(Quick update to yesterday's post - I called the hospital and told them that this communication delay was unacceptable and that I deserved a straightforward call today; I was able to convey without yelling that I was pissed. I didn't get a call back from the doctor himself, but a nurse called me within the next few hours to go over the ultrasound results. The SuperBall lump is indeed a varicocele; it's unlikely that I'll need surgery or not be able to have kids, and it's one more item on the list that we'll be monitoring over the next few years of check-ups. Thank you, that's all I needed to hear. Who would've thought that communicating your true feelings to someone can lead to better communication overall?
This reminds me of the meeting of minds that takes places on multiple levels when we experience a story. Again, I'll say more on that one later - I somehow managed to finalize a 40-page critical paper dealing with this topic and more in the first week of recovery after my February surgery - I was able to keep this vow of never missing a deadline under any circumstances during my previous, cancerous project period, which I'm very proud to have done. Anyway, I'm going to draw on this paper for my December residency lecture called "Do the Twist: How Storytelling Shapes the Unbroken Surface of Fiction and Reality." I'll probably be hashing out ideas in future posts; I promise that they're not all bullshit.)
And what have I done since? I'm still schooling and have worked a half dozen or so part-time jobs, but how has this helped anyone but myself? In recent, now-daily posts, I've portrayed myself as a young traveler who drank too much and decided to come home for a few weeks to help out with a family emergency. How noble... but really a huge motivating force behind that was not having my shit together, being miserable, and needing to regroup for a few weeks. I wonder if I'd made the same decision if I'd been having the time of my life and had made promising plans. My presence at home seems to be helping, but will it matter in the long-term? Family and friends come first, but what about this world and the evil that resides within it?
So this whole fighting evil agenda perplexes me. Being able to point out injustice doesn't necessarily lead to justice. We all want some less righteous noun to shake our heads at, whether it be a faceless corporation, a distant country, an ethnicity, a religious group, a sexual orientation, a political organization, a band, a television show, or, in the more advanced stages of this disease, everyone who is not us. Does this sometimes not-so-subtle method of finding ways to feel superior to others bring any more good into this world, or does it serve as a distraction to following through on definite deeds?
Either way, I think it's unavoidable. I find myself doing it with privileged people who don't know that they're privileged (says the kid with a doctor Dad, a big house to stay in rent-free, and no student debts to speak of). Hell, I even did it in yesterday's post when I said that "I've also had it with aquiescing to people who aren't as smart, talented, or thoughtful as me." I still mean it, but it's also another way to feel superior without taking action.
"All that is necessary for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing" (Edmund Burke, although I know nothing about him beyond this quote). To add to that, I believe that doing nothing when you come across an event that twists your gut with how wrong it is can be another form of evil.
I also question how you know when you're doing good or evil, since there's so much in-between. I saw a disturbing, endearing, and funny movie called Super that started me thinking. Perhaps I should don a costume and beat evildoers with a wrench too? This whole issue of "what is good?" and "what is evil?" can lead to esoteric arguments about how morality is a tool devised by society to keep us from thinking for ourselves - in other words, another form of inaction. Add to this that good has many definitions, some of which can be evil indeed. Perhaps Hitler truly believed he was a savior appointed by God to rid this world of lesser, evil races for the greater good.
I also watched parts of a documentary last night called Superheroes, which featured costumed citizens with limited martial arts skills who patrol city streets by night. At one point, a guy talks about the day in the life of a superhero (it went something like "you get up, eat breakfast, say bye to your girlfriend, go to work, say hi to your work friends, come home, eat dinner, and finally break the monotony by getting out here and looking for bad guys.") At this point, someone behind the camera asks the speaker if he has a girlfriend; the costumed man says that he was speaking of a girlfriend "metaphorically", although I think he meant to say "hypothetically."
The point of the documentary wasn't to make fun of tortured nerds; while they never get footage of costumed crusaders engaging in physical confrontations with "bad guys," there is plenty of footage showing these people handing out food, water, and bathroom supplies to homeless people and holding candlelight vigils for victims of violent crimes that occurred in crowded areas where no one had stepped forward to help.
I still don't know who or what I want to be, but I want to be good. And for that to happen I can't do nothing. I'm not sure where to start - I suspect that if "good" deeds start leading to a false sense of superiority, then it's time to take a step back and follow a different path. I'm scoffing at how easily I've been throwing around the words good and evil, but I believe that there are truly evil and undeniably good parts to this world. I want to find both, and I know there are people out there who'll help me do just that:
Oh, a sleeping drunkard
Up in Central Park,
And a lion-hunter
In the jungle dark,
And a Chinese dentist,
And a British queen -
All fit together
In the same machine.
Nice, nice, very nice;
Nice, nice, very nice;
Nice, nice, very nice;
So many different people
In the same device (Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut)
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