Bullet-headed, I plunge into the icy waters. I am prepared; it doesn't take my breath away. The floating ice scrapes my skin as I skim past. The frigid chill saps my strength. But I will swim the distance. I will make the shore, because I know what waits for me there.
Sometimes, the journey is not reason enough. Never forget the destination.
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Thanks. Needed this.
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome. So did I.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't really fit with the thematic message of the blog, but I don't think that's terrible. Sometimes it's not good to wallow.
Oh, is what's under the title of the blog supposed to be the theme? I wasn't aware of that. I just you decided to share brilliance with us.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I figured it was descriptive, but then I suppose it turned more into a prescriptive measure.
ReplyDeleteI don't want to deny the point of remembering the destination of the journey, but ... 0 degrees Celsius. That is the ideal temperature at which ice and water can coexist. A human can survive in water that icy for less than five minutes.
ReplyDeleteSo yeah, obviously the destination is important. But given the incredibly slim odds of actually reaching that destination, I still say the journey, the striving, means something more.
Is there value in striving toward a goal without hope of success?
If the journey is hellish, what use then in celebrating it? Celebrate instead the strength to endure it.
ReplyDeleteAnd I suppose there is value in a hopeless struggle. Not nearly as much as our romanticized view of a hopeless struggle, but some. Maybe not enough to justify it, but some. I think that a hopeless test of endurance simultaneously tests our humanity, and that being proud of that is a net positive.
I'm falling asleep, but essentially: life is hard. The destination is crap, too, unless it's heaven. The journey is important. The stages are important. The progress is important. They all merit some celebration.
ReplyDeleteSee, I think you're equating "journey" with "obstacles to be overcome" whereas I equated it with "progress made."
ReplyDeleteI want to quote that thing someone carved in a wall at a concentration camp, about believing in the sun even when it refuses to shine. Or like, Winston Churchill. I think, honestly, it's a Captain Kirk thing. You don't give up even when the odds are astronomically against you because ... I don't know why. You just do.
Because Providence honors the brave? Because the alternative is inconceivable?
Again with the free association nonsense. A character flaw I apparently do not desire to correct. Sorry I'm not sorry.
Keeping with the theme of Left Hand of Darkness, there is a quiet moment as the two main characters are toiling through an impossible journey (essentially two men walking from Juneau to Halifax undetected in the snow across a glacier) and one of them asks if it is indeed the journey that is worthier of praise.
ReplyDeleteIt is essentially the old yarn.
The person who read the book before me was conservative in their markings, and took this time to carefully pen: "First instance of famous cliche?"
I think swimming through ice is notable. I think having goals is laudable. I think achievement is worthwhile.
I like reading other people's notes. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, but I don't really think the conversation about failure is/should be(?) over just yet.
Surely you know that horror story in which a father kills himself and his son moments before help arrives, yes?
That is an extreme example, I know (as are the ones in *Star Trek*). But people pretty much only tell stories of the extreme stuff. Faced with rejection, a man sacrifices his dignity on the altar of love and gets the girl. Faced with life and death, a person takes an impossible chance, and he survives.
Great stuff, right? But like ... I just have no idea how to calibrate that. I have spent so much of my life letting go too early or holding on too long, and so this question matters to me.
At what point is it imperative to screw the destination and take solace in the fact that you tried?
((Or does success only come for the attractive white male?))
Taken in discrete chunks, everyone is a failure. It's like the story of Abraham Lincoln. What did he really accomplish, running for Congress? Senate? He tried so hard to be in those institutions but even if he got there he never did anything of note. And when he was president, after choosing the wrong general of the Potomac a hundred times, he finally gave in and hired the butcher and watched the South burn. And finally, just before getting to the thing he would actually like to do--healing the South, he was killed. And Johnson and Grant got to do the job made for and by Abraham Lincoln.
ReplyDeleteSo was he a failure even so? He did pass that one proclamation. But in the long scheme of things, we only remember the guy coming OUT of a crisis (Washington, FDR, Reagan) with any fondness. Was he a failure who happened to be in office when the war ended, or was he a failure?
Taken in discrete chunks and viewed without the broader scope, everyone's life is a failure.
