Tell Me Why

Sailing heart-ships thru broken harbors
Out on the waves in the night
Still the searcher must ride the dark horse
Racing alone in his fright.
Tell me why, tell me why

- Neil Young, "Tell Me Why" from the album "After the Gold Rush"

There are always more reasons to justify not taking an action then there are for taking one. A close friend of mine, a wonderful woman at an age where most people choose to be overly cautious, recently fulfilled a life-long dream of skydiving out of an airplane. Prior to her jump, she decided not to tell anyone about her plans until after the deed was done. She didn't want her goal crushed by the cautious admonitions of others.

There are so many ways in which our culture crushes individualism. Somewhere along the line we managed to have a one-size-supposedly-fits-all template engraved into our thinking that dictates how we are to live our lives and what we are to consider priorities, and thinking outside of that box is somehow to be considered deviant behavior that demands a stern attempt to bring dreamers back into line. We are taught to conform, and led to believe that happiness and satisfaction come as a result of our integration into society through conforming to its expectations.

My friend was wise to keep her mouth shut about skydiving until after the jump had been accomplished. In doing so, she deftly sidestepped the attempts that would undoubtedly have been made to lure her back to a more cautious and conforming way of thinking - sterile and passionless, void of risks, safe.

A conforming member of society fulfills his or her duties and obligations without sticking one's neck out. There is no desire to rise above the meager accomplishments and marginal rewards of basic conformity to principles considered to be universal. And little or no thought is given to the fact that this entire conformity-promoting belief structure is part of a larger propaganda machine that has figured out how to get individuals to commit their lives to helping people who are far richer and more powerful than themselves to acheive their goals while suppressing their own - and accepting the notion that suppressing one's own goals is, in itself, a value to be rewarded. People have learned how to use you, and are willing to use you completely up and send you to your grave feeling good about the hopes, dreams and aspirations that you once had for yourself but were willing to let go of in order to become a cog in their machine. And most of the people that you know are so connected to that machine that they feel that it is their duty to "help you" by discouraging you from achieving your goals.

Why else would "bucket lists" exist? Obviously, there are a lot of people who, in their old age, recognize how much time has been lost to the machine and attempt to play catch-up in spite of the fact that their bodies are no longer as youthful as their dreams. Dreams are timeless and do not age, but our bodies and our capabilities have a shelf life that we can ignore only to our detriment. Face it, if you are in your fifties and had hoped to be an Olympic athelete, you're pretty much screwed, and whatever it was that occupied your life and kept you from your goal led you to a life of conformity that, while it may have had it's rewards, failed to provide an opportunity to pursue the one goal that will haunt you every day of your life.

Our culture trains us to disregard hopes and dreams as thoughtlessly as we might flick a bit of lint from our lapel, ignoring the fact that, when it comes to living a truly satisfying life (as opposed to a life utterly weighted down by compromise and self-sacrifice), the stakes are extremely high. We react with horror to suicide bombers who prize martyrdom so highly that they are willing to strap explosives to themselves, but fail to recognize the slow martyrdom of strapping ourselves to desks and cubicles for years and decades at a time in order to futher the rewards and agendas of others. Just as the suicide-bomber is conditioned to believe that there is a reward for their self-sacrifice, the worker who obediently suppresses his hopes and dreams for the benefit of the company is led to believe that a reward awaits at the end of a long career, to be enjoyed when youth is gone, health is suspect, and time can no longer be ignored. To the athelete who once dreamed of earning a gold medal, the gold watch is hardly an "honorable mention."

Interestingly, there are degrees to which one's ambition can be seen as deviant. Express an interest in learning how to play the piano, for example, and one would expect to find encouragement from almost every direction. Knowing how to play the piano is considered by many to be a useful skill even if it fails to lead to a career. On the other hand, tell people that you are planning to record a CD of your own songs and you'll be surprised at how many people you know will disappoint you by rolling their eyes dismissively. It is as if, while music itself is generally appreciated, music that is to be considered good can only come from people that you don't know and from places far removed from the local neighborhood. Unless the culture as a whole publicly acknowledges the value of your work, it would seem that you almost have no right to presume to create anything. After all, who are you to think that you can create anything worth listening to? And make no mistake, there are people that you know who will attempt to enforce this narrow viewpoint through both ambivalence and stinging sarcasm. You'd be surprised at how many people who aren't particularly interested in what you're doing will nonetheless attempt to make you feel like an idiot for doing it. By attempting to rise above the huddled mass and do something different, you make yourself a target that people feel obligated to "cut down to size." They prefer that you remain ordinary and unremarkable - like themselves - and sling discouragement your way in order to keep you in line.

I wonder how many potentially great artists our culture has been denied simply because the level of discouragement that they faced was too effective and too powerful. The greatness of many artists stems from an emotional sensitivity that can be all-too-easily crushed by listening to the wrong people. Perhaps the reason why many of the current entertainers are considered mediocre and arrogant is because the arrogant personality has the advantage - the ability to dismiss those who would discourage with the same thoughtlessness that they are confronted with. A sensitive performer might be more talented, but less able to face the discouragement of "concerned" friends and relatives who would be happier if the individual chose a safer, more conforming path.

What exactly are we being protected from? Disappointment? Disappointment is a crucial part of life. Do we really think that we're doing anybody a favor by attempting to shield them from disappointment? Are we forgetting that disappoinment can also shape greatness? How many times was Thomas Edison confronted by disappointment before finding the perfect filament for his light bulb? Isn't it true that we get better at a task by comparing ourselves with people who are better at it than us? At some point, Michael Jordan was playing basketball against kids who were better than him. It may have been easy to discourage him from continuing to play if protecting him from disappointment was the only goal. It would have been safer, and there would have been a lot less risk. Think about it - any artist in any medium could probably, at some critical point, have been talked out of pursuing their dreams.

But the world is a better place because they weren't.

So if you've been pushing that personal goal further and further back into the calendar, isn't it time for that goal to push back and demand to be addressed?

And the next time that you feel an impulse to guide somebody away from a risk and towards something "safe," you might want to take a good, long look at your motives. They may not be in anybody's best interest.