A Confession
Dazed by Dostoyevsky
Background
From the earliest age I wanted to understand how the world worked, and sought answers to the most fundamental questions: Why are we here? Why is the Universe the way it seems? How did it all begin, and how might it end? An autodidact, I became a voracious reader, and fell in love with all the -ologies, thirsty for knowledge more than a decade before college.
My favorites were the essays of Isaac Asimov and Stephen J. Gould, alongside endless science biographies. I devoured textbooks, and quickly understood that mathematics was the language of science — yet also realized that my math literacy wasn’t sufficient to be fluent at the level needed to freely converse with the stars and elementary particles.
Physics seeks to describe the essence of the world, so I chose that college major. But it didn’t take long for me to hit a discernible math ceiling, and then I knew, quite literally, that I was no Einstein. That fact hit hard, made me question my life goals. That’s when my girlfriend’s mom gave me one of the best pieces of advice I never took, imploring me to stick with it.
“Scientists are a dime a dozen, but great writers are rare — especially ones who understand science,” she insisted. “You’d probably make a mediocre physicist, but a terrific science writer, so grind through your BA, and get a second major in journalism or English to specialize.” In retrospect she was bang on point, so of course I didn’t listen, and impulsively changed majors.
A rebel with pointless causes, I leaped majors. After reading William James, I changed my major to psychology, believing that the science of mind held all the secrets. After reading Friedrich Nietzsche, I changed my major to philosophy, believing that psychology was too narrow. And after reading Fyodor Dostoyevsky, I dropped out of college altogether, seeing the light.
Notes from Underground blew my mind. The perfect combination of science, psychology, and philosophy, expressed through a medium that I naturally exceled at and couldn’t get enough of: literature and writing. Boom! I remember the epiphany zapping me right between the eyes, Destiny revealed, the path forward transformed yet distinct and compelling.
I visualized what I wanted to do, but could I do it? The Devil, of course, is in the details, talent a combination of appetite and aptitude. I had the hunger, and presumably the ability, but the arts are tricky, as much a consequence of time and place, as prowess and personality. I got into Borges, too, and sensed a precautionary tale of infinite libraries, and zero job prospects.
Imitation indeed the sincerest form of flattery (plus the rest of the alleged Oscar Wilde quote) that mediocrity can pay to greatness, my first attempt at high brow writing was a fitting homage to, and obvious ripoff of, the great Russian’s classic Notes — with a sprinkle of Camus. Since scanned and shared, here’s “A Confession” from that exciting and confusing time of life.
Does the story suck? Sure, any twenty-two-year-old with the chutzpah to out-Fyodor Dostoyevsky deserves the dustbin of history. Where it doesn’t is how I managed to infuse the pathos and anxiety I experienced at such a crossroads. The Underground Man had withdrawn from life; I quit school for absurd reasons without a net, the American middle class equivalent.
Fast forward decades, many lives lived, and I have a son about my age then who’s thinking about joining the Marines now. Akin to his dad, he’s seeking the path of least resistance, only to take the hardest one. Should I have listened to my GFs mom? One thing’s for sure: the best writing draws more from agony than ecstasy, Alice down the rabbit hole, hoping to wake up.
Here goes…
A Confession
Tribute to Doystoyevky
I.
To think? Difficult. To write? Impossible. For anything written, is but a blasphemy against consciousness. All one can do is to communicate, to speak. And is not all speech but a confession, another blasphemy against consciousness? And is not a written confession the worst of all? But one must often commit blasphemy in order to understand; one must speak in order to be heard — or should I say that speech is but the first and necessary step? I do not know, for I am ignorant. Perhaps that is why I am unable to remain silent. I speak too much, and in doing so I am always confessing, confessing my failures with every breath, almost as an excuse for my very existence. Excuse? Why it is my very existence! I live to speak. But I do not need others. I am never alone, for I often confess even to myself. Even in those rare moments of silence, alone, there is no escape — my thoughts are my shadows. My thoughts are relentless because I enJoy all difficulties. I am making things difficult for myself, you might think? Hah! I want to make things impossible! If only I could confess my successes…
A medical diagnosis is like a confession: it is an excuse, and a noisy one. It is a key to unlock the guilty conscience, and nothing more. A diagnosis is always simple, and do we not all relish simplicity? For simplicity is virtually silent, and in our greatest silence we can shout the loudest. With a good, professional diagnosis we can vanquish the world, we can alter it to our likng, we can hide and then go to sleep. And sleep well. But even in the
deepest sleep we are not alone. Our difficulties force us to awaken, and then we must vanquish even the diagnosis. Only then can one be truly alone.
