The Web of A Life

Imagine a spiderweb, if you will. Threads crisscross each other, meeting at different angles, sometimes running perpendicular, sometimes looping forwards to run parallel to each other, but forming a continuous, unbroken…err…web. Now, imagine yourself at one of the intersections of threads. There are, simplistically, six ways you can go – upwards, downwards, forwards, backwards, left or right. The particulars may vary, but in general, these are your choices. Now, to add a further twist, imagine a web that responds to your choice of direction, that is, depending on what you do, your options at the next intersection, or indeed, the distance you must travel to the next intersection changes. Confused? It’s not over yet, but have faith, we’re nearly at the end of this cumbersome analogy. As a final complication, imagine the rest of the world traveling along this web at the same time as you, and everybody’s choices affecting everyone else’s future choices.

This web, ladies and gentlemen, is what we call history. “But”, you cry, “that’s nonsense, you’re a fool indeed, history is what’s already happened!” I’d like, if I’m allowed, to pose a different definition. History is happening all around us, at every point in time. “We”, as some important bugger once said, “are moving through time at the rate of one second per second”. If we pin events down, and dissect them, and analyse them, and write cumbersome treatises on them, then yes, history changes form from a glorious, living, breathing creature into the sad, dry, boring subject we’re forced to mug date by date and chapter by chapter in school – which might also explain the profound distaste people normally show when the topic is brought up.

History, then, is happening all around us. It might not be important in the grand narrative sense of it, but nonetheless, it happens. My choice to sit here, writing this at 4:30 in the morning two weeks before my finals definitely shapes the web before me – there is a large prospect of an irate mother in my future, and an even larger prospect of some frantic, last minute cramming right before my paper. Which further modifies the web, and so on. The interesting bit, though, is how we humans fit into this web.

Humans, as a group, seem to be the most confused species on the planet, if only because we have so many choices before us. For something a few rungs down the ladder, such as a monkey (to which we bear a distinct similarity, or at least, I’ve been told I do), the choices are simple. Eat that fruit, drink that water, sift through that other monkey’s hair for lice, and the world is your crustacean. Humans, on the other hand, routinely face thousands and thousands of choices, whether it be what to eat, what to drink, what to wear, or, for those with higher expectations of themselves, which side of the bed to get out of. Instead of making life as simple as possible, we’ve reached a point where the number of decisions we take every day has gotten so out of hand that we’ve developed defence mechanisms to deal with them – routines. Now this might just seem like a pointless rant from someone who’s just been ‘talked to’ by his mother for waking up late once too often, but I beg of you, hear me out.

Zen tells us that instead of thinking about things, we should just do them, and learn from the experience, rather than trying to reason out what would happen, and then doing it, with our minds filled with foregone conclusions. It stresses more on instinctual behaviour and understanding, rather than active, meticulous, point-by-point analysis. Follow what seems right, it says, and you will be at peace. Don’t look for things, but wait for them to come to you. The minute you try to supersede your instinctive thought with rationality, you’ve begun the slide toward a splitting headache, and a bagful of existential dread. More than that, Zen advocates following ‘natural rhythms’ – eat when you’re hungry, sleep when you’re sleepy, and so on. To try and wrestle what I’m saying into another analogy, life is like a dance, and history, more so. You can’t force yourself into a dance – you simply surrender to the music, and let your heart guide your feet. Even I, who could easily aspire to the top ten list of most incompetent dancers, manage not to look like an utter twit when I try this. But I digress.

Human beings are defined by a number of things, at least in their heads. What I do, what I earn, where I live, what I buy, what I eat, and so on – all ‘my characteristics’, I’m told. Advertising caught on to this fact and set about making the products they represent seem like gateways to better self-images. If you pay attention to some ads these days, then you’ll know what I’m talking about. A couple of sprays of a popular deodorant, and I’ll have hundreds of screaming, excited, and above all, hot women running after me. A particular brand of diesel promises to have my car grow horns and charge off into the mountains followed by a crazy lightning storm. Basically, the average day for the average human involves a few hundred instances where he’s being propositioned into making a particular choice, usually involving a lighter wallet, and ownership of something that he probably doesn’t need (For those of you who notice that I said ‘he’, rather than ‘he/she’, and object, you can go to hell. Feminism is all well and good, but I’m a man, and I refuse to write as if I have a severe biological identity crisis).

To get back to the initial point, then.

Life is an n-dimensional web, with turning points at every step. Humans have varying influences (and effluences) on this web, depending on the impact of their decisions. My choice, for example, to write this load of nonsense, will have a relatively negligible impact, when compared to America’s decision to go on raising their interest rates to stem the haemorrhage of capital heading east. Right and wrong are mere opinions, rationalisations that we make to convince ourselves that their choice was one that will benefit them – whether it be personally, or to their community, or society in general. Not all decisions are important, however – the trick is to find out which is which.

As for me, I think I’ll have a cigarette.