The nature of future predictions is to end up eating your words with some regularity.
I’ve grown somewhat used to the taste of my own, though find it no more palatable now than I ever have. I believe this to be because I try still to avoid it. I want to imagine myself brilliant, a keen observer of the scene, who can see perhaps what others cannot, can tug at certain threads that remain unpulled in hopes of leading to some great unraveling.
I want to imagine I am some combination of Nostradamus, Bob Dylan, and Marx, as my ego cannot handle anything less. How silly of me, no?
Already I have come short of this ambition, as in rereading I find myself so often disagreeing.
I firstly, clearly a product of my times, come across as agenda driven and thus biased. Unable to see fully past my own desires and the futures I hope for rather than likely realities, I write with clear ulterior motives; the beliefs that drive the arguments go often unspoken, deeper truths going unsaid.
When I read back over my writings, I see a person growing and changing and bathing in the fresh possibilities of the world. This presents so closely to the world as ignorance, that I suppose it cannot be taken as anything but.That thought initially embarrasses me. I have not posted my name or attached my physical identity to this project for a couple reasons. I can make fancy sounding justifications for why this anonymity might be, but in a word, it boils down to protection. I want to be able to protect my future self from my opinions of today. I want to allow myself the opportunity of growth that might not be allowed if after every article came my name as signature to the above contract. We all know that we ourselves are changing, adaptive things, but we so often don’t allow that grace in others, and I fear the social retribution of my peers. Alas, I am mortal after all. For now.
If I hope to reach this predestined immortality of mine, I must first face truths my indulgent aspects would rather I deny. The first is the comfort of my own fallibility and seeing that in fact, it is not a failing at all. It’s saccharine hogwash we all hear in overabundance: mistakes are a part of life, it’s not about how many times you fall down but how many times you get back up, and on. The embracing of failure leads to the fulfillment of oasis.
I mostly dislike reading the underlying anger that undercuts so much of my writing, and how it hides and distorts too much of my true message of connection and love. Love, love, love. So often I try to justify the anger, say it comes from empathy and our rampant injustice done daily in our world, but I see too that this is just how I color my reality. I internalize more keenly ever injustice done unto me and others so that I can continue to paint the world as unjust, giving less prominence to acts of kindness, connection, and love. I meet a Christian living in accord with the word, and say ‘Here is one of the good ones’, then meet one who struggles to live true to the path and lambast them and say ‘See, what are they like’. How casually I slump into bigotry when it’s in defense of my own perceived values.
Clearly these are values that need more consideration, that need more thought and understanding. I don’t know that I would so soon in my journey realize how much I disagreed with my own public beliefs until I took the courage to actually write them down and get them out there, and now have to defend myself to the verdicts of the public and time.
‘Oh crap, I really said that? Yikes. I mean, it totally sounds like me then, but I was going through a lot at the time, have some understanding!’
Who wants to hear that from a writer? It corrupts my influence upon you, taints my fountain from which you drink leading you to search for other more pure sources of spring. So instead, perhaps still in protection, I will merely address the possibility of error directly, more comfortably, and just say that what we are on is a journey together. I cannot promise the truth in its highest ideal, all I can promise is the findings on my journey as I seek it.
I walk now out towards the entrance of the cave, the world looming, bursting framed by the edges. Scared of the unknown journey I try turning back, and shouting to my tribe still entertained by the dancing shadows on the walls. I shout to them, but they do not hear, I tug at them, but they do not feel, I lift them up, but they only walk back to the show. So now I walk back to the lip of the cave, and with these words, I spring forth out into existence.
– Sam Taylor