the-foreigners-parable

It's so simple to feel that you are particularly awful.'Flaws' seems like a word impossibly small in the wake of the reality of what you've done, the index stored away of every misgiving, social disaster and irreparable real-time decision you incorrectly ventured. Moments slip through your limited fingers as you try to make decisions about an opaque future, based on an opaque past, with contact with a hazy present that is structured in cognitive complexes, not hard truths, measurements or 'reality'. One of those complexes is called "hopelessness" and it crystallizes brutally in the core of the mind, not only rewriting and growing itself, but overwhelming the mechanisms in the mind responsible for building new structures in the mind. Everything in the mind takes on a new hue, contextualized by this nefarious architecture, bloated and over-efficient in it's sorting.But this hopelessness is not the only mechanism lingering in the mind, rewriting history and disastrously skewing the current ledger of events. We are born into a world without knowledge or power. We need. This need never leaves us. We are surrounded by behemoths of physical, cognitive and spiritual power, people who seemingly 'have it figured out'. And somewhere in this state, something can crawl into us. This sense that we are somehow alien. Insufficient.Damaged.And it's a self-replicating virus. As we sense there is something wrong with us, we feel ourselves drift from the firelight of humanity. There is a powerful sense that if we just rowed correctly or adjusted our sails or, perhaps, patched the cracks in our raft that we could find our way home. So, we fix. We laugh and smile, we diet and compete, we exercise and ring our fingers around the things we can control until our knuckles look as lifeless as we feel inside. And in our every action, there is a plea for the one thing that we cannot control and that we have never been able to control: acceptance.Our bank accounts, our jobs, our clothes, our bodies, our sensibilities and taste transform from just being utilities to being cries for acceptance, for love. Like entropy springs out of every movement, we unwittingly spend untold energy in the desperate exhaust of approval. And yet, the fire still drifts. Damage feeds Hopelessness feeds Damage feeds Hopelessness.All the while we find ourselves in a humanity of exceptional people. Exceptional bravery, exceptional skill, exceptional beauty, exceptional discipline, exceptional kindness. It can be so easy to catalyze this experience into a further sense of damage and inadequacy. But, this exceptionality is where my hope was found. Because, in the midst of the exceptional good, humanity has within it exceptional bad. Exceptional cruelty, exceptional violence, exceptional neglect, exceptional hatred. It's easy to view these attributes as the natural state of things, to feel that humanity is doomed to its own awfulness. It's particular awfulness. But, these attributes of humanity are just as exceptional as their mirrors. Chaos is always easier than order. Order requires particularity, while chaos is free to be anything. And Chaos is ubiquitous in a way that Order may not be. That much I have not determined yet. But, my point: If humanity were more cruel than it is kind, more evil than it is good, then surely none of the good we have today would exist. While it may take centuries to build a cathedral, such a structure can be leveled in a number of hours by a much smaller team than was required to build it. Humanity would not be sustainable if cruelty were the rule. So, exceptionality runs both ways. Good and evil. And each exception has its mirror.Someone lauded as driven and determined, may in the same actions be seen as temperamental and abrasive. Someone who is kind and peaceful, may be seen as flimsy and indecisive. This is not a call to explore and select the flaws in humanity, though. This is an opportunity to rid yourself of the notion of your own exceptional awfulness. I do not doubt you've done wrong, you've hurt people, you've made terrible decisions. But, your every action has a reason for it and it leaves behind a shadow, a shadow that, when explored, may reveal a beautiful strength in you. Not an unimpeachable strength. Not a strength that enforces that you will receive love and not a strength that frees you from future mistakes. But in this strength, you have value.I know that I don't know you, I know that I haven't seen what you've done or been through. But I don't care. There is nothing so terrible that you could have done that forbids you from humanity. Perhaps there are things to resolve, debts you need to pay up on, those you need to forgive or seek the forgiveness of, but this is different than Damage. Flaws, mistakes, errors, we're incredibly well adjusted as a humanity to adjust to these, to expect them. Everyone makes mistakes, big mistakes, mistakes that rattle them awake in their soundest sleep. You're really not that different from anyone else. It's so simple to feel that you are particularly awful. Just remember that affords you a particular strength, as well. Welcome home.