Fortune Favours the Brave
Part of the confusion over my identify stems from the fact that I donāt know what I want to be. Itās not a lack of motivation to be someone, I just donāt know who I want to be.
I took a weird class last semester called English 301 with an old professor who I simultaneously loved and hated. He spoke in an extremely confusing, haphazard manner and was a stickler for grammar rules that are both no longer used and truthfully, never that important to anyone that loves the essence of writing. I mean, when I read good writing, thereās this flow and this meaning and it fills my soul regardless of the dangling participles. Thatās besides the point.
What I mean to talk about is the weird point he brought up about the book Pamela. It was a cool book, I mean, for the time. It was an epistolary novel, and I think it was the earliest book of sorts to build this deep skepticism around truth and narrative trustworthiness. I was into it because it had this girl randomly fall in love with a guy who kidnapped her and I was so bored of not understanding class that I needed to romanticize the dark, modern enemies to lovers trope. Iām sorry. Iām off topic today.
Anyway, I couldnāt understand a thing this prof was saying about this book, but I really tried to listen! I did. And in my listening, I would pick up on sentences and some stuck with me as interesting from my own making. He mentioned how the religious context of Pamela falling in love with this guy was warranted because she was developing an attitude of submission, and that was historically and contextually a respected trait of that era. I think, maybe, that could be what he said.
It sort of struck me because I never considered how the people we aspire to be, the traits we try to embody would change throughout our history. I assumed there were times that submission would be a rewarded trait, not because it is a truly āvaluable oneā, but one that was manipulated into having value based on context or societal requirements.
Imagine a priest, in the 1500s. His wellbeing depends on donations to a church. He himself displays all the qualities that are valued in todayās age. Leadership, sermons displaying knowledge and creativity. He has a command, he is not submissive. But he must inspire submissiveness in those that attend church in order to retain his place in society. Being a priest requires people to preach to. Maybe in the context of his church, his sermons, itās based on his teachings that people come to see submissiveness as a quality you are supposed to have. Pray to God. And such things. I see the priest, the dominant one, as the one to be praised, because he is in control, and the qualities of submissiveness are only important because he has manipulated the context in order for them to seem important. In my head, the brave are the winners in all scenarios. They are always the most important, the ones that should be valued, regardless of the context.
It struck me as strange for my prof to imply that spunk and wit and courage and leadership are only seen as important because theyāre simply what is praised in our modern times. As someone who is swimming in this sea of identity loss, it makes me question who I am supposed to be. The first step in answering this question is recognizing the people I want to be, and trying to be like them myself. But thereās more to it. Why do we idolize the people we do? What contextual spotlight is built into favouring the characters or the people we think are good, or bad? Or interesting? What makes a trait or a quality good? Valuable? Respectable?
Does it all come down to a mishmash of spiderwebbed events, woven together to make you value certain characteristics and dislike others? Or is it just nothing? Is it just some random squirt of chemicals you get as an inviting when you see someone you think is cool? I donāt know.
I read something recently that said identity is a cage, and I agree. Being a person has nothing to do with the traits you write down about yourself that you occasionally embody the concept of. We are just people. We exist in the moment. We arenāt a walking set of adjectives, we are what we do. Iām working on that. Living in the moment. Responding organically. Seeing when I am faced with a choice and finding that I usually, mostly, know what I want to choose. That seems to be existence at its most clear. We canāt respond to the situations that donāt exist yet. We just wait until things happen to us and respond in the moment. Do more. Be more, think less. Thatās what I think being alive is. If history seems to favour the brave, then I do too. And I just hope, organically, spontaneously, I can be brave when itās asked of me. But not before. I donāt need to be things until I am them.