Eat the Damn Cake

It’s scary how little I know myself. How little we all know ourselves. I mean, I’m terrified. I’m always waiting for myself to do something awful to me. And mess up my whole life. I’m unpredictable. I’m wild and dangerous and I don’t know exactly what I’m capable of. Which is sort of the negative side to the end of my post about not knowing how smart I am.

I’m reading Stumbling on Happiness. I’m embarrassed that I like it so much, because I don’t like liking things that everyone else already likes. I prefer to find those things obviously lacking and smile a tiny, condescending smile while I continue on my tiny, condescending way. But Gilbert won me over with these two lines:

Line 1: “Phineas Gage was a foreman for the Rutland Railroad who, on a lovely autumn day in 1848, ignited a small explosion in the vicinity of his feet, launching a three-and-a-half-foot-long iron rod into the air, which Phineas cleverly caught with his face” (Gilbert, 2006, pg. 11).

Line 2: “For example, most Americans can be classified as one of two types: those who live in California and are happy they do, and those who don’t live in California but believe they’d be happy if they did”  (Gilbert, 2006, pg. 114).

I completely forget how to cite quotes. And college wasn’t even that long ago.

(A marigold. Keep reading… source)

I love the first sentence because it was early on enough in the book that I didn’t expect him to say something like that. And because the topic is so serious that you can pretty much be sure no one who studied that particular case of frontal lobe lobotomy ever made that remark until Gilbert. Don’t worry, Phineas was OK. Sort of.

I love the second sentence because it’s true. And, being of the latter group, I really do sometimes catch myself fantasizing about what life might be like in what Emily calls “The Land Where Dreams Come True.” (She’s in California.) My fiancé is from the Bay Area. I’m assuming that gets capitalized. It sounds like it should. When we visited his family so that I could meet them, I kept looking around at the rolling hills and muttering to myself, “But how? How can anyone stand so much beauty? It’s too much! It’s too much to bear….” Which is part of why they like me so much. I’m good at first impressions. Gilbert went on to say that people in California are not in fact happier than anyone else. So it’s clear that he’s not quite as brilliant as he’s supposed to be.

But what really struck me about the book was Gilbert’s description of how poorly we understand what we will soon want. He talks about how we work our whole lives trying to please, pacify, and impress a future self who almost always underappreciates, if not actively loathes, us and our efforts. We’re always trying to save money so that we can buy the things we’ll want later on, maneuver into a career that will gain us respect and fulfillment later on, buy food that we’ll want to eat tomorrow, and pick romantic partners who we’ll still like in five years (or when we’re ninety). And we always fail. Or at least, we fail a lot.

When he described how even the future self of two minutes from now might not enjoy the Twinkie you JUST bought for her, I nodded emphatically. I’ve been there. My past future self has rejected the snacks chosen by my past past self. She’s been really mean about it too. Like, “Seriously? Do you even know me? When do I ever like cherry yogurt? WHEN? Can you answer that? NO. YOU CAN’T. YOU PATHETIC LITTLE GROVELING TWERP. No one loves you. They only love ME!!!”

So what do we do? I mean, it’s hopeless, isn’t it? We live in a world of predictions and fantasy. Constantly trying to guess what we’ll be like in the future. I think back over the boys I’ve dated and shudder involuntarily. Some of them are so revolting that I can’t imagine how I ever hung out in a group of a twenty or so people that included them, let alone kissed them (and possibly more). Who was I? How did I choose so poorly? I try to explain myself to myself, and it’s like trying to explain why some guy in Idaho picked up an axe and murdered his entire family and then hacked an incredibly beautiful and detailed rendering of a marigold into the front lawn. I don’t know—he’s insane? I don’t know—I was insane?

But I’m about to get married. I’m making a huge choice. I’m taking a guess that, at twenty-four, with no prior record of success, I can pick the person I’ll like for the rest of my life. I feel like someone should burst out laughing at this juncture. But it’s not me. Because I’m making this choice very seriously.

And because I also know that despite how poorly we all know ourselves, and how unpredictable and mean our future selves can be, sometimes when you make a really, really big choice, you commit to that choice, the concept of it, along with committing to the details (in the case of marriage, the actual person). You commit to being willing to work with and around the uncertainty and changeableness of life. My fiancé will change over time, and I will change over time, the commitment itself will exist irrespectively. Also, he’s really incredibly easy to be around. Which cannot be said honestly about me. So let’s hope that he doesn’t grow to realize what a crazy, irrational person he once was when he made the decision to marry me.

The fact is, decisions have to be made. Not necessarily the decision to get married. I probably could’ve put that off a few more years. But I chose to go college, and where. And then I chose to transfer. I chose to apply to grad school, and to go to grad school in New York City, a place that terrified me at the time. I’m choosing now to try to build a career as a writer, even though all evidence points to impending disaster and abject failure as a result.

I don’t know who I’ll be tomorrow. Or in a year. Or in ten years. I might like cherry yogurt by then. But if part of what makes us human is the ability to forge on ahead anyway, with a lot of bravado and spunk and determination, then I’m sort of proud of that tendency. I think one of the things that humans are best at is belief. Believing in things, even if we can’t see them. Even if they’re not guaranteed. And I believe that if you can manage to like who you are at the moment, then even the really terrible ex-boyfriends are probably forgivable. Not the boyfriends, themselves, necessarily, but the fact that you dated them.

(Actually, this looks pretty good. source)

*  *  *

Un-Roast: Today I love my moles. They’re elegant. I went to the dermatologist and he said they were “beautiful.” Especially this one on my leg. Not even kidding.

P.S. Congratulations to Virginia at Beauty Schooled (one of my all-time favorite blogs). She just graduated!!! Read her post about it here.

P.P.S. This is a really good article about the changing nature of maturity, and where 20-somethings fit into the social, developmental picture. I want to write something about it, but I’m not sure how to start.

P.P.P.S. I need to learn how to write shorter post titles.

Also (I can’t write another P.S.): Check out my piece about the Brooklyn homeschoolers and my own childhood in Huffpo.