We Spend a Lot of Energy Pretending We Aren't All Just Tired and Terrified to Varying Degrees

Have you ever noticed how much effort it takes just to look like you’re not losing it? I’m sitting here watching the light catch a layer of dust on my bookshelf and I’m just thinking about the sheer absurdity of how everything feels like it’s just fraying at the edges. The systems are slowly crumbling and we’re all watching the same slow motion collapse on our screens. Nonetheless, we all still get up and act like this is all perfectly normal. You know, nothing to see here. This is fine. Everything’s fine.

But we all know it’s not fine, right?

We’re just experiencing hypernormalization and it’s bordering on the psychotic at this point because well, here we are polishing brass on a ship that’s already halfway underwater while still making sure that our LinkedIn profiles and our resumes still look sharp. In any case, we spend a lot of energy pretending we aren’t all just tired and terrified to varying degrees. And even though I think we do make an effort to trade in these hollow pleasantries throughout the day, there remains the unspoken agreement to keep the performance going because we’re in denial of the alternative even though we all know what that means.

So, under these ridiculous circumstances, you have to do stupid stuff like remember to nod at the right intervals during a Zoom call so you don’t look like you’re catatonic or something. And you have to have a curated opinion on the latest media discourse to prove that you’re still a functioning member of a dysfunctional society. I think survival, at this point, it’s becoming a marketing exercise because even survival is being commodified now.

Now, the vast majority of us, we’re just tired of this narrative because we’ve spent all this time playing the part of the responsible employee or whatever role it might be that we’ve forgotten there’s actually a biological entity underneath the outfit.

So essentially what’s happening is that we’re hollowing ourselves out to make room for these roles we’ve been assigned and we’re terrified that if we stop moving the silence is going to catch up to us.

So, I was at a pharmacy last week where I watched a guy get genuinely redfaced angry because they didn’t have his specific brand of toothpaste. He was shaking. And I realized, you know, he wasn’t actually mad about the toothpaste. He was mad because the world had stopped following his script for 5 minutes.

So in other words, he’d invested so much in being the consumer or playing the consumer role that a minor logistics error felt like a personal assault for him and he couldn’t handle that glitch. The herd doesn’t necessarily translate to community. It’s really it’s a compliance loop where the majority of us agreed to stay in character so that nobody has to deal with the void. That’s what it boils down to. Avoid the void.

So, we end up trading our actual chaotic internal lives for what we think is a secure seat at a table where nobody’s actually talking. Because if the performance stops, we have to look at each other. And if we look at each other, we might realize that none of us are actually in charge of these roles that we’re playing. And that’s just a little too overwhelming, and we’re just scared of being the first one to stop the fake clapping.

So I’ve been thinking about the writer Fernando Pessoa. He was, well he wasn’t a revered hermit sage on a mountain or anything like that. He was actually an ordinary clerk in Lisbon. Basically just a guy in a suit with a mustache filing papers in a room that probably smelled like, I don’t know, old dust and ink.

So he was more or less invisible, but inside he was kind of a riot because he didn’t just have an inner life, he had a whole crowd in there. He didn’t bother trying to be one thing, settle on one identity. He wrote under numerous different names that he called heteronyms. And he knew that the social identity we’re all so obsessed with, you know, the personal brand we’re supposed to be building, it’s all just a cage, a trap.

So he stayed in the office for the most part doing his mundane work and he was perfectly functional, but he was something of a ghost in the machine, I guess, because Pessoa realized that you don’t have to quit your job and move to the mountains or the woods to be free. You just have to build a fortress inside your own head. He looked at his co-workers like, how did he put it? …like they were dead while living because they actually believed the roles they were playing. They thought they were that job title.

So, he had this interesting idea that we’re all different versions of ourselves that we haven’t met yet. Now, most people spend a great deal of their energy trying to keep those versions locked in a dark basement so they don’t embarrass them[selves] in public. Pessoa on the other hand, well, he just let them talk. I think being a spectator in your own life, that’s a pretty heavy way to live because it makes your morning commute feel like a slow motion funeral procession.

However, I do think there’s a strange muted dignity in this because, well, it’s the dignity of the person who knows they’re wearing a costume. Society can’t stand a person who’s just watching. They want you to engage. They want you to, you know, have goals and fill the gap, in your participation with a career path…with some…purpose. Because an observer is dangerous. They’re dangerous because they’re the ones who notice that the whole system is held together by nothing but a habit and a mutual fear of being alone.

