Narcissistic Reflections

Many years ago, and repeated by literary and uncultured Austen fans to this day, Jane Austen penned, "It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." This syllogism is just one of many typifications of human activity: "First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby in the baby carriage;" education, graduate school, money; house in the suburbs, two kids (a boy and a girl), minivan, soccer practice; Etc.

Besides functioning as fodder for satire and stereotypes for young adults to form adverse ideologies against, they represent truth, at the core. Few every wonder if these syllogisms are a byproduct of marketing a Made-in-America system for maintaining a consumer market, class system, and predictable, easily controlled citizenry (the few who think this are conspiracy theorists and watch too much Made-in-America television with the same objective).

Otherwise, the syllogisms are true because they happen naturally, a boy-meets-girl phenomenon -nature's (or God's) programming, for countless reasons.

I find myself slipping, or rather my mastery over ideals is slipping while I slowly descend into cliche territory. For example, while dating, I thought it completely gasp-worthy that a husband or wife would sit on opposite couches. I vowed never to let this happen (while I type from across the room). It was unthinkable that people would lazily roll luggage at an airport. They have no business packing weight that they themselves cannot carry, I thought. The wheels on my suitcase go round-and-round (blush). From the dark side I feel no guilt or reservation to conform or appease my pleasure in these areas. The convictions, I now hold, were naive.

But the descent becomes more slippery as time passes, as friends buy homes, and "nesting" sets in, babies are born, mini-vans purchased, and our 6th anniversary rolls around. Stereotypes have a ricochet affect that begins in generational mass movements. No one follows the trend of the weird guy from high school who went on to become an astrophysicist and locks himself most days in observation, needing to be reminded to eat and use the bathroom: singularities rarely start a movement. Usually it comes from looking around, beside, and into oneself to find comparisons, similarities that draw longings from within, natural or conditioned. And for myself I wonder what to make of these.

I could give in, adopt the dog, buy the house, have babies, and on... and truth, a part of me sighs a deep, warm sigh at this prospect. I have the home picked out; life is planned for the next 18-25 years and full of the unknown goodness of family life.

But I teeter. I don't want to slip and fall. I want to lean far from the edge. Not toward money. Not toward notoriety or class or ideal or career or I/me.
I want instead to delve into new. Things that never end: people whom I never figure out, ideas that tease and tangle my brain, doing something for which success is almost unattainable. I like challenges: being ridiculously bold and uncharacteristically behaved, facing a gripping fear, doing something that no one else will, pushing myself beyond a previous limit. I enjoy depth of anything: conversation, woods, silence, longing, memories, ideas; these fathoms are the stuff of life! I like when there isn't an obvious solution: analysis is the most satisfying pasttime. I like business, and motionlessness.

I don't want to fall into them. I want to stand as me. I'm not done with me, not yet. This narcissistic reflection, some would say, galls them, who have given and sacrificed and found the greatest of riches in family and suburban community and Western Christian fellowship. But I don't think, no, I know that I would not find LIFE there. Capital life that gleams bright and courses warm. Unless I gave everything, every dream, every thought, every joy, every expectation, every physical, emotional, and spiritual tendency, and I slipped ever gently down into them. To them. And I chose to serve forever, forsaking myself. Abandoning my will. For me I would not join the sisterhood of women delighted, as some do; I would join forsaken, timid, alone, and faithless.

Can I choose me? This is what I wonder? In choosing education, rent, poverty, and the reckless unknown I would know sacrifice, but not the stripping of myself completely. It would be sacrifice that, in the end, strengthens for service, empowers through empathy, and resonates with a spirit, mind, and body that I was gifted when I was born, by a God who intended me to serve the world AS I AM. Can I choose me, and through this the world? Or, do I slip softly, easily, effacing myself of identity to become one with/for them?