Dare to Think Differently: a Birthday Reflection
The process of aging is inevitable. Celebrating a birthday is a fun way to face the passage of time, especially with the knowledge that this time is irreversible and finite. A costume party, a refrigerator of beer, and a gaggle of great friends from all phases of my life made the coming and going of this birthday quite special. I am lucky to have such a wide variety of personalities and characters in my life. The presence of many different perspectives and backgrounds is enriching for anyone’s being. I have friendships that have survived many moons and incredible distance, and while they ebb and flow over time and with the changes that happen within each of us and our lives, we always find each other again.
That’s the power of love.
This birthday, in addition to thinking about all the people who make my life special, I’ve been reflecting on the many unexpected changes that occurred over the course of the last year. I had just turned 25 when I was asked to join a Denali expedition, which proved to be a journey about the experience, not the summit, and the things I would learn about myself over the course of preparation through execution. I also lost one of my dearest friends shortly after agreeing to the expedition. Juggling the grief and the training I had to do in order to be fully prepared was really difficult, and I struggled a lot. My readiness for the mountain suffered, but that I undertook the challenge anyway did a lot more good for me in the long run. Without something to ground me, something to keep my head straight and my eyes focused, I’m not really sure where I’d be today.
Leading up to the journey on Denali, I was really hoping I would fall in love with every aspect, even the most difficult, and that it would be the start of higher and more difficult mountaineering adventures. I think I was really looking for something to fall in love with, because I needed an anchor to hope. If you’ve ever grieved before, then you know what I mean.
As it turned out, I didn’t fall in love with it, and “professional mountaineer” is an unlikely addition to my resume in this lifetime. I did, however, come to a more serious sense of the fact that I get to decide what I want to do with my time, and I get to decide who I want to be within it. I started shifting my energy onto research for a non-fiction project I’ve had in mind for some time now. I started burning through books and stacking them on my desk to later transcribe my notes in the margins. I’ve been exploring everything from feminist literature to the analysis of sex, gender, and war, the “great game” of the Middle East and its ever-sought for natural resources, and in-depth analyses of our constitution and the idea of natural law and natural rights. The more I read and the more I learn, the more I begin to piece together my own thoughts and ideas that can be told through the narrative of my own experience in the military.
And that’s how I fell in love with this project. If my adventure on Denali taught me anything, it showed me how deeply passionate I am for writing, and bringing to light new ideas that might help people better understand the notions of truth, hope, and freedom. I might never be a true mountaineer, and I may very well be an unpublished, unpaid writer forever. But if I cared about getting paid for it, then it wouldn’t be what I truly cared about doing.
I don’t want to speak too much to it yet, because it is still very much in the fetal stages of its development. I’ve always found writing to be like digging for buried treasure. More often than not, the words come out of the page in conjunction with various streams of ideas in the mind, rather than straight from the mind itself. The more I set out to learn from others, the more words I am able to find in my own pages. My mind has been opening to ideas I never thought I’d consider, and while I’ve always held to the idea that not everything is as it seems, I’m surprised to find this to be much truer than I once could have imagined. I have found a deep passion for recalibrating the integrity within ourselves, our communities, and our government in order to fully realize the intent of our constitutional values, and I am very lucky to be in a position to explore these ideas in greater depth with the purpose of helping people think about these things for themselves.
I’ve been reading a lot of historical, geopolitical, and military-analysis type stuff, and I’ve been doing so by looking at many different sources. I am not a political person, and never have been, but my time in the military, the events of the world since, and my own investigation of them has led me to a point of significant realization: our democracy is at stake. Not to be a dramatic heretic here, but we are in a position that many people won’t realize is so vulnerable until things really take a turn for the worst. Moreover, I’ve learned with greater depth and clarity just how important democracy in itself is, and just how profound the notion of natural law and natural rights are. I’ve further realized that not many people really understand them. Perhaps more heartbreakingly, many of us are comfortable enough in our own lives to risk little in the people’s battle for the power we are rightly given.
Or at least supposed to be given.
