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WalletsOctober 25, 2010 This got dropped from "The Spy I'll Never Be" (see entry for October 24), but it helped me get to where I was going. Maybe it'll eventually stand on its own, or become part of something else. Belief, absolute belief, unquestioning belief. Letting someone else pull your strings, giving yourself into the control of a puppeteer -- maybe not a fate worse than death but it still seems very scary and Not a Good Idea. Like getting married if you're a woman and marriage is the traditional man + woman = man kind. Putting your wallet in someone else's pocket. Putting your wallet in a total stranger's pocket isn't a good idea, but putting your wallet in the pocket of someone you trust often isn't either. What philosopher said that the one thing we aren't free to do is sell ourselves into slavery? In other words: to abdicate responsibility for our actions. If slavery of one kind or another is the only alternative to starvation or some other form of death, then you're not really free to choose, are you? Being the person who's got other people's wallets in her/his pocket -- that has consequences too. You start to think you deserve it, that it's because of your self-evident superiority that everyone's entrusting you with their wallets. And there's something wrong with anyone who wants to keep hold of her own wallet. Aha. Now I'm beginning to get it. Part of me envies anyone who believes so deeply that she will sacrifice whatever self-determination she's got in order to put her wallet in the pocket of a person, a country, a religion, a cause. Part of me thinks such people are gullible, self-deluding, or not too bright. Or scared. Scared is an odd word to use about a guy who day after day after day risked exposure, disgrace, and long imprisonment to spy for the Soviet Union. Or about people whose belief is so steadfast that they'll strap explosives to their bodies to win a skirmish for the cause, or refuse to give in or shut up when the likely price is gruesome death or mutilation. My mind boggles trying to understand this, yet at the same time I know people think I'm brave for things that don't seem unusual to me. My hunch is that at the moment we do something brave, or foolhardy, that thing seems normal, inevitable, not brave at all. Everyone around us expects us to do it. We've done it every day for a year and nothing bad has happened. Whatever, our choices have led us to this particular hurdle so we take a flying leap. Even if the leap is off a precipice, and the ground is far below and strewn with jagged rocks. Or the leap off the precipice seems preferable to one more tedious day of putting one foot in front of the other. If the leap lands you in an afterlife of milk, honey, and whatever your heart desires, so much the better. Is this about living in the real world, and making your own meaning one day at a time?
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