more than horrible and cruel, far more than barbarous. Every age, every culture, every custom and tradition has its own character, its own weakness and its own strength, its beauties and cruelties; it accepts certain sufferings as matters of course, puts up patiently with certain evils. Human life is reduced to real suffering, to hell, only when two ages, two cultures and religions overlap. A man of the Classical age who had to live in medieval times would suffocate miserably just as a savage does in the midst of our civilisation. Now there are times when a whole generation is caught in this way between two ages, between two modes of life and thus loses the feeling for itself, for the self-evident, for all morals, for being safe and innocent. Naturally, everyone does not feel this equally strongly. A nature such as Nietzsche’s had to suffer our present ills more than a generation in advance. What he had to go through alone and misunderstood, thousands suffer today.”
I often had to think of these words while reading the records. Haller belongs to those who have been caught between two ages, who are outside of all security and innocence. He belongs to those whose fate it is to live the whole riddle of human destiny heightened to the pitch of a personal torture, a personal hell. [Italics added]
I cannot tell you how many times I have wondered if I fell through a crack in the space-time machine…born in the wrong decade or century; the wrong country or continent; or on the wrong planet in the wrong galaxy. My sense of aloneness and displacement has been haunting, persistent, growing, and at time severe. Only relatively recently has it become clear to me that there is a huge difference between “unique” and “weird.” All individuals are, by definition, unique. But there is a sort of statistical scattering when it comes to weirdness. I. am. weird. [The ones who know me in real life would affirm my assertion. Of this I am sure.]
Hesse–especially poignantly in the quoted passage–speaks to me. Here he describes the experiences of “displaced” (or “misplaced”?) persons. It has frequently bugged the piss out of me that “people” seem only to be able to examine other times, ages, and places through the filter of their present scene. While in most cases their filters don’t even allow for any incisive consideration of what’s happening under their noses right NOW. If, in Hesse’s time, there were “thousands” who were experiencing the suffering of “present ills” to the ONE in Nietzsche’s day, then surely there must be millions in our times. I am one of those millions…one of millions out of the thousands of millions (i.e. billions) who currently call Earth home.
Consider with me–for the sake of discussion and accepting Hesse’s contention real struggles emerge when ages, cultures, and religions overlap–that today we are seeing the “overlapping” of a multitude of ages, cultures, and religions. Technological changes–and thus commercial and societal changes–are so rapid that one can see several “overlaps” in one’s own lifetime. What once moved at a pace that gradually affected groups of people over generations can, and do, now wash over large portions of the population over the course of years, months, or even weeks. Whether or not things are moving “too fast” isn’t the question or the problem. What is left in the wake of the tsunamis of change is the problem. [This hits me as a nearly inarguable proposition...but if you can set me straight, I welcome your feedback.]
Back to the regularly scheduled programming…
Where does this leave me? Where does it leave you? Whether you’re struggling with the question, “to be, or not to be,” or struggling with a loved one who is struggling with the question, there clearly is a struggle. Do you think Nietzsche had no one in his life that cared about him? That nobody wanted to or tried to love him? That there wasn’t at least one other person that he wanted to love and with whom he wished to relate? What about ______________? Just fill in the blank with any weird, revolutionary, philosophical, religious, etc. historical figure that comes to mind. Or, more pertinently, just fill it in with “me.” We need to “get real.” We need to decide whether or not we can embrace our own stumbling, bumbling self and move forward with a realization and acceptance of our weirdness. We need to decide whether or not we can embrace and realize and accept the weirdness of our stumbling and bumbling significant others. Just because I’m weird–in the words of a dearly departed friend of mine–it doesn’t make me a bad person. Some other things might, but that doesn’t.
Are you one of those whose fate it is to live the whole riddle of human destiny heightened to the pitch of a personal torture, a personal hell? You are NOT alone.
I am Broken Too…
Peace.