Do not forget: I am ignorant. That is an advantage, because in that statement I take advantage of both worlds, and am able to laugh while l hide. You might say that I mereky laugh at myself in such dark corners? Good. My disguise has proven itself. But allow me to continue. I am ignorant, and by saying so I have offered the ultimate diagnosis. I have faith in such a diagnosis — it absolves me of all responsibility, and places me in league with the ignorant. In such company one can speak and be heard. But I am also ingenious, for I know and accept my ignorance, and with that I join the other ranks. With them I remain silent, but I already have my company. My diagnosis is my passport to all, it is my character. Even if I lose all, my ignorance remains to comfort me, to define me.
You question the need to continue? Why listen to an opportunist, and an ignorant one at that? But let me show you how that it is a need, how istening to a confession is almost as important as making one. Now I want to tell you a little about my confession, so you, too, can be ignorant. Why am I being so generous? Perhaps it is another need. Perhaps it is the only need…
II.
I am a student. Today, everyone is a student, because that is another
excellent diagnosis. The underlying illness? The quest for knowledge. Fortunately, it is never sincere. I am no exception. I am never an exception, and use this to my advantage, too. Since insincerity is the rule, many would believe that a confession in such an academic context would be easier. But no! For the confession is known to be insincere from the very beginning, and one is forced to perform on the open stage. Everyone knows that you are an actor, everyone knows that your integrity depends only upon the success of your performance, and everyone is thus a drama critic. If your act is convincing enough, you force the critic to take part in your performance. They resent it, because we all know that actors resent others of their kind who are impertinent enough to direct. But enough histrionics. More will follow.
I sense that you are becoming impatient with me. Am I not correct? I must admit that I am an excellent judge of character, being an individual who thinks only about himself. As a result, I react much quicker than others, who try passionately to relate to others in hopes of anticipating the reaction. I am ingenious — I simply gaze inside myself and seek out the contradictions, seek out the confusion, seek out the fear. Why struggle to understand your neighbor when similar seizures of irrationality and terror have long infiltrated your own soul? The fact that I do not understand myself does not at all interfere with my ability to comprehend the motivations of others; on the contrary, it is a distinct advantage. Fighting against myself, searching for my own motivationst I invariably encounter resistance, feverish resistance. I retreat, gather together again all of the my strengtht and then try again, perhaps following a different path in the hope of acquiring some new personal insight. This forces me into those nooks and nightmarish alleyways others might inhabit, compels me to know the neighborhood, so to speak. Then all that I require from anyone is a misdirected glance, a nervous twitch, some curious gesture of the hand or seemingly inexplicable facial expressiont and I know. Yes, I know where to look. I can find you in the darkness. I can find you in my own darkness. But I must continue. It is lonely in the dark — and dangerous.
As I have said, l am a student, I will always be a student. Should I become a shopkeeper or an engineer, l will be known as a shopkeeper or an engineer who is also a student. Do not be fooled. Labels are for your convenience, and mine. We label an individual when we know something general about them, or do not know anything in particular. Rarely do we allow ourselves to be ignorant enough to realize that labels are all we can ever know. But allow me to tell you about a professor, an intelligent man. We respected each other: I respected him out of envy, he respected me for my envy — an island of sincerity. Displaying an early aptitude to utilize any good diagnosis, I became a good student, and our respect for each other increased in proportion. Even after the confession, the respect never diminished. That has been the hardest to live with — maybe now I can relate the rest to you, with an almost clear conscience.
III.
To balance oneself is an art. The instant is our only concern, and the fate of the instant — whether calm, thunderous, remorseful, indignant — transforms the psychological event, creates the psychological moment. A successful act of will, the feeling of control, the flowing of power, an instant and the mind is suddenly awake, the world becomes electrified, the ego swells. But given an infinitesimal spark of fear, of powerlessness, of darkness, the soul plummets and the will is asphyxiated. To gain control in order to function, to be useful — to do something! — one must balance oneself between these extremes, or should I say, potentialities? Discretion is the key. One must be selective, filter out the dangers from the environment, become blind to much of existence and to oneself. What then becomes dangerous are the instants of passive existence, when the mind, replete with its arsenal of black cloth and blinders, is forced to deal with — boredom. When one faces the world from a lounge chair the struggle is muted, one feels safe and secure, and the passions turn inward. This is the danger, because inside one is still convulsing from the conflict that now does not exist, and what worked so well against the world becomes useless when turned against oneself.
