The Worst Thing You Could Do

I have some advice for you: if you're going to quit smoking, just don't.

And if you do, don't promise anyone that you'll never smoke a cigarette again.

Unless you like breaking promises, or lying.

From a personal standpoint, it's really easy for me to approach a commitment I've made to myself with a fair degree of malleability. It's not about being wishy washy, it's about adaptation. It's also about being able to admit that you were wrong. No one ragged on me when I gave up my dream to be Batman, no one ragged on me when my plans to go the U.P. last summer failed. I certainly didn't punch myself in the nuts over it. I could easily take up smoking again despite the fact that I aimed to quit.

But one thing I cannot, will not do, is break a promise, assuming I can help it. I think about 50% of stress in my life comes from the prospect of failing to do something when and how I said I would do it. You could say that's because I'm a man of principle, but I think it's because I have an obsessive personality disorder. Hey, maybe I ended up like Batman after all.

When I told Bean I would never smoke a cigarette ever again, when I promised her I would never do it, I don't think she expected me to live up to that promise. I think she anticipated failure, but what mattered to her was the intent, the effort. She expected me to operate in a capacity that was human. I think she played a card she now at times regrets, having misunderestimated 1) how important it was that I have a reliable form of stress relief and 2) my fundamentally unhealthy approach to not being false.

So now I stir in cyclical disquiet, craving a cigarette, needing a cigarette, incapable of having one, further desiring the contractually unattainable.

Sometimes I feel super guilty when I'm typing my last name and put in three k's instead of two. Such is the depth of my conscience.

Last night Bean and I were talking about how our relationship differs from others we've been in. All that aside, one of the things she mentioned was that a lot of her problems in previous romantic endeavors (both in choosing who to be with and how to be with them) stemmed from not knowing who she was. In reflective comparison, I realized that a lot of my general unhappiness came from trying to figure out who I was. Hey, how about that? A topic somewhat related to the concept of this blog.

I've struggled greatly with self definition and purpose in my life. I'm not sure why these concepts are difficult for me, in particular. I acknowledge that the rest of the world has a similar existential conundrum, but for some reason they don't seem quite so crippled by their own questions. They work, they go to school, they raise families, they pay their taxes --

Oh yeah, I need to do my taxes tonight.

Anyways... Meanwhile, I toil, sleep walk, stay up or sleep for days on end, find myself going for walks or taking sporadic night drives in an effort to "find myself." At least, that used to be the case. All this searching ended in part because I simply didn't have the time for it between work and a love life. In larger part, however, it ended because I simply decided that there was no "me" to find. Everything we are is dynamic, instantly malleable. Sure, we have standards, beliefs, ideas, habits that are developed through time and our interactions with the world, but -- assuming some general capacity for sentience and a tendency to be self-aware -- everything boils down to a single choice in the moment. Through that choice, every choice, we are determining, stating, who we are and what we value.

Struggling with a typo that makes me appear to support white supremacy, even unto myself, only troubled me because I was still denying myself choice and agency by attributing my presence and actions to a possible predestined character. In essence, a part of me still (the psychoanalyst, most likely) believes that the typo is a subconscious statement about who I am. I am drawn to extremes, and yes, drawn to defining myself.

Recently, though, I have been allowing myself the freedom to negotiate between making a choice that I, the concept of who I am, would make, and letting my own unfiltered decisions define me. As a result, I've been a much happier person.