Part 3: Completing The Trinity - Searching For a God

I just hope I can live up to the title. Funny how the mind draws a blank immediately after the invigorating burst of energy that got me out of bed and sat me down over here. A wooden chair, naked ass, no competition for a duvet. I mentioned a dream last time you were here. In it, I was informed that I was dying. I told you that the person who told me was significant, but I didn’t know who it was. I mean, I knew -deep down- who it was, but I didn’t know who it was. Like when you see someone who you should probably recognise, but you don’t.

I am struggling to look backwards. That’s not right. Not entirely. It’s more like the past keeps looking into me and it's making me uncomfortable. I find a little buoyancy in the concept that if you look back and you don’t cringe once or twice then you’re not doing it right. There is no growth if there was not once a less-appealing version of you. Sometimes it really hits me though. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I resent who I’ve been, but I’m deeply concerned at times. (If it’s at all possible to be genuinely concerned about something that has already been.)

I saw an old video yesterday. Me and two old friends, drunk, armed with instruments. Maybe seven years ago now. I have this loud gruff banshee voice that leaves everyone else barely audible. It has nothing nice to say, just that we are all ending up somewhere we’d rather not, and that’s how we’re made. Like our past is playing target practice with our present selves. I know that this isn’t entirely factual, but I also know that we can make it true if we don’t understand what’s really going on.

One of the recurring themes is ‘how much has fear played a role in who I am?’ What really happens when something scares us? When I sit quietly and really get to work on the fragments of who I’ve been, and to a degree might still be, I can always whittle the uncomfortable parts down to fear. To the point that I’m beginning to question whether or not hate can actually exist, and if what we perceive as hate is just a more complex manifestation of fear. Not amounting to anything, loneliness, the darker sides of who we are. This idea that if we were to broadcast all of our thoughts -unedited- then we would quickly find ourselves standing alone. It’s not that we ever intended for our thoughts to ostracise us, it’s just that sometimes they do.   

So I found myself drawn into the current racial tensions. People said things that didn’t just annoy me, but they challenged my entire construct of who we are -or perhaps what I hoped we might be. It all came with a notion that no matter what some of us did there was something beyond -and more powerful than- the individual that operated as an oppressor. Then came the notion that if I was to disregard or denounce it, I somehow became a part of its agenda. Deep down, I just hoped that there might be a universal solution that allows a human being freedom from anger and fear, and whatever it is that ‘they’ might be calling injustice.

I dived into interviews and literature, never really trying to prove one point or disprove another, but deep down I felt that there was something else going on other than the ‘heated at the surface, but tepid at the core’ black and white arguments -pun intended. A blue steak of moral dilemma, not to derogate. I remember someone saying, much akin to the message of Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment, that every human soul contains the prison guard as much as the prisoner. The unjust and mean-spirited devil sits next to the righteous samaritan in us all. Jung called it dualism. Hesse wrote Steppenwolf. There was always going to be one angle that spoke to me, and then a collection of others that I had notable difficulty listening to. I wanted to understand it on an individual level and the points were largely being made in reference to us as a dysfunctional collective of sorts. 

That’s how we’re made right? And so I now come to God. This is perhaps the first time I’ve given the chap the credit of a capital letter. I’m warming to him as a concept. It seems to me that, at any given point in history, people have been searching for completion, and in many more ways than I can mention conclusively. An impossible completion. But we try, and for that, we have to be given credit. Admirers, wealth, status, equality, distraction, altruism, enlightenment, achievement, and on and on. Things that we don’t feel we have enough of, we seem to innately want them. These are all based on us individually, of course. But, we are grouped together by occasional similarities, and these similarities are often defined by timelines and geographical placement. That’s how we make friends and fill spaces with likemindedness.

When I used to talk to rooms full of people about how to best provide care to vulnerable adults I first separated them (in my mind) by making them watch this video. About two hours later, after discussing the importance of developing rapport, I would ask them a question. “Give me a single human behaviour that doesn’t aim to serve an individual’s needs or wants.” People tried sneezing, and hiccups, but a quick lesson on the biological purpose of a sneeze left the question without an answer. Even our involuntary behaviours serve our purposes. The point was that everything we do, we do for us, and us alone. Nietzsche had a fair bit to say on the matter.

So, this means, at every given point in history, individuals have done what is in their best interest. If they were to consider a wider audience when making decisions then it was in their best interest to do so. Being entirely selfish can produce guilt, and guilt doesn’t serve a person well. If acting entirely selfishly did happen to suit them, then it did so for an ingrained reason. If one chooses to remain indecisive then their lack of decision making also serves them seemingly well at that particular time.   

