The Whale Belly

Freedom is a self-imposed limitation. A focus. There are paths that others would have us walk down for their own benefit. These are already defined and made for those who think they’d prefer to be told what to do. Then there are the paths that one has to cut through the wilderness without any idea of where they will end up. There may even be a higher chance of their ending up nowhere. And yet, just the act of cutting through one’s own path provides a sense of accomplishment. It is one’s own path that no one else has ever seen, it is entirely unique.

Some may say it’s selfish, and perhaps it is a little bit. But much of this accusation comes from a place of resentment and low self-esteem. People tend to see their own failures in other people’s successes, the crabs that yank one back to the bottom of the bucket. But heroes must leave the humdrum realm in order to return with a boon for society. It requires risks, hurt feelings, courage.

In stories, choice is usually removed from the equation. The hero is plunged into circumstances beyond their control and it is a long while until they finally take responsibility. But in real life those dramatic moments are too easily avoided, they don’t press on a person and force his hand. The great consequences of our poor choices are buffeted by the comforts of modern life and the notion that we are just wisps in the howling gale of earthly problems.

For decades I’ve worried about the suffering that humans cause for the rest of the planet, for no other reason than a childish greed for new playthings. I wish solving the problem were as simple as picking up a sword and plunging it into the heart of a dragon. But these culture-wide, specie-specific psychological problems are not just material, but reside in a ideological and abstract realm that makes it difficult to know how to do anything about it. Picking up litter on the street will have little to no impact. It seems that no amount of art, whether expressive or rhetorical, makes much of a dent into habituated behavior. For even someone who worries about it as much as I do, I’m guilty of the same destructive behavior.

Some refuse altogether to have anything to do with a culture of waste. They move off the grid, cultivate sustainable lives, and we both marvel and shudder at their ascetic and arduous lives. But for what may be seen as a self-imposed exile, we could also see it as an example of how to live in better harmony with the world around us instead of burning and choking everything in sight until we eventually burn and choke ourselves. So this seemingly selfish turn into martyred solitude could in fact be a heroic journey, returning to us a boon of a mirror into our own lives. Not that the people who go into exile will ever experience the benefit of it, but maybe that’s what makes them heroes in the first place. Heroism doesn’t mean making a name for one’s self, it doesn’t mean being loved or even respected. But it is refusing to give in to what is ultimately harmful to both humans and the world that supports them.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what participation in things like “social justice” looks like. People on the radical left tend to be critical of those who find necessity in solitude, as if they were turning away from responsibility in fighting against systems of oppression. And in many cases they’re probably correct. But there is a need for those who would seek solitude for the purposes of meditation and alternative living outside the pathways of society, and the boons such people could bring, if they are people of a submissive faith to higher truths, could be what we need to see ourselves in a truer light.