I think about Pessoa sitting at his desk in 1920s Lisbon dipping his pen into the ink well while the rest of the office buzzed with some with the same self-important nonsense. And it’s not very different from the way it is now. But he didn’t fight this situation. He didn’t try to change the culture. He just filed the papers and nodded at the right times and he went back to his fortress.

And that’s the realization that’s starting to settle in. You don’t have to win the game or even quit the game. You just have to realize that the person playing it isn’t actually you. It’s just a ghost you’ve hired to do the work so you can stay in the dark and, you know, supervise, I guess.

You know, it’s pretty wild that we’ve reached this point where a 5-inch piece of glass that we’re addicted to can make you feel like you’re being hunted even in your own home. Every notification is like a tiny digital spear throw. And that’s the needle.

So what do I mean by the needle?

So let’s go back to 19th century, into the mind of the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. He had this very simple analogy known as the hedgehog’s, or the porcupines’s, dilemma.

So imagine a bunch of porcupines on a freezing winter night. They’re cold, so they move closer together for warmth. But as soon as they get close, well, they start pricking each other with their spines. So naturally they pull apart and then they start shivering again, and the cycle repeats until they find this very specific rather lonely middle distance.

So that middle distance is where I’m sitting right now. It’s that sweet spot where you don’t freeze to death from total isolation, but you’re far away enough from, you know, you’re far away enough that people can’t quite get their needles into your soft tissue.

Now, most people are terrified of that distance, and frankly, they’d rather be pricked bloody than be alone with their own thoughts for an hour. Schopenhauer implied that they usually mistake the huddling for connection and the bleeding for passion. And they huddled together in these shallow distractions, you know, group chats, brunch, small talk, complaining about the same three political topics or whatever. And they call it a community.

But Schopenhauer looked at this and he just saw what he called a blind irrational will to survive at any cost, even the cost of your own sanity, even if it means decades of self harm. I think the hardest part of being in the middle distance, it’s not so much the cold as it is the guilt. And Schopenhauer makes this sound easy, like it’s a simple logical choice. You get pricked, you move away, you find the equilibrium, easy peasy.

However, in practice, it is a lot messier and this experience is especially pronounced if you’re an introvert or an HSP, you know, a highly sensitive person. Now, I’m an introvert and I’ve struggled with this middle distance issue throughout my life. The challenge of wanting connection but running the risk of inviting the needles back in.

So, you have to decide if the warmth of a 20 or 30 minute conversation is worth the 4 hours of social recovery time it’s going to cost you. If you know, you know. And if you’re a person like this, you’ve probably been singled out as the difficult one, the aloof, or the antisocial one. I’ve been accused of being a hermit.

I was accused of being a loner by my grandmother way back at the ripe old age of 12. I was a shy, quiet kid. And you know, for a very long time, I’d beat myself up and I’d feel guilty for being this way until eventually I finally began to develop some real emotional intelligence and self-awareness and eventually self-love, which I’m still working on and always will be. And yet I do think it’s gradually leading me to a place of peace. Time will tell. I think there’s a certain type of melancholy, or melancholy in realizing, that the price of your own peace unfortunately can also mean the slow erosion of your ability to maintain any type of relationship.

You start to become like a ghost even in your own social circle. And I think for some people they have a realization eventually that most of their interactions consist of porcupines trying to convince each other that their needles aren’t that sharp and that the whole performance becomes exhausting after a while.

So Schopenhauer said that a man of high intellectual worth would prefer to sit by his own fire even if it’s a little chilly and lonely rather than be crowded in by the vulgarity of the huddle. He may have been a bit of a snob, but, you know, I don’t think he was wrong about this tax that we pay for interaction. I think George Carlin also had some interesting thoughts about the crowd versus the individual. Every time you enter a room with people in it, you give up a little bit of your own reality to accommodate the collective delusion of the group. So, you laugh at things that aren’t funny and you let their needles under your skin so they don’t think you are a psychopath. I know you’re probably thinking, “Oh, he must be real fun at parties.”

To me, the functional outsider is this is the person who’s finally looked at the bill and decided they can’t afford the tax anymore.

