discipline
my essence is at odds with discipline. it is my nature to fight discipline, to avoid it, hide from it, run away from it. i hate routine and i despise convention.
conventional wisdom suggests discipline is the cornerstone of success but recently i have wondered if that is an absolute after all. (perhaps it is in our utilitarian society.) as for me i am especially undisciplined in some regards and in other ways i am utterly disciplined.
i don't open my mail in a timely fashion and i am often late paying my bills. i use an alarm clock but i refuse to get up at the same time everyday. some days i rise before my alarm. other days i knock it off and wallow for a spell or return to sleep. i prefer to be up well before having to go to work in order to protect my lack of routine. i prefer spontaneity to planning and chaos to order. (of course, the world is gray and there are examples of all of my maxims turned on their respective heads.) discipline stifles me, the me i like the most, the curious me, the alert me, the me in motion.
i get my art. i refuse to let anything: work, relationships, responsibilities, anything whatsoever, interfere with my ability to take in art. when i have been busiest i still make time to read before bed. i still keep my netflix queue moving: sugar, days of heaven, my week with marilyn, hugo, melancholia, whatever works, the devil and daniel johnston, flash of genius, stanley kubrick; a life in pictures, i am, and the steady stream of films flows into and through my life like blood only instead of red blood cells and white blood cells and oxygen, the movies give me insight and empathy and knowledge and fulfillment. i am nurtured through my appreciation.
i am in many ways a tragic figure. i am determined to live a life without regard for money. currency is of course ubiquitous and so, i deal with money, which is to say i pay my bills and i make an income and i consume and provide for. i am like bartleby the scrivener however, in my refusal to adapt. i reject conventions. i reject the idea that i should be aware of and track every cent i spend. that sort of mundane exercise sucks the life out of me. as an alternative it has always been my goal to be a little bit smarter than others around me in order to excel to the affect of gaining slightly more income, enough income to allow for my idiosyncrasies, primary of which being my refusal to be completely aware of the flow of funds through my account. i reject the idea i should spend my life in the service of money. i am disappointed at my standard of living being lower than perhaps what i expected growing up. that said i am comfortable in an apartment. i have everything i need. there is an abundance of love in my life. my children are thriving. the discipline associated with balancing a checkbook and making my lunch everyday, (as opposed to picking up a sandwich or whatever,) disdaining meeting up with friends for a few beers or not taking the kids out for some pizza is anathema to everything i like about myself. instead i indulge myself in these ways and i am unable to afford to be a homeowner, (which is a bad joke to begin with since banks own the houses for 20 or 30 years anyway and at the end of it all no one gets to take anything with them.)
in some ways i am glorious in my singularity. i am disciplined in how i treat my children and in how i answer their questions. i never lie. i have a cousin who is sick and my aunt was telling me all about it the other day and my daughter overheard some of my phone conversation and so as i tucked her into bed she asked me about this illness. we started talking about kidney stones, the kidneys, vital organs, kidney function, my limited grasp of what a kidney stone actually is, how it passes, what the doctors do for one with kidney stones, and so on. she asked me if one can die from kidney stones...and then she asked me if i was going to die. i told her yes, i will be dying some day. i went on to explain that i will not die until she is an adult and that i likely have another 30-40 years here. three minutes after i turned out the light she came upon me in the living room with tears streaming down her face. she said she did not want me or her mommy to die. i picked her up and set her in my lap and referenced the circle of life from the lion king and let her know that it is natural and that i am comfortable with it but that i promised to do everything possible to be around well into her adult life even to a time when she might become a mommy. i hugged her tight and i refused to tell her lies. i know i could have avoided this conversation, deferred it perhaps somehow, but this is not my way. rather i think it is important for me to hang in there in these tough moments, to look my daughter in the eyes and think hard about my answers and try hard to give her the very best of me. she was okay, too. 10 minutes later i put her back in bed and she went right to sleep. recently the principal at her school told me she is the very best student in the school. she said my daughter makes other students better because of how serious she is about learning and engaging in the various activities and subject matter of a day. the principal said she did not know what we are doing in our newly broken homes but that for all she could tell my daughter continues to thrive. if i have to put my finger on what i, or we, may be doing right, i think it is this honesty. my daughter knows i will always tell her the truth. she knows there is no santa claus, no easter bunny, no god, no ghosts or goblins and no tooth fairy, (though she has made it clear she would like to believe in fairies of all sorts because she likes them but i know for certain that she knows.)
i am also messy. when i am tidy i feel better and i often feel more productive. that said when someone suggests to me that a messy desk is representative of a messy mind i can't help but frown on them and think them something of a neanderthal. (did they never see einstein's desk?)
to those i want to say... shut up with your maxims. i suppose all these absolutes and labels help you in some way cope with the world but you're not coping at your best when you take the lazy way out. challenge yourself, your long held beliefs, your little rules. try starting from an opposing perspective.
"If in the last few years you haven't discarded a major opinion or acquired a new one, check your pulse, you may be dead." -Frank Gelett Burgess
i like to change things up. i try not to do repetitive things the same way each time. this habit may not be unlike an obsessive compulsive in as much as these are small things i am referring to: the route i drive to a particular destination, the order in which i go about making dinner, or how i clean a room in my home. i think of routine in the same way i recall the firefighters from fahrenheit 451. remember how they played cards constantly as if to keep themselves from thinking about what they were doing, their job and the decay in their society? for me avoiding discipline is in a way like fighting that ability to turn my mind off in that manner. i like the small challenges and i like variety. it is my stated goal to be disciplined about challenging discipline, the disciplines i do not value.
in this way everything you know is wrong. discipline is not good. it is not bad, either. the world is gray but in order to see the gray i found i had to be able to shield my eyes from the white and focus on the black to facilitate achieving gray. embracing the contrarian has been an effective means for achieving balance.
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