Look Away, I'm Hideous!

I have admitted something to myself more important than convincing everyone how truly terrible a person I am. By the way, some have absolutely no trouble subscribing to my awfulness while others spend too much time refuting my arguments. My friend, Evan, simply interjects, between my very protracted pauses for breaths, things to the effect of I can’t fool him or that my claims are unsubstantiated. It is important to highlight that he does add the qualifier that I am not as bad as I would like to present myself. So, he has left the door open to attribute some degree of rottenness, through his deliberate phrasing. Meanwhile, another friend has me branded as someone that entered an arena and was embraced and loved and respected so readily that I have gone out of my way to destroy my own popularity and reputation. It is true. I have done so deliberately. She rightly observes I am more comfortable as an undesirable scoundrel or untouchable. I know it is because otherwise I doubt I will be touched as much as I require.

Being discovered to actually be nice and to demonstrate regard for others is so contrary to my desire to be a threatening figure of a man that it really derails my ambition to alienate myself from the human race. I may be brutally blunt and obnoxiously direct but I care. I care to tell the truth. I care to not allow myself or others to hide. I care to listen and be involved. Caring sucks. When one cares, the want to help and to fix things is constantly thwarted either when someone elects to forsake the offered assistance or because no amount of help is sufficient. I hurt for others far more than for myself and I do not spare myself the luxury of wallowing; so, I carry this burden like a thorny crown. Fortunately for us all, the One that actually wore that crown has the power to overcome. I simply am asked to live rather than die. As has been said, “Dying is easy – Living is hard.” - In as far as this world dishes out misery, I have a good life. But, I live to help. I can’t resist the pull of jumping into the fray; even if I exacerbate the fraying as the result of my rough edges. I do not know how to remain neutral. I can not mind my own business or keep my mouth shut. For someone that cares so much I certainly don’t have much sensitivity when it comes to people’s personal space and preferences. I do not respect boundaries and I do not honor limits.

All of that was simply introduction to the utter dichotomy of my nature. I have a general contrariness and intolerance that borders on dictatorial. I am an advocate of executing martial law – MY edicts, of course. Yet, beneath the gruff and growl and the scowl and snarl has been a very tedious desire to embrace, accept, and conform to the prevailing view surrounding me. This has been an arduous and often insufferable vexing of soul and anguish of spirit for me. Simply put: I want to ”behave” and be a non-descript goo that is not in any way discernible from the masses. I have striven for that but it is the most monotonous of vane pursuits. I yearn to be invisible and homogeneous and . . . I must surely fail. The admission I am only making at now nearly forty-seven years of age is that I am not a conformist. I will always be distinguishable no matter where or with whom I am found.

The truth finally has to be faced that I am seeking to do precisely the opposite of most other people. Where others are looking to elevate themselves, I am attempting to disappear. As many wish to be found unique, I am struggling to compress myself into the cast. The similarity and the paradox lies in the fact I am engaged in the normal human wrangling to find comfort in my own skin except in reverse. I am trying to become a part of what most are trying to escape. I have a peculiarly inverted relationship to other human beings. Evan also insists that everyone claims to adore and wishes to emulate the Maverick and the independent thinker until they actually encounter such a one, personally. It is never a meeting of recognition and mutual admiration but of resentment and conflict and a feeling of threat and suspicion toward the unique, the individual, the “different.” Only historical figures are lauded and exalted while contemporary figures are ridiculed and despised. I must admit he is extremely observant. The thing that I have had to face has not been the shunning by others or even open hostility. That which has afflicted me has been self-contempt for being self-aware.

One finds escape from most of the unwanted identification as an individual as long as they may be conveniently packaged and branded. The largest umbrella to attempt to overshadow the fact that some project rather than reflect is found when labeled as an “artist.” As long as any term inviting explanations that can be encompassed by not quite all of the five senses of sight, taste, touch, hearing and smell may be applied (more out of convenience than supportable evidence) the lone figure may be contained, defined and deemphasized. There is a sort of normal desire to mar the clearly distinctive characteristics of others so that they become a blur in a faceless human smudge. A “visionary” is not as distasteful as the notion of a stubborn, insistent and willfully selfish magnate. One “listening to the beat of a different drummer” is far cuddlier and much warmer a character than when considered marching in a never wavering straight line to their objective. A “philosopher” is a much softer figure than the leader that shuns decision based on consensus or conventional “wisdom” who shuns the attempt of others to color his thoughts. In all of these, and especially in recent societal “developments” and “cultural influences,” feeling has supplanted thinking.

Currently, to stand out from the crowd really does not require that one necessarily exhibit any extraordinary abilities. All that is needed is to claim any abilities at all. It is expected that one must accept and make subjective value judgments based on the collective impression of feelings rather than on reason and carefully measured and repeatable standards. There is a strange duplicity of demanding accountability for others while apportioning deniability to one’s self. This is the grounds for intolerance of an individual because their very singular behavior threatens to reveal the whole machine a fraud by not subscribing or needing to find association with others. It is quite educational to demonstrate that ignorance is encouraged due to the subjective, collective pooling of tactile inputs as acceptable; but, the objective outputs of the individual mind are discounted as arrogance for daring to claim understanding. There is an actual preference to shun the notion there can be absolutes. There is nearly a religious fervor to imagine a world in which nothing may be stated with any certainty. This has been the futile struggle in which I have engaged for most of my life. I dare to claim insight and am punished for doing so. I have innocently identified common behavior and have been found guilty of crimes for failing to omit or overlook the folly of my fellow man. Many wish to identify with the child that told the truth about the absence of the Emperor’s new clothes, yet spend the majority of their efforts making whole cloth out of fabrications and falsehoods.

I must acknowledge that my desire to conform has only succeeded in creating a conflict between reason and action and Pavlovian response and reaction. Feeling is not thinking. Transient impressions are not keen observations. When one is mindless there is little to identify consequence for being thoughtless. I am at odds with a culture that seeks to remove any discernible and permanent markers and that refuses to recognize a fixed graduation or scale against which to examine the world outside or inside them. I can not, and in fact, will not waste my energy applying cosmetics to fit into some mask of reality. I am through with finding diversions and distractions in order to hide from others the unattractive things I see. If the need to allow the light to shine on human stupidity makes me an ugly person then I am finally able to articulate without apology, “Look away, I’m hideous.”