Running
There are many forms of running, of hiding from the soulless fabric of civilization, the pain of duty and engagement, the obligation to the stage, to your reciprocating audience. Do it for your fans. No, don’t. They’ll be fine without you. Fuck your fans. Reclusion and travel are just two such forms. There will always be more fans, and a better play.
Hell is other people, and the longer, the more so. So we run. Or we’re shouted away. Or forced away. Or dragged away. It doesn’t matter: the results are the same, and the rest are just rationalization for whatever story it is you desire in that own act of yours. We get so lost in all our unending game theoretic dances that in the end, we can decide to think whatever we want. The rainbow of experience has all the colors you need for a self-portrait in any style, from any angle.
And so we run. Why? de Botton doesn’t say. Instead he quotes, with a strange fondness, of grief, of despair, of loneliness. The fondness is one of avoidance: the comfortable feeling of looking away, and pretending not to notice. It’s denial, plain and simple. Denial of what? Too easy. Of guilt. The emotion so basic, and yet too delicate to mention, even in the pontification of self-proclaimed intellectuals. Especially in the pontification of self-loving intellectuals.
But it’s the only one that fits, by simple elimination. The kindess of time melts grief, happy strangers fish you out of despair, and loneliness is on its own full of comforting thoughts. But for self-condemnation there is no help but to look away until you find the strength to face it. Some never do - they wrap themselves in that cold social fabric, be it in the cloth or in the limelight. It’s no use, of course, to ignore it. There aren’t enough blankets to warm up something cold from freezing, only to keep the temperatures separated. There’s only one way to warm up - to be the source, to have the wisdom to find your own warmth and to face the coldness with all the might you can muster. It’s the might to run, the wisdom to know when to stop, when to turn back, and when to return, to apologize, and go on.
Let’s drink to finding that wisdom and that might, when the time for them comes.