Technically, you have overcome adversity both social and mental to become an intellectual powerhouse. Is that destination good enough to consider enjoying the journey in retrospect?
I think that's what it is. If the victory is good enough, we can justify the failures along the way. But if the victory feels lacking, we dismiss our struggles as perpetual failure.
ReplyDeleteHmm. A different take on "the ends justify the means." It makes sense with the "history is written by the victors" thing, too.
ReplyDeleteYou're right, I guess, about everything looking like a failure when you want it to. (I will NOT also quote *Pollyanna,* even though it's technically an Abraham Lincoln quote, I guess.)
One can do the same with victories-- focus on the successes and the successes only. Like, I don't know. Like *Saving Mr. Banks.* Disney takes a bitter struggle from its past and tries to absolve itself by taking a narrow, self-serving focus that makes it look good.
In my life, I've overcome various kinds of adversity, but I've brought most of it upon myself. I've failed at many other things, but sometimes I did my best, and I am glad of that. I've refused to even try at other things, which means both failure and a lack of it, depending on how one views it.
I often find myself editing stories from my past to make myself look better or to just make a better story, and though I can't quite kick that habit (I'm not completely sure I want to), I am also learning to accept and even appreciate the complexity of real life even though it's not a story I can easily tell my (fictional, impossible) grandchildren.
In other words, I don't think you're wrong, though you never really answered my question. :-)
So I responded to this, but I think my computer decided it wasn't worth the effort of submission.
ReplyDeleteBut I could be wrong on that.
Anyway, I was just saying ... it wasn't even that great of a comment, but I mourn its (probable) loss anyway because I am lazy and don't want to have to reconstruct it.
I tend to edit my past in my memory in order to make it into a better story. I do that with other people, too, I think. And anyway, that's a habit I didn't realize I had until years of tweaking the truth had already passed, so how can I say I know the truth about myself?
There is value in building good stories, but truth is more valuable. ((The Bible is full of complex, not-very-good stories that give me confidence that it is true.))
We do that with famous people, too, of course. At the risk of quoting Starkid, we sometimes twist heroes into villains and villains into heroes, and either way, we lose the fact that they were people. ((I am currently reading an excellent fanfiction that addresses that. I cannot quote it here.))
Anyway, the thing is ... whether we are even capable of viewing history as a whole, for all its beauty and ugliness and blandness, is not really debatable. We can't. We can try to learn from it, we can study it, but there will always be information beyond our grasp, and data mixed so inextricably with interpretation and years of bias and legend that we may never understand any of it as well as we think we do.
So yeah ... the victors write the history books and tell their stories, and maybe the losers eventually gain enough power to do the same. You graduate, and it makes all the years of work at college seem to fall into place; you find the person you want to be with all your life, and everyone else you dated seems a prelude leading up to the crescendo you'll tell your kids about later. And, on the flip side, if something goes wrong, suddenly all the good moments you had on your journey to that point seem to disappear.
So, yeah, I'm agreeing with you and mostly spewing out nonsense because it's clarifying the thought in my head, and I want to get it right.
But the best answer to my question I can construct from all of this is simply, "There is absolutely no way to know."
This is, of course, why Jim Kirk captains a starship and Mr. Spock does not.
And for all my pretense at being Kirk, in this respect I am Spock. I cannot trust my instincts.
Janelle said: "I want to quote that thing someone carved in a wall at a concentration camp, about believing in the sun even when it refuses to shine. Or like, Winston Churchill. I think, honestly, it's a Captain Kirk thing. You don't give up even when the odds are astronomically against you because ... I don't know why. You just do. "
ReplyDeleteThat made me think of Puddleglum, when they're trying to fight against the witch's spell that would trap them there under her power. He stamps on the fire and says that even if Aslan and Narnia don't exist, even if it's a game, it's a game that seems more real than the world the witch was spinning. So that's a thing.
Maybe we're all discrete failures. Cumulatively we might amount to something, but in the end what does it matter? And humanity is general is a collective failure. That's why we need Christ.
But I also think that a God-given self-worth is important, too, in finding meaning in what seems like repeated failure (I struggle with self-worth, for sure). We can't see the big picture, and that makes us insecure. So it's good to get reminders to keep on trying, no matter what.
