Why Individuals Frown a Lot

[This “Individuality and Absurd Rebellion” series of posts introduces you to ideas you’ll find in Eric Maisel’s most recent book Redesign Your Mind. You can learn more about Redesign Your Mind here.]

We individuals make our value-based decisions and then we try to live up to them and live with them, simultaneously feeling proud and blue. We’re careful not to inadvertently call this state of sadness, agitation and insufficient satisfaction “depression.”

Our malaise is no “mental disorder” but rather the natural consequence of dropping a passionate, energetic, creative, moral, and lively creature into this tiny little world, a world full of roadblocks, tyrants, disappointments and ordinariness.

So, the results we get do not match our hopes. Ideally, we would get excellent results from choosing righteous work like teaching and tackling that work as an engaged individual. Ideally, we would find ourselves smiling a lot and even happy.

In reality, we’re likely to get very mixed results and do a lot of frowning. This is why the life that an individual leads will not look like arithmetic. When we do math, we get a satisfying answer like “Four.” When we do life, our answers look very different.

Instead of four, we get: “I intend to write my poetry, even though it will never pay, live in love, even though I’m only mediocre relationship material, and raise children in love, even though I’m terribly scared of my critical nature.”

Or: “I see that I’m responsible for the whole world, which is ridiculous, and that I must call out every injustice, which is a fool’s errand, and that I’m obliged to do great work, even though my first efforts have been completely awful.”

Or: “I need to live in this community, because my loved ones reside here and won’t leave, but this community is tyrannical, dogmatic, and anti-rational. So, I’ll stay here but resist, even though that is bound to threaten me and my loved ones.”

None of this sounds like fun. Nor is it. Individuality is not a cheerful game or a stroll through the park. It is a tight-fitting suit that nature has fitted you with, making every step of the way half-uncomfortable. No need to thank nature for this!

This mandate to individuality is a lifelong albatross. Nature fitted you with this albatross and now you ratify its presence on your shoulder. You say, “I didn’t ask for this pressure but I accept it, since I refuse to live small or to shut my eyes.”

Can we meet these challenges? Not at the 90% level. Not at the 80% level. The challenges presented by our fierce need to be individual reduce us to accepting a very modest success rate, above insignificant but well below satisfactory.

Your individuality demands that you write an excellent novel. It is great in spots and ordinary in spots and terrible in spots. Was that an insignificant effort? No. Do you feel satisfied? No. That was a challenge bravely tackled, leading to a 20% victory and a frown and not a smile.

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