There Is No Life That Cannot Be Successfully Prosecuted From the Right Angle

Or, we say we do not care what anyone thinks, and then check whether anyone liked the sentence in which we said it

My mother does not understand adventure.

This is not entirely true. She understands adventure as an abstract category, the way I understand the concept of debt: I accept that it exists, but I would prefer not to be personally involved.

Whenever I tell her I am going somewhere or doing something that contains even trace amounts of uncertainty, she asks, “What is the need?”

This is an excellent question because there is almost never a need.

There is no need to climb a mountain. The mountain has not requested it. There is no need to ride a motorcycle through the countryside or jump from a plane or wander through an unfamiliar city eating food whose name you cannot pronounce. There is technically no need to leave the house unless the house is on fire, and even then my mother would probably advise waiting for the fire brigade.

“What is the need?” is the question asked by people who believe life is something to be protected.

I have generally believed that life is something to be spent.

The disagreement between us is not really about paragliding or trekking or motorcycles. It is about what danger means. To her, danger is the possibility that something terrible might happen. To me, danger is also the possibility that nothing happens for a very long time.

I would like to claim that her opinion does not affect me. I would like to tell myself that I am an adult man with a job, a tax return, and a worrying amount of confidence in Google Maps. But her disapproval still enters me with almost administrative efficiency. A stranger can call me reckless and I will think, Well, screw you too. My mother can call me reckless and I begin preparing a legal defence.

This is one of the humiliations of love: the people closest to us retain passwords to parts of us we thought we had secured.

I have spent a lot of time wondering how much power other people should have over the person I believe myself to be. The obvious answer is none, which is also the answer most commonly given by people posting inspirational quotes beneath photographs of lions.

But of course other people have power over us.

We need approval. We need acceptance. We need to be recognised by someone outside ourselves, because a self witnessed only by itself begins to feel theoretical. We say we do not care what anyone thinks, and then check whether anyone liked the sentence in which we said it.

There is something childish in wanting everyone’s approval, but there is also something childish in pretending we need no one.

The problem is not that we are influenced. The problem is that we are often influenced indiscriminately.

Every opinion enters through the same door.

A colleague dislikes the way we work. A parent worries about the way we live. A partner wants more than we can give. A stranger on the internet believes our sense of fashion is evidence of moral decline. Each judgment arrives dressed as information, and unless we have examined ourselves, we cannot tell whether it is evidence, projection, love, fear, control, envy, or merely someone having a bad Tuesday.

Without some internal position, every accusation becomes an emergency.

You are selfish.

You are wasting your potential.

You are too ambitious.

You are not ambitious enough.

You travel too much.

You work too much.

You do not spend enough time with your family.

You are becoming boring.

There is no life that cannot be successfully prosecuted from the right angle.

If you choose adventure, someone can accuse you of irresponsibility. If you choose stability, someone can accuse you of cowardice. If you pursue money, you are materialistic. If you do not pursue money, you are naive. If you compromise in a relationship, you have lost yourself. If you refuse to compromise, you are incapable of love.

Every virtue casts a shadow when viewed from somewhere else.

So perhaps the question is not whether a life can be criticised. It can. The question is whether the criticism belongs to the life being lived.

I think this is why I have become interested in positions.

An identity says, This is who I am.

A position says, Given what I know, value, fear, and hope for, this is where I currently stand.

Identity sounds stronger, but it is often more fragile. Once I say I am adventurous, every cautious decision becomes a betrayal. Once I say I am loyal, every departure becomes a moral failure. Once I say I am rational, every emotion becomes embarrassing evidence for the prosecution.

An identity must keep proving itself.

A position can change.

This seems less heroic, but perhaps more honest. I can hold the position that adventure matters to me without promising to pursue every available form of death. I can believe that travel makes my life feel larger and later decide that I want to stay home. I can value ambition without worshipping work. I can love someone without agreeing that love requires me to disappear.

The position may change because the world changes, or because I do, although these are often the same thing.

I used to think changing your mind meant that your earlier self had failed. Now I suspect it sometimes means your earlier self completed its work.

Still, there is an uncomfortable problem here. A person can justify almost anything by calling it a position.

“This is what I have chosen to optimise for” is an impressive sentence. It can make selfishness sound like mathematics.

We can explain our lives through systems and trade-offs and incentives. We can build a small consulting deck inside our head. Slide one: My Values. Slide two: Strategic Priorities. Slide three: Reasons Everyone Else Is Wrong.

I am especially vulnerable to this because I like explanations. Explanations make chaos look like it has been attending meetings.

If I can explain why I travel, why I work, why I take risks, why I cannot give someone everything they want, then perhaps I am not erratic or selfish or afraid. Perhaps I am simply executing a strategy.

But a strategy can also become a hiding place.

Sometimes people understand our reasons and remain hurt.

My mother may understand perfectly well that adventure makes me feel alive and still fear receiving a phone call in the middle of the night. A partner may understand my limits and still feel abandoned by them. Someone may see the logic in my position and still decide that the position is unbearable.

Explanation does not abolish consequence.

This is difficult for me because I want clarity to produce peace. I want to believe that if I arrange the words correctly, everyone will understand not only what I am doing but why it is necessary that I do it.

But people do not experience our logic. They experience our choices.

Perhaps an internal position is not a tool for persuading others. Perhaps it is simply the place we return to when persuasion fails.

My mother says, “What is the need?”

And I could explain the need for uncertainty, for motion, for occasionally standing somewhere far from home and feeling how vast the world is and how temporary I am. I could explain that safety is not the same thing as being alive, just as being alive is not the same thing as being safe.

But none of this would remove her fear.

And her fear would not remove my desire.

Love does not always resolve opposing positions. Sometimes it merely keeps the argument from becoming abandonment.

I used to imagine self-knowledge as a kind of final discovery, as if somewhere inside me there were a sealed envelope containing the answer to who I am. But whenever I look inward, I do not find a single self. I find a committee.

One part wants freedom. Another wants approval. One wants to be brave. Another would like comprehensive insurance coverage. One wants to be understood. Another resents having to explain anything at all.

Perhaps self-examination does not reveal a fixed identity. Perhaps it only introduces the members of the committee.

Even then, there is some relief in recognising the voices.

My mother’s fear can enter me without becoming my command. Someone’s criticism can wound me without becoming my biography. A person I love can want something from me that I cannot give, and neither their wanting nor my refusal has to prove that one of us is wrong.

I do not want to be immune to other people. Immunity is another word for isolation.

I want their words to reach me. I want love to retain its terrible power. I want to remain capable of being corrected, embarrassed, changed, and occasionally devastated. But I do not want every voice to become the narrator.

Maybe that is what a position offers: not certainty, but continuity. A provisional place from which to say, This is what I believe today. This is the trade-off I can currently bear. This is the life I am trying to live, though I may still be misunderstanding it.

The hope is not to become impossible to influence.

The hope is to become difficult to hijack.

And yet the people we love will always know some of the passwords.