I think it's hilarious that the strongest resonance of victory at all costs is Kirk. Neither of you were able to read the other's comments, and yet you both mentioned him within half an hour of each other.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I am amused that this, one of my shortest posts, has accrued so many comments.
Actually, I was quoting Janelle when I mentioned Kirk. So the mentions of Kirk are all Janelle.
ReplyDeleteLength of something doesn't necessarily indicate depth. So....but it's an intriguing concept. I don't trust my instincts on much (except maybe grammar, and even there I mix up British and American usages). What I trust my instincts on the least would be my romantic relationships with other people (of which there have been zero, which is a result of the mistrust, I would think).
Good point, Ashlee.
ReplyDeleteHe couches it in terms of victory, sure, but Kirk doesn't resonate with me because he wins. He resonates with me because of his undying hope. He never gives up, even when reason demands it. He knows what he values, and everything he does reflects those values.
.... And there it is. Ugh. When you order your life around success/failure, you are bound to get lost because those aren't absolutes. Like plotting a course based on the locations of individual insects.
Point taken.
Also: this is why Haiku.
ReplyDeleteIn light of the original post, Kirk is surprisingly irrelevant. From what I know of him, he wouldn't have prepared for anything, but would have improvised on the fly to deal with the challenge and then claimed the same thing at the end.
ReplyDeleteSo, different worldviews I guess.
Not that I know everything there is to know about him, but my understanding of the character is that while Kirk is very good at improvisation, he does prepare.
ReplyDeleteHe plays chess, after all, and he (often) wins. He puts protocols in place, and he knows and follows Starfleet regulations most of the time.
Although ... I think he may share your (apparent) tendency to trust his instincts first and come up with reasons for it afterward.
Again with the middle ground (I think).
That doesn't sound like preparation. That sounds like playing by the rules, which has little to do with how much work you put into something before hand.
ReplyDeleteAs a teacher, I often have to/get to use materials that someone else made. I don't think that using those materials means I am unprepared for my classes. I just don't feel obligated to redo work that has already been done.
ReplyDeleteKirk may not have made the rules he follows, but he has taken the time to learn them and figure out how to bend them without breaking them. The fact that he can do so much without spending so much time on research indicates (to me) that he has done that work already.
In one episode, a fellow officer he knew at Starfleet Academy (Gary Mitchell) described him as "a walking stack of books" who was so tough as a TA that he (Mitchell) tried to distract him (Kirk) with girls. So maybe by the time he makes captain, he's not spending all his free time reading regulations and missions briefs and doing tons of legwork to figure out what to do. But he also worked hard enough (both in the original series and in the reboot) to graduate in three years when everyone else graduated in four, to find a solution to a test no one else had passed (and to take it three times, unlike other cadets), and to become the youngest captain in Starfleet.
I do not think his reliance on his crew (which, honestly, is the whole point of having a crew) negates his ability to work hard and be prepared for many different outcomes/scenarios.
But then again, I am somewhat biased.
I am beginning to doubt my understanding of your use of the word "preparation."
Benedilock Holbatch prepares. In the Reichenbach Fall, he had contingencies for his contingencies. That's preparation.
ReplyDeleteYes, and we know this because he told us about them in a ridiculous amount of detail. Because that is kind of the point of the show.
ReplyDeleteKirk doesn't say, "Look at how awesome and well-prepared I am," as BBC Sherlock does because *Star Trek* has always been (until reboot, at least) about philosophy and social issues, not about how eccentric one character is.
I do believe Kirk prepared well for his command and for his individual missions and encounters. I am willing to concede that he did not have contingency plans in as great a number (or full of complexity on the scale) of BBC Sherlock's.
I just think that to say Kirk doesn't prepare disregards his years of careful preparation, his study of and adherence to a strict moral code and Starfleet regulations, and his understanding of and ability to rely on his crew.
Given that he was literally going where no one else had gone before, and a starship is a sealed unit, I don't think he really could have prepared better than that.
I bow to your better knowledge, for I must. I don't know much about Kirk. But I do know that the show concerns itself far less with themes of preparation than with reaction. I suppose that perhaps the only way to look at it is that he has done as much preparation as possible in a situation so desperately foreign. But to suggest that preparation is more important than reaction seems to be incorrect even so.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you there.
ReplyDelete