Modern Freedom
Hello, it’s been a while. I hope you had a nice summer. At first, I started this blog post in June, however, my life has been in constant states of infernos and paradisos – you’ll understand what I mean by this if you keep reading – hence, I never had the right state of mind to sit down and type up my train of thought. But as autumn approaches, we’re back. So welcome. You don’t even know how happy I am that you’re reading my blog post.
arts & anxiety III. — anxiety of choice
,,Valahogy a kettő között lebegek. Egyszer a jelenhez vagyok közelebb, egyszer meg a jelenhez tartozó asszociációmban vagyok.”
“I am somehow hovering between the two. At one time I am closer to the present, at one I am in my association to it”
Levente Lukács
I’m a great storyteller (and humble about it at the same time). But what I mean to emphasise is that I can easily put together a cool story behind any decision I make. Not just to an audience, but myself as well. A couple of months ago, I randomly met with a coursemate from university. That’s when I realised, I tell myself and others a very nice-sounding story about my journey since graduation. I tell people that I was confused, I needed some time to exist, hence I travelled a bit, and then I decided to stay home in Budapest since I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to go to London because everyone else was going at the time or whether I wanted to go there.
I ended my story by saying to him ‘In the end, it seems London bought me, I am here because I want to.’ But to be honest with you, even after circa 5 months living here, I’m still not sure about this sentence. I’m not sure whether my decision was as conscious as I make it sound to be.
Now, the freedom of choosing which country to live in is an insane privilege. Yet, with greater freedom and privilege comes a feeling of immense responsibility.
The overload of opportunities makes me so anxious that all I can do sometimes is stand in one spot. Questions just keep piling up: Where do I go? What should I do? How do I choose my path? Do I even have a choice? How do I make a decision? Should I just roll a die? Flip a coin? Should I think about my choice or just vibe with the times?
This is the centrepiece of an exhibition I visited at 38 degrees; gotta love the heat waves. The exhibition was set up by a friend from university, and may I just say in advance, her exhibition is immensely relevant to us all.
Helga Haiman’s exhibition: Itt sem, ott sem vagyok // I am neither here, nor there
I took the liberty to use the explanation the artists gave us about the title:
The title refers to a state of being, that is marked by one’s incessant quest and consists of a multitude of question marks and unbeaten paths. One is neither here, nor there when locked away from the world in search of her/his place and companion, being disconnected, as one is.
Helga Haiman
The photo exhibition covers 4 storylines: Genesis — the beginning out of nothing, Paradiso — finding a partner but collaboration fails, Inferno — the exit from the continuous poisoning, and Arcadia — the soul working in harmony with itself. The four storylines converge into one, as all four are part of the great search for oneself in this world.
Genesis
The anxious discomfort of the nescience. When we are growing up, life is a constant series of unprecedented events. We meet new feelings, such as love, sadness or grief, however, since they are all new to us, we don’t have an inner voice saying ‘Maybe let’s not date that guy who’s already looking like breaking hearts left and right.’ There are so many parts of life we don’t yet know, however, from a very young age, we are sort of expected to know what we aspire to be in the future. Instead of experimenting, we are encouraged to get good at a very niche segment of life, or the subjects that are supposed to give us financial safety. But how should we, if we know nothing?
Paradiso
Love. Many of us first think we have found ourselves in a love partner. Yet the lesson is clear: finding our presence in others is not the right direction. Or this is what I call the Stendhal love. The impatient love. Stendhal uses the metaphor ‘crystallisation’ to describe our behaviour: people in love elevate the loved one to a pedestal of perfection. This is where we merge ourselves with the other, where we find something that justifies us and cleanses our sins – or at least we think this is what we have found. “[…] with love, the reality is eagerly reshaped according to your desires. Therefore, of all the passions, it is love that permits the greatest scope for pleasures in violent desires” (Stendhal on Love, 1975). However, to put the partner in this position is quite dangerous. Not one human being can bear the weight of absolute forgiveness and justification of the other. At the end of the day, we are all just humans.
Inferno
The continuous poisoning. And yet, somehow, one of the most painful experiences you’ve ever had is exiting this relationship. Doesn’t matter if it was 3 months or 3 years. This extremely unpleasant pain is because you validated yourself by the relationship, hence when you outgrew it, it’s like leaving a poisoned piece of you behind. It’s like another birth but the path is suffocating. You were, in some parts, addicted to the highs and lows. You were breaking a pattern.
Arcadia
Not lonely, just alone. The dolce far niente. The day when you welcome your peaceful thoughts in your head. Where you can sit in one place and enjoy it. The warmth and stillness of your love towards yourself. I think of it as you becoming your compass, and the directions are aligned with all corners of the world. You recognise your potential and surround yourself with people who give and take the same way as you do.
