Although the title sounds maybe like a completely natural course of events, I'm talking about a very specific phenomenon in this post. My first remembered experience of this idea goes back to probably the most frustrating thing my friend Lew ever said to me, and I'd kind of let it go for a while. But it popped back into my head the other night while I was headed to the fireworks, and I realized that it plays a fairly large role in the way I interact with the outside world.
I'll just start by explaining, paraphrased, what Lew said to me. This was some time after he had decided to abandon reason for madness by believing in, and reorienting his life towards, God. No need to go into how surreal that was, and how for weeks I was waiting for the punchline to some elaborate practical joke. In any case, it wasn't a joke, and our friendship came pretty close to falling apart, entirely because I was convinced he'd really lost his mind. During the course of this disintegration we discussed his new found beliefs passionately. Our conversations would start off playfully, with me mocking something he claimed to believe but which I was convinced he didn't really believe. I would get gradually more annoyed with the reasons he gave me for his faith, until it got to the point where I was getting angry, the way you'd get pissed when someone's doing something dangerous and you know they're going to hurt themselves if they don't stop, but they keep doing it, and you just want to yell, "Fucking knock it off!" Maybe the best way I can describe it is if your best friend picked up a heroin habit, and he just kept sinking lower into that pit of addiction, trying to kill himself, convinced it was his calling.
I know that sounds overly dramatic, but there were nights back then that I cried for him the same way I did sometimes for my friend Hannah who had died; never for long, but with desperate loneliness. The worst part, the statement he made that convinced me that his mind had been overcome, came in the form of his explanation of how it was possible to have faith, to believe in God, and what I would have to do in order ever to believe. He can correct me if I misrepresent this, but what stuck with me most is the following statement, again paraphrased, that he used to explain the process: "To believe, you must first want to believe." I think both he and Kati explained in more in the sense of asking God to enter your heart and fill you with his love. More words for me to think about when I was alone--crying for the friend I had lost--crying because I gave up one night, alone, and in tears I said, "Okay" to no one, and I asked silently for what my friend had asked for and been given. For some number of seconds I said please. With my eyes closed I said please, and I felt the pain of the three people in my life whom I had lost. And suddenly the pain was gone, and I opened my eyes, and I was filled with terrible anger, and I swore, and I said fuck all of it, and I hated myself for being weak and letting myself call out to no one and ask for something I created out of nothing.
I didn't cry about Lew anymore after that. Our friendship went through a period of awkward ignorance, while I continued to interact with the parts of him that were the same as before, and pretended to forget the piece that had been replaced. That feeling passed eventually, and over time I came to accept that his faith hadn't obliterated his mind, as I had once believed. I never understood what he felt, but I became less convinced that what he felt was impossible. I certainly didn't believe it, but I couldn't rule it out, and I couldn't hate him for choosing from among any number of explanations the one that seemed true to him.
Well, this wasn't so much supposed to be all about how I almost abandoned Lew forever, or about how close I might have been to believing in God. It was about the first step I had to take, which was that I had to want to believe before I could believe.
I still can't tolerate that notion. I still interpret as, You have to choose to be deceived, to work to believe the lie until it stops being work, until you forget all of the work that went into it and all that's left is a product of your imagination that presents as inalienable truth. It reminds me of suicide, or of amputating my own limb.
This concept always seemed fairly specific to me, seeming only relevant as a requisite for faith. But it occurred to me that this isn't as remote an idea as I might have assumed. The thought that occurred to me, on the way to the fireworks, involved the simple idea of having fun, and why I'm sometimes so bad at it. I assume that most people are able to just experience the moment they're in, and get pleasure from it. That sometimes happens to me, but much more often I become introspective when I think I'm having fun. Instead of enjoying the moment, I'm partially enjoying it, while at the same time asking myself if I understand why I'm enjoying it, whether I should be enjoying it (according to my own sense of what are "appropriate" experiences to get pleasure from), and why everyone else with me is enjoying it (and whether they should). It's as though in these experiences, I'm two people: one directly involved in the experience; and one observing and passing judgment.
I feel like this ties in because for me, having fun isn't really involuntary. I have to first want to have fun, in the sense that I have to consciously suppress the part of my personality that attempts to keep me at a distance from the emotional part of the experience, or at least make an effort to ignore it. And as I've recently discovered, even drinking a lot of alcohol has no impact on shutting down the introspective part of me. If anything, it makes it more acute, but that may only be because intoxication is still novel for me, and there's a lot of new data to examine.
In order to have faith, I need to first want to have faith. And in order to have fun, I need to first want to have fun. I need to be able to suspend my disbelief, put aside my criticism, and be willing to experience it, without any buffer or filter. But I don't do that. Something keeps me from indulging. Maybe it's pride, or arrogance, or maybe it's a good thing. I don't know. But this whole feeling can be summarized in a single statement: I may want to, but I don't want to want to. This seems fairly clear, but what I mean is that although a given experience might feel good to me, and make me happy at the most basic level, another level kicks in and refuses to tolerate the idea of getting pleasure from that sort of thing. It's like there's some kind of morality to my sense of enjoyment. If I can't simultaneously enjoy the experience, and feel I'm justified in enjoying it, I don't really enjoy it. I can't tell if that's a bad thing or not. But it makes me wonder what things would be like if I could disable the part of me that constantly appraises my own actions, and just let the other side of me run on auto-pilot for a while, nothing held back. The idea is intriguing, but again, it reminds me of suicide or amputation.
The part of me that keeps me from believing in God, that keeps me from just enjoying the moment, is the part of me that I most identify as my "self". To shut that off, to think letting something else be in control, is actually terrifying to me. Which I suppose is why I don't get swept up on my emotions, and why I don't accept the idea of God being in control of the direction of my life. What does it mean when about the highest virtue you hold is your sense of independence?
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