Megalomania and depression manifest themselves when one has the time and the ability — and yes my friends, I had both. My world began to crumble along with my success, and that island of sincerity I have mentioned became the forefront of the demolition. For before I discovered it, I was forever on guard, and that kept me in balance. When I would walk to class. I felt the coldness and the distance in those who passed by, I could sense their inner anguish and virtually taste their resentment. They hated me, they hated me because I was just like them, equally full of resentment, equally lusting for power, and equally frustrated in the reality of powerlessness and fear. Those closer to me, classmates, neighbors, were similarly disposed toward me, and I felt safe in our shared contempt. I had only to look into a friend’s eye to find the treachery and selfishness. My only responsibility to them was its reciprocation. But as my self-confidence increased with my new found associations I was pushed into unfamiliar water. The professor urged me on, asked me to read my papers to the class, introduced me to his colleagues… and that, my friends, is when it all began to tumble down.
Please, do not misunderstand me. I am not so brash and impudent as to assert that one sequence of events in my life led to it all. I am much to garrulous to accept such a notion. But in retrospect, that friendship stands out and forever haunts me. For the first time I felt — responsibility. Yes, I was given an option, the opportunity to make a choice about my future. I was given the freedom to decide my own fate. From then on I could not hide amidst the fear, because I was given a goal, and life became more than a walk to class or an insincere smile. Whereas before I could create new alleyways and hide in the remotest corners, now I was thrust out into the open and was forced to pry. even deeper, to seek out my true inadequacies, my true limitations. But by this point such a task was too much for me. I found it impossible to discriminate between those back alleys and the main streets, and slowly came to realize that the difference did not exist. When I walked with them I had become one with them — 1 had found myself while I walked, because alone, I was nothing. I sought the crowd and its falseness because I was false, and I felt comfortable in its hypocrisy and delusion.
My reaction to these feelings was quite predictable: I sought the refuge of my room and my mind in the hopes that I could find myself through solitude. But similar to the hallucinations induced by extreme sensory deprivation, my mind recreated the insincerity and coldness I was long accustomed to. The walls were suddenly filled with busy streets, crowded classrooms, stark textbook pages. The restless anxiety that had projected itself into revenge and contempt now had no outlet but to further drive the need for more control and more power. I became feverish in my intensity, until the hatred was again forced inward, against my self and my own thoughts. Suicide became an obsession: I imagined the startled looks and stares of those who would find me lifeless in my room, the newest inhabitant of nothingness and the anticipator of the final passage. But these very fantasies compelled me to find some other solution. I did not want to allow the others to find such prosaic satisfaction through my own demise. Besides. nothingness was my only god, and I did not want to appease it, either. (I do not believe in God — I believe only in myself.)
What I needed was a solution: quick. simple, lasting. A solution that would give me more time. For we are all-forever deluded into believing that more time will change attitudes forever ingrained. Another diagnosis! Of course. And I would seek the very best kind of diagnosis, a professional diagnosis, because in an age of amateurs and specialists, the professional is lord and master.
IV.
A difficulty never stands alone. It is always a multiplicity of images, contradictions, struggles ag.inst resistance, hope. A difficulty can thus never be “solved” (a solution is merely another difficulty) — only reconciled, compromised, appeased. Like shadowy politicians and diplomatics vainly seeking an agreement, finally approaching and sitting down at the conference table is but the beginning of a long, protracted stalemate. Each opposing force is concerned solely with its own rapacious desires. Secret meetings are held amongst themselves to try and analyze the mysterious enemy, and to decide what can be sacrificed in order to acquire more and remain in an advantageous position. But imagine the confusion and utter chaos produced when a diplomatic team is not even sure of its own needs. How can it bargain when it does not know what can be sacrificed, does not even know why it seeks an advantage?
