Just a few minutes ago, I felt like I was about to crash into concrete—the feeling was that of free-falling, but slower, almost as if I would have only enough time for being fully conscious of the inevitable crash and that I do not seem to have it in me to find a way out. Still, I tried to go through the different possibilities, some of which seemed to make the pull of this figurative gravity stronger. Some, fortunately, seemed to form a makeshift parachute that would lessen the acceleration and give hope against what seems like an impending doom.
Now that sounds like a completely negative way of putting things at, but perhaps the dramatics aid in the roundabout uncovering of the good. As I scrolled through the options, viewing each possible path that are visible, I realised why I felt I was falling. By that I mean, I was beginning to acknowledge that with which I might feel myself able to fly again.
Sometimes it seems like one has to merely accept all the things that already are—that one can only change oneself and then succumb to the environment. However, by whatever reason, I am beginning to think that it might not necessarily have to be that way.
One other option is the exact opposite: that one ought to accept oneself fully, resisting any change of the self, and force the environment to obey one’s will. As intense and arrogant as this sounds, there is a form of hope and kindness to this as well. That may be primarily attributed to the radical acceptance of the self that is necessary to have such a belief. However, it seems easier to be conscious of caution with ideas like this than with its opposite.
Maybe then it can help to see the other option: a balance of some sort—an acceptance of the self and the environment and an acknowledgement of the possibilities of changes from both.
With that said, the main point that I want to reflect on tonight is the possibility of change in the environment that is attributable to personhood. I would like to think that Ricœur’s aesthetics is one such possibility. Fiction—or art, in general—are catalytic productions, and as they ‘imitate’ life, life then imitates them, and therefore changes and so life continues to be lived.
This then is the justification for persisting in the kind of life I want to live. Maybe I do not need to fall into despair at the seemingly imminent fall, and instead embrace the possibility of being able to fly if it is in flight that I find my joy.