Now, there is one massive contributing factor to all of this, and that is knowledge, or the lack thereof. Historical, and psychological. It’s not always obvious why we’re driven to make the decisions we make. They can feel impulsive at times, and immediately regrettable afterwards. At other times they can feel like a long ideological pilgrimage that we are destined to take on. Why the fuck would I try and tell a clearly upset man (of colour -for storytelling’s sake) that I don’t agree with the severity of institutional racism that he is claiming. Why does a man ring the doorbell of a mistress knowing full well the guilt that comes after climax? The chance of greater good coming from either situation is obviously very low, but the impulse still drives us on, and it's unfair and dismissive to just say ‘it’s because you’re an idiot.’ 

We want to escape discomfort and fear. It’s uncomfortable for me to know that there isn’t an answer that makes all of this okay. It now seems to me that there isn’t, but in realising that, I must also understand that I might be wrong, and perhaps there is an answer... Deep breath... Take a pause... I have a tear forming in my left eye... I’m distracted... When some of the things I have done begin to haunt me as I sit quietly, I realise just how uncomfortable I was at the time. It’s troubling to consider how much unrest can dwell in us, and more so when forced to recollect the depravities that we might embark upon when we are blindfolded, desperate and gasping for escapism. It’s rather disparaging when you realise that most of your blunderous past was nothing but a distraction.

I am clearly not a politician or a social strategist. I’m not a qualified psychotherapist, nor does my take on things offer very much in the way of actual output. At times I am one to grumble at this, and at other times it's nice to have reasons to improve. There are times in our lives when we look out and we see despicable droves and there are other times when we look inwards and we could benefit from a priest if we could only bring ourselves to believe in something bigger than ourselves. 

Whatever is happening right now, I’m starting to see it as a myriad of different ways of searching for God. My only hope is that we can do so peacefully. (And that’s going to take a very complicated agreement that no one really knows who or what God is, but we should probably all agree on the ‘ideal image’ metaphor and take it from there.   

We should understand history, not only as a textbook account of what happened but as a collection of souls trying to move forward within the scope of their resources. The red wine might impair this analogy, but I’m thinking about how, no matter how hard one or both parents might try, they will always impart some undesirable characteristic upon their child. History is a collection of individuals carrying out a method prescribed by their circumstances. Circumstances that we are now fortunate enough to be able to better rationalise.

If my mum and dad could see me now, I’m sure they’d have as much to praise themselves for as they would to condemn. I hope so.

This is intended to be the completion of my trinity of blogs inspired by recent events. The dream about me dying reminded me that I have a book to write. I might not be able to cure social divides or undo history’s wrongs, but I do intend to write a goddamn book that somehow manages to touch upon why we are who we are and all those other questions that plague us when we’re not throwing rocks at horses that shouldn’t be there in the first place. I might be racist, I might not. But, for now, I have more important self-directed questions to find a retort for.  

I have no answer, quite simply because it’s all very complicated. I have thought about it for some time, and I ask you to think the same or at least within the realms of similar considerations. I’m not one to say that you shouldn’t look for an answer, but consider that rush and desire to offer an opinion -the electricity with which one reacts. Consider that, that might be an innate repulsion to fear and an inherent desire for love; not the result of knowing. I put my hands up and I know that that was what mine was. I had a feeling, but I didn’t have an answer. Like we are as good as we are bad, we are as right as we are wrong. 

I have enjoyed this bottle of wine, and I have enjoyed typing through this, knowing, deep-down, that I was mumbling away on paper as I would if I was speaking to you in person. The only debating I get to do here is with myself or through a sequence of motorcycle horn blasts at other sequences of motorcycles horn blasts. I’m Drunk, concerned and still capable of a smile. I hand this problem over to the rest of you if you can be arsed, not that it was ever in my hands, or that I really wanted it to be in the first place. You are who you are because stuff made you that way, and you’ll continue to be that way unless life offers a signpost to someplace else. Some of us are destined to seek, others are doomed to be satisfied, and the terms and conditions are exchangeable. It’s not always your fault and sometimes it is. Don’t go too hard on yourself, and never let yourself off the hook without a rebuttal.

I guess I’m just trying to say ‘never feel obliged to do something about something if there’s something you’re better at doing.’

Good luck fuckers. 

(Now go listen to and eventually share this lovely song about all those life-changing things we don’t understand with the world, so I can finally find my own version of God. And find me on spotify, and stick my songs in playlists if you like them. You wouldn’t like me all resentful, bitter and full of self-pity.)