The government has successfully subverted most of our power through various means since our nation’s inception, but especially within the last several decades. What makes the problem especially difficult is that most people won’t engage in a conversation with “the other side,” because somehow our political identities have come to bear more importance than our collective identity as human beings. The true genius set out for us during the revolution was the incredibly enlightened ideal that all human beings are endowed with natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (even if it wasn’t actualized at that point). What most people seem to have forgotten, or never fully realized, is that these rights are equal across the board. No one person has more natural rights than any other, but instead of hashing out differences through diplomatic efforts, there are many people who double down on their own opinions, and adamantly refuse to budge from their own perspectives. This happens at the individual and collective levels, and it is corrosive to everything we claim to stand for as a nation.
Big Tech and the Algorithm play a big role in keeping people confined to their own self-affirming bias bubbles, and it effects absolutely everyone. No one side is more to blame for pigeonholing themselves into an idea, regardless of its nature as productive or destructive. Everyone gets caught up in the stickiness of “our side,” without realizing that true power rests in the ability to change hearts and minds. You can’t violently throw your ideals at someone and expect them to listen. You have to meet them with empathy, which requires understanding them, at least to some degree, and pulling on the humanity and goodness that exists inside. Darkness isn’t eliminated by pushing it out. It’s eliminated by exposing it to light. Unfortunately for us, there are many bad actors on the various stages of our society with darkness in their hearts, and they’d rather sacrifice honesty, integrity, and the protection of the American people for the sake of political victory, profit, or some other personal gain. Fortunately for them, we the people are too busy fighting each other to realize that we should all be fighting for a true democracy and the elimination of bureaucratic corruption.
I read a lot, and I try to understand perspectives from all sides. I often find it disheartening or even frustrating that people around me are often too stubborn to consider a different opinion, or at least consider their own to be lacking all-encompassing comprehension. I think one of the most important things I’ve learned is to not get stuck on one train of thought, though I admit this can be a difficult task. But when we confine ourselves to the belief that our opinion is the correct opinion, even if it is thoroughly sound and valid, we reject the validity of others’ perspectives in spite of their perspectives being just as human as ours. When I listen to people preach the same things or argue the same positions that they’ve been arguing for years, I become less inclined to take their positions as thorough enough to stand on. A person can hold the same position on something for many years, but still learn new things that expand and deepen their understanding. When someone says the same words over and over again, it becomes clear that they haven’t really done much learning or exploring outside of their current thinking pattern.
This is a dangerous trap for anyone to fall in, but it is pretty easily avoidable. It takes discipline, but seeking out various sources of information, engaging in dialogue with people who have different views, and recognizing that you don’t know everything is how you avoid mental and intellectual stagnation. If your mind stagnates, you have become trapped to the whims of whatever narrative feeds the opinion that your ego so desperately clings to. If your mind stagnates, democracy itself is threatened. Times change, the world changes, and new problems constantly arise. If we do not know how to think outside of what we have been conditioned to think, we cannot effectively address our issues and find productive solutions, collectively. In order to adapt, one must have an adaptable mind. One should never take a sure position on anything, but should pursue truth for themselves by daring to think differently, even from a previous version of themselves.
As I come into another year of this life, I actually feel more sure about things by being less sure about them. The truth is an endless pursuit, but the most worthy undertaking. I am excited to share my story in greater depth against the backdrop of various philosophical musings, and I am excited to keep learning in the process. Learning never stops, because there is always something new to know or consider. All of us have a responsibility to ourselves and each other to pursue knowledge beyond the words and opinions given to us by our media and political leaders. Each of us has a brain, and each of us must use it in order to fully realize the potential of a truly democratic state. Don’t get trapped in your own ideas. Be flexible, be open, and be diplomatic in your engagements with others. We the people hold the power, but it only matters if we hold it together.
If you’ve seen “A Bug’s Life”, then you know that the ants finally defeat the grasshoppers when they realize their strength in numbers, and work together to victory. That’s exactly what’s happening here. We the ants need to come together, and embrace that which connects all of us to each other: love. If we can do that, perhaps we can align ourselves with better understandings of truth and freedom, and defeat the nefarious forces that seek to quench our collective enlightenment. Love, and only love, can save the world.
Remember that, and remember that you are not blue or red.
You are human.
