Adrian sat in a small community library on a rainy day in April, in Valencia. In a few weeks, after 8 months abroad, he’d be returning home. He’d left the U.S. with great aspirations. Inspired by spiritual literature, he’d wanted to train as an ascetic, to live without creature comforts and without a backup plan. He’d wanted, ultimately, to transcend – to shed the layers of his personality and to realize enlightened awareness – to sit with himself through all manner of discomforts until he reached, probed, and became intimate with the very depths of his fear. But none of these aspirations had remotely materialized. It was his own fault, his own fear holding him back, he knew. He was still living comfortably from his savings. He’d mostly been staying with families or in AirBnBs, not camping or living on the streets as he’d idealistically envisioned. He’d been unwilling to live very far outside his comfort zone, and had therefore hardly experienced any real apprehension, fear or discomfort during the eight-month travels.
Adrian couldn’t help but suspect that he was a coward. But somehow he seemed to be alright with being a coward, or at least with the ongoing existence of the suspicion of such, which, his being ok with it, he also found mildly disconcerting. He felt somehow that he should be more outraged at himself for possible cowardice, for his lack of conviction in pursuing his initial aspiration. Vaguely, he wondered what he had become. Who was this complacent creature he had turned into? Had he always been this way?
Adrian, like many, had started out as one of those types who have dreams of grandeur – grandeur in a healthy, un-pathological way, he liked to think, if such a thing existed. He’d wanted to be heroic, to face great trials, to suffer greatly, and to forge an unbreakable character – like the noble, straight-backed, steel scaffolding that’s left standing after a building is engulfed by a great fire. He’d wanted to be that strong scaffolding – fire-tested, indomitable. He thought of the quote he had seen in that Pema Chödrön book: “only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible in us be found.”
But Adrian hadn’t faced those storms about which he had so fantasized and that he had also feared and dreaded. He hadn’t been tested by any real fires. He had lived, and was continuing to live, a pretty comfortable life. So far in life, neither the world nor anyone in it had asked him to demonstrate greatness or outstanding courage. He had waited 30 years for some great push, some call-up from the reserves of life to the main stage, some situation to trigger a great adventure, like the beginning of a Hollywood movie. But eventually he’d begun to realize the truth, that the call would never come. Nobody would ever ask him for greatness or heroism. If he wanted to, he could simply go on living his comfortable life and nobody would really care or be bothered. No great force from the outside would ever be be coming to jolt him out of the rut of his life, or turn his comfortable nest over and send him flying out into the unknown. If he wanted greatness and adventure, he would have to deliberately choose those things himself. The push would have to come from within. And so, in the weeks before his 30th birthday, Adrian had left his career and naively stepped out in search of “transcendence,” or “greatness”, or “destiny” – or at least that’s what he’d told himself. In his lonely hours he couldn’t help but doubt and suspect that restlessness, immaturity, and an unwillingness to commit to a conventional career were the real motivations behind his decision. But he pushed those doubts away and chose to trust in his dreams, in the idea that he could be great.
Oh stupid, foolhardy youth!
Be careful what you wish for, they say. What would’ve happened if he had actually found hardship? If he had been sent to prison, say, or perhaps mugged and beaten to within an inch of his life. Would that experience have somehow validated his decision to leave his career? (Did his decision need validating at all?) Perhaps, like Pierre’s experience in the prison shed, in War and Peace, it would actually have been edifying. He might have learned, through deprivation, like Pierre had, “that the choice of occupation or lifestyle had become a simple matter, after his choices had became more restricted, and a surfeit of luxury, after having been eliminated, no longer took all the pleasure out of satisfying his basic needs” (paraphrased).
On the other hand, how many poor souls in undeveloped, famine-stricken, war-torn parts of the world wouldn’t want to trade circumstances with Adrian in an instant? (or would they?) But of course, Adrian doesn’t want to trade lives with them. He just wants to dip his toes in their world for an instant. To get a little thrill. But now that it’s come to it, even that little thrill is too much for him. He’s travelled a bit, he’s tried some things. At the end of the day, he supposes, he technically has gotten out of his comfort zone some, sure, but he never really took the full plunge into the real unknown, the real test – the point of no return with no safety net underneath.