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How does this all connect to choice? Because I believe with the modern age, our quest is crazier, longer and more confusing. We can get lost in either of the above states or relive the cycle several times. Making the journey insane since we consist of eternal possibilities. We can choose to quit, change, move to another country, or go in a direction our family has never done before.
To give you a simple example, buying a product, such as chocolate, will leave you with a myriad of options. How do you find your arcadia? It might be the one which you loved when you were a kid, so you choose Milka. But then a thought swoops into your head, all your life you’ve been eating Milka, but never tried Tony’s. Since there is no real barrier between you and trying Tony’s, you do so. Tony’s is something you’ve never experienced before, and you are falling head over heels in love with it.
And life seems to play this game with you, just exchange chocolate with anything from a career path to a love partner. We are lost in the eternal possibilities of the modern age. We try to make every service so convenient, and the rules of the game are dictated by the numbers in sales. You are left with choices left and right, starting from what to watch on Netflix, all the way to which course to study as an undergraduate. The multitude of opportunities leave you feeling like the world is yours, hence any time you choose, you lose. Thinking that Tony’s will be the chocolate that fills your life with joy forever, but then when time comes, Milka might again take its turn. (To the people of London: I don’t even have to explain this feeling further, there are just so many places to visit in this brick jungle.) As if, you are in a constant battleground between Paradiso and Inferno.
But some opportunities were not even yours in the first place. It seems that you have all these possibilities in front of you but it’s only a myth. Your brain cannot decode the overload. Now tell me, in the end, if you have all these options but cannot cut through the noise, were they choices, to begin with?
So what can we do about this? How are we to reach Arcadia when a sea of options surround us wherever we go or whatever we choose to see on our phones?
To find answers to these questions, I turned to my most admired resources: books and movies. I took the liberty to cut together little bits and pieces to see what is out there to help us in the incessant quest for Arcadia. This time my choice was Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World and a tiny segment of Ollivier Pourriol’s The french art of not trying too hard:
“There is a fallacy of youthful restlessness that’s easy to forget when it’s mostly in the rearview mirror: It’s possible to both not know what you want while also being pretty sure of what you don’t. Becoming who you are isn’t some coherent, linear path with a definitive ending that comes in the form of finding the right person or the right job, getting married or having a baby, no matter what romantic comedies would like you to believe. It’s a chaotic and messy process of elimination with casualties big and small.”
“You think you live in infinity, but at some point, you don’t. Choices will be made for you if you don’t make them yourself. And loss is necessary to find a place of acceptance for yourself. Unfortunately, you have to go through some shit to accept groundedness. I think this is what Julie has to go through. It’s a coming-of-age story for adults who still haven’t grown up. And to some varying degree, even though I’m in my 40s, I continue to be one of them.”
Trier about The Worst Person in the World
“In certain situations, choosing randomly is better than not choosing at all. […] What he is saying is that the content of a decision is unimportant, once you’ve decided, it’s the right one.”
“Take a path you don’t know, to reach an unknown place, to do something you’re incapable of. Phrases like this, though apparently meaningless and highly risky, once heard and put into practice open up a space of freedom and pleasure, where existence can be renewed. [..] the exact point of the exercise: to re-establish a sense of the possible. Not by having a very clear goal or image, but by accepting confusion and vagueness.” – If the phrase is not a description of life then I don’t know what that is.
The French art of not trying too hard by Ollivier Pourriol
What I’ve put together so far: Not choosing is also a choice, and it is suboptimal. Cut through the noise without necessarily giving your mind away to a thinking spiral, jump into opportunities and adjust your path according to the experience you had. And for finishing touch-ups, there is one additional value to keep in mind when searching for the how.
Just before leaving for university, my oldest sister gave me a puzzle as a departing gift. It was a quote cut into many pieces. When I put together the quote, I liked it but I wasn’t mature enough to understand its meaning. As I grew older, the quote has become very important to me:
“Be patient toward all that is unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
— From Letters to a Young Poet by Reiner Maria Rilke
So yeah, I believe freedom can be just as hard as constraints. It seems the recipe includes but is not limited to courage, belief, loss and patience. Never forget, you’re not alone in this, I believe there are plenty of people who feel the same. So look around and share your questions, it is only natural to have them, and what a privilege it is.
Wouldn’t you say?
I’ll leave a song at the end of this post, as I think it’s still very relevant to us all, not just to our 10-year-old selves.
Best to you,
Sis
The Time We Have Left 