Honesty

I've definitely heard of Sex and the Ivy before, but it wasn't until I took the time to read the post that I just linked to that I really felt... well, I don't know what I feel right now, considering I just finished reading that post 2 minutes ago. My first reaction is basically shock, the dull thud of a realization that seems distant and unfamiliar because it's been so long since you've felt those kinds of dull thuds that used to be feel like sharp knives.

I mean, first and foremost, I have to get past the insta-crush I develop on any girl who's capable of putting together coherent words on a page. And just so you know, the level of crush (from "kindergarten crush" as Will on Real World XX: Hollywood put it so aptly - dear God, why do I watch trashy reality shows, all the way to full blown "leave your husband and run away with me Tina Fey, pleeeeeaaase?") is in direct proportion to my perception of the writer's skillz. Without going into too much detail, Sex and the Ivy is about as close to that Tina Fey-love level as Hillary is to Obama in pledged delegates (close, but almost impossible that she would ever match it).

All my many issues with women aside, it's the writing that cuts to the quick. Maybe I'm just imagining, but reading the stream-of-consciousness in that post felt so much like being inside someone's head, able to predict the answers to their own rhetorical questions, that I almost lost myself there for a second, forgetting whether those were her thoughts or mine. I don't really want to intrude on her privacy, so I won't say anything else about her, but from reading something so honest and at the same time so aware of the impossibility of its own, full honesty, I could start to feel that nervous itch in my fingers, that urge to strike a keyboard and pound out the vagaries of thought and emotion (in that order or not) swirling from the back of my brains to the tips of my fingers. They're like tentacles that know precisely what they're looking for, and before I can even form the rest of the next word they should be spelling, they are already on the next sentence.

But what I'm getting to is this: I don't think I'm capable of the sort of honesty that she at least tried for. It feels beyond my grasp to even try that hard. As much as I think of humility as a virtue and am disgusted by those who fail to display any, in the domain of my personal thoughts humility has never been present. I mean, it doesn't seem to be a question of right and wrong, when you ask yourself what sort of person you think you are. You are what you make of yourself. But to frame the discussion (but who am I discussing with, myself and I?) in such a way precludes the possibility of change. By which I mean, if I thought that what I thought/did was always and forever the one and only true and absolute representation of myself, than for better or, more likely, worse, I would never change. Everything new or previously undiscovered would be amalgamated into the existing sprawl, swallowed whole into the dark mess of self that offers in explanation of this acquisition only that it was there all along and I had better get used to it.

Honesty (in this particular sense of self-honesty) implicitly acknowledges that the whole damn thing is a multi-party (or at least, two-party) system. If honesty is to exist and have meaning, it must entail a choice between two things, one of which is presumably what they call, the truth. In my current conception of self, there is no truth or falsity, only a kind of unquestionable, existential being. I am. But at least in my mind, that isn't so much a definitive statement, as it is question-begging -- I am... what?

The objective facts that I can offer up to that question seem woefully inadequate: I am 19-and-a-half, I am Chinese, I am an Ivy-Leaguer, I am single, I am a Computer Science concentrator (as of last Tuesday), I am a mediocre writer with delusions of grandeur, I am essentially CFO of a corporation in a dying industry, I am nocturnal, I am a poker player, I am a gambler, I am procrastinating. The next set of responses offer slightly more insight, but they mostly run as adjective editorializing of the first set of responses: I am immature, I am simultaneously too Chinese and too un-Chinese, I am a lucky bastard who doesn't deserve this curse of a gift, I am lonely, I am indecisively and hopelessly lost on whatever path of life this is, I am a whiny/neurotic bitch with a blog that might as well be a LiveJournal or worse - my old Xanga, I am a deceptively sincere but ultimately inept cog in the leadership of a rotting machine that no one has the manual to fix, I am anti-social to the point that I prefer the solitude this late-night/early-morning activity affords me over the bombardment of daytime interactions, I am a bad poker player, I am an addicted gambler, I am a lazy slacker. But it still sounds hollow, even though it seems all to be true.

Honesty is more than just the truth, then. If it does indeed involve a choice as I stated earlier, then the choice means something too. The choice to be honest involves something else, something not captured in the bare appeal of reality. For me, it probably is a choice made by my urge to know, and what's more, to be known. It isn't fame or notoriety though, but it is understanding that I seek, that I need. And before this gets too sappy, I admit freely that rarely do I return the favor, that most often I make no effort to understand other people. Not only is there hypocrisy in this, but there is also active deceit. Call it stinginess, but I want to get the most I can while giving the least. The way national intelligence agencies trade secrets, I trade half-truths and yesterday's news for gems of real value. It's a re-gifting of things I've already given out and won't miss, in a greedy bid for something new.

Or, in stronger moments when the urge for self-deprecating, emo bullshit doesn't choke me so tightly, I will admit that there are still things that I believe in absolutely about myself. I believe in the value of doing the best that you can, and I believe in the damnation of ones such as myself who either don't do their best or lie about what their best is. I believe in love, strangely enough of all things. I believe in love at first sight still, even if you don't know that that is what it is at first. I believe nothing can erase those first impressions of meeting someone. I believe that people are most honest to strangers and close friends. The ones in between are the ones you lie to the most, and the most often. I believe the hardest thing to be in this world is honest.

Especially when it's gotten you burnt in the past. Fried, roasted, and set ablaze. Burnt to a painful crisp and left in a pile of ashes. Too bad you weren't born a phoenix. Of course, the fact that it was really self-inflicted arson will often conveniently slip your mind as you go on angry/frustrated rants against those things that make you feel good that it wasn't your fault and was beyond your control.

So, as Turk once said, "lay some truth on him baby." Here's some honesty: I am a dried, shrivelled-up little ball of a person (and it'll be a long time before I'd use the word "man"), with all the outward appeal of a raisiny-looking old person like you'd find on Clearwater Beach in the summer, who's one and only hope for fulfillment rests in an avenue in which I am both unwilling and unable to pursue. Oh, and before I forget: it's gonna get worse before it gets better.

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Nothing groundbreaking really. Still falls victim to that same tendency of over-analysis that distances him from the possibility of real, effective action. He seems to be very caught-up in the drive to explain and interpret, with little room or desire for "doing" anything. He never writes about what happens, what he's thinking, or what he's feeling; instead, he writes only about what he thinks about what has happened, what he thinks about what he thinks, and what he thinks about what he feels. Sometimes, it's even another layer (or two or three or infinitely many) up, of what he thinks of what he thinks of... what he thinks. Like right now.