Confused thoughts like these competed in Adrian’s mind…wondering what would’ve happened if he had found tragedy/hardship. Wondering if it was even wise to seek hardship in the first place. An awareness of his privilege and that he was somehow not making the most of it. A mild feeling of guilt and also a resentment that anyone would want to make him feel guilty for his privilege, which he hadn’t chosen.
In any case, the conclusion these tangled thoughts and his visceral feeling of disillusionment seemed to be pointing to were the same – perhaps he should return home and fully inhabit the space society has granted him, own it and make the most of it, earn a good living and donate a big chunk of his income to charities in developing countries.
“Perhaps that really is the way I can do the most good in the world, find the most meaning… after all,” he thinks.
“I’ve travelled enough. I’ve gotten some of the restlessness out of my system, now let me go back home,” he thinks.
But another part of him, maybe his wounded pride, maybe his idealism, isn’t quite ready to let it go. It rebels, “What a let-down. What a pathetic disappointment! Is that all this was? Some little game of pretend where one plays at being adventurous without really risking anything? Some sort of jousting with foam swords?”
The righteous voice continues: “Fine, go back to your safe world, Adrian, if you like. You can justify it however you want. You’re disappointed in yourself, sure, but know that you still have a choice. You still have an opportunity. You haven’t been willing to step over the edge yet, but you’ll still have more chances. This isn’t over yet! Don’t you dare belittle your genuine ambition for transcendence or confuse it for merely an extension of, or a reaction to, your privilege. You’re scared that your soul wasn’t meant for such rarefied heights, but you’re wrong. You can go back to your comfortable, well-upholstered world, but you’ll never truly feel like you belong. And when you return, your family and friends will all be very impressed with you. They’ll praise you and talk about how unconventional you are, how you broke the mold and were “so adventurous.” And your heart will all the while smolder with the dull anguish, the guilty knowledge, the truth – that you’d never fully let yourself experience that true depth of fear. You’d held yourself back. That anguish will be the natural result of your unexpressed potential, and it’s no less than you’ll deserve. But it’s not so bad, I suppose, in the end. You’ll learn to live with it – the anguish. You’ll keep yourself distracted with your job and your family and your hobbies, and so you’ll simply live, a good life, but not a great one, for the rest of your days. Is that what you really want?”
Adrian sighs, then stands up abruptly, as if to push away his confusion and his own verdict of himself. He looks around. There is an old man in a baseball cap two tables to Adrian’s right, slumped in his chair, seemingly asleep. The only other person visible to Adrian is a middle-aged librarian at the front desk, her face screwed up in concentration, staring at her computer screen. Neither has taken notice of Adrian. Adrian closes his laptop, puts it in his backpack, and begins walking out of the library.
He’s decided he’ll try to forget the verdict of his own idealistic soliloquy. He feels he is subtly confounding things, mixing truths and falsities. He vaguely thinks of ways to refute his previous indictment. He considers that adventure and bravery can be embodied within a so-called “conventional” life, and that he should try to make an effort to stop seeing conventional as such a dirty word. He mumbles “grow up” to himself while exiting the library. That’s what you get for watching too many Hollywood movies. One doesn’t have to take actual physical risks or perform dramatic, heroic acts. One can take emotional risks, intellectual risks, be rigorously honest, embody virtue. These are ways of living truly and fully and are totally compatible with existing within what may look like a conventional framework from the outside.
Maybe the outer form of a life is always a unique, changing thing, Adrian thinks. One’s vocation or path might look more or less conventional from the outside, but the basic thing is to try to be as good a person as one can be, as best as one knows how…
Adrian can’t help but smile wryly at this easy platitude, but the smile is not without some genuine amusement. Somehow, although he’s officially resolved nothing, he does feel more at peace. He lets his smile grow. “It’s worked! I’ve fooled myself into being ok with going back home!” He laughs in mock exuberance, not sure whether he’s being ironic or not, as he steps over some dog shit on the street, shiny from the rain, and unlocks the front gate of his apartment complex, stepping inside.
Always at the Beginning 