My professional diagnosis was a good one, bipolar manic depression: “mental disorder characterized by severe and recurrent mental, physical, and emotional depression or hyperactivity with abrupt onsets and recoveries.” Hah! There you have it. And what an advantage, for it even qualified my madness into mental, physical, and emotional portions, as if that were possible. It even offered three smaller excuses, three additional explanations. Did not God give humanity reign over the animal kingdom by revealing the power of names? But the diagnosis was only the invitation to the conference, just the beginning. Certainly, defining a difficulty does not lessen its intensity. If anything, the difficulty conforms itself to the definition in order to realize its full intensity. It follows its own will, its own dictates, and is subject to that same need for domination and control. In this sense I began to be victimized by my diagnosis, for what was before merely my reaction to the world, now became a reaction to the diagnosis. Rather than confront the images on my walls, I found myself debating a psychological adversary who asked for concessions I was more than willing to give. This reconciliation became my only goal, but it was a goal I did not want realized because the debate itself became everything. Nothing
existed outside the conference room, no sacrifice was too great simply to maintain the tension and conflict. I lived only to sacrifice, until I had nothing left to sacrifice but the diagnosis itself. I relinquished it by telling all.
Yes, my friend, I used my excessively loquacious nature quite productively, quite productively indeed. I went beyond the initial diatribe with the professional that resulted in my diagnosis. I told him what I felt, and what I did not feel, what I wanted to feel, and what I wanted him to feel. l told my acquaintances and thereby alienated them further, but in a relentless, unsatisfactory way — for what is effective is what is subliminal, below the surface. Everyone feels the tension and the fear, lives with it and inside of it. But to expose it, bring it to the surface, and address it directly is
taboo, impolite, against social etiquette, contrary to good taste. This became overwhelming, and my room became my permanent habitation. The images I could live with, but I painfully missed the coldness and indifference of those journeys to class, the empty faces passing by. I missed the hardness of the pavement and the sharp, cold air of the open sky. In my solitude I grew impatient, and the practical considerations of my absence from class offered a new outlet, another offer to my shadowy adversary across the table. One should never forget the practical considerations, because they are the greatest escape. They are tangible, react in predictable ways, goading you into the real, the impersonal. In my wisdom I realized this, and in my haste ran to the opportunity.
Now I told all to the professors, all of them, asking them for a withdrawal from class, from life, from difficulty. One after another, their glassy eyes wa tched me present my diagnosis. They were all quite understanding; from within their book covered offices they nodded their approval, expressed their concern, offered their hopes. The act went smoothly, and I played my role most skillfully, not pressing them too far, allowing their own histrionic abilities to merely augment my own performance. All that I really asked of them was a signature, and that is all that they gave me. This was possible for all my professors but one, the one whom I envied.
I spoke to him last. He listened intently, and I knew that he listened because I could sense his frustration and sincere impatience. He simply said that he had experienced individuals similar to myself, “perennial underachievers” he called us. Another label, and I almost cried out in appreciation at having been at least categorized in some way. He expressed hope in my eventual return to class, and he savored his new position, for I now envied even his sanity and stability, My respect for him increased substantially, and with it came a new and ever more painful realization. He sympathized, he tried to console, he encouraged me yet again, and by stressing the future he once more placed responsibility into my hands. Even more distressing was his obvious belief that I was not satisfied, that I was insightful enough to understand that accepting responsibility could offer as much as any diagnosis. With his silouette cast against the window, I saw into him, through him, as never before. What better hiding place than behind success and achievement? For both allow for silence, whereas a diagnosis always requires some explanation, some qualification. For the first time I understood that I had the same difficulties as everyone else, only I was more sensitive to them. I lived in them, and the struggle had been too great.
V.
A difficulty is merely the corruption of a feeling, and neither needs any justification. For how can one justify a difficulty. but through a feeling? And how can a feeling be justified? What compels the individual to justify anything at all, but the need for some form of compensation?
Purged of the need to justify, my diagnosis stood alone, and I was finally presented with the reality of the sickness it was left to describe.
Wherein lies the confession, you justifiably ask? Excellent question, for what is a confession without a crime, without guilt? Is not a confession an attempt to minimize or even eradicate that guilt? I have no guilt, I assure you — I am too far removed for even that, and without guilt there can be no crime. The criminal is but a creation of the guilt-ridden.
Wherein lies the confession, them? I do not know, and in that, in the most profound ignorance, I am safe, even from myself.
Wherein lies the confession? I do not know — but I wait, expectantly.