And you can observe this needle dance anywhere. It’s always happening. It’s in the way people talk over each other. It’s in the way empathy gets used as a way to probe for weaknesses or honesty is used as a way to sharpen our points. I think I speak for most introverts by describing this as a constant lowgrade warfare where we’ve all been drafted into it since birth. Eventually, there’s this uncomfortable realization that comes when you stop trying to be likable. Because you realize that most likability is just a high functioning form of submission.

When you’re alone, you don’t have to maintain these the spectacle of yourself. You don’t have to hold your face in this contrived, pleasant expression that we wear like a uniform. You can just let your features go slack and just let your resting face shine in all its glory. You can just be. I think the middle distance is the only place where you can actually hear yourself think over the cacophony of the will. It’s the only place where the needles of the world are–they’re long enough to see, but they’re too short to draw blood.

Schopenhauer, well, he wasn’t a hermit exactly. He lived in the city and he ate at the same restaurant every day. He even had a poodle named Atman. But he was what you might call a strategic recluse. He knew that social interactions are for the most part just this series of porcupine moments.

When I look at a smartphone, that too can be a delivery system for needles. But if you turn it off for a while and you step back into that middle distance, some people get nervous, you might get labeled as an antisocial prick or something. No pun intended. Schopenhauer argued that a man can only be himself when he’s alone. And he said that if you don’t love solitude, you don’t love liberty.

Which sounds a little extreme when you’re reading it in a book, but it actually feels quite practical when you’re sitting in a kitchen at 2:00 a.m. listening to the hum of your fridge. When you’re in that space of silence and solitude, the will simmers down. You don’t have any labels in that space. You’re just the observer. So the needles can’t reach you there. And yes, there’s a certain coldness to that. And it’s not exactly cozy, but for the most part, I think I’d rather be a bit cold and intact than warm and shredded by the porcupine huddle. But that’s just me.

I think there’s actually a certain degree of freedom that comes with being the one who’s forgotten. We spend so much energy trying to be relevant and stay in the loop, but there’s definitely an unspoken relief in realizing: you know what, the world’s going to keep spinning even if you don’t acknowledge the latest urgent email or whatever–the latest tragedy.

So, I’m starting to wonder if the functional part of being a functional outsider is just–it’s knowing exactly how much warmth you need to survive and not a single degree more. It’s a very particular place.

It seems like we spend a lot of time pretending that our gadgets are tools while they’re also very much electronic leashes at this point. And I think about it every time I see someone walking down the street, staring into their palm as if they’re checking a pulse that isn’t there. And there’s this strange kind of gravity, you know, this need to be constantly tethered to a world that doesn’t actually require our presence to keep spinning.

I think the fear of being perceived as difficult, that’s more or less what keeps this whole machine running. We’re so damn terrified of the social friction that comes with saying “no” or “I don’t care” that we just keep nodding until it’s an actual pain in the neck.

So there was an ancient Greek philosopher named Diogenes. Now, he’s usually viewed as the punchline of philosophy because he basically lived in a ceramic jar and he would eat onions in the middle of the street. He’s viewed as the original cynic in philosophy. But back then cynic just meant doglike because he lived like a stray.

Most of us, I would say, are terrified on some level of losing our status. We’re scared of being the one who isn’t, you know, moving up in life in some fashion. So, Diojanis looked at the wealth, the social graces, the manners, the whole social ladder process, and he realized that it was just a series of masks and he decided to just stop wearing them.

I think there’s a power in that kind of refusal. There’s a story about him that comes to mind where Alexander the Great, arguably the most powerful man in the world at that time, he goes to find Diogenes, and he finds him lying in the dirt, probably covered in dust, doing absolutely nothing. So Alexander stands over him and he says, “Ask me for anything you want and I will give it to you.” Now if that happened to most of us, we’d probably have a long list, right? But Diogenes just looked up and said, “Yes, stand out of my sunlight.” You’d probably expect Alexander the Great to see this as an act of flippant mockery or something. But on the contrary, he was reportedly so struck by Diogenes’ complete indifference to his status and his power that he responded with something along the lines of: “If I were not Alexander I would wish to be Diogenes.”

So Diogenes basically proved that the person who wants nothing from the system is the only one the system can’t control. You can’t really threaten a man who’s happy with just the sun. You can’t cancel someone who’s already canceled their own need for your approval.

You know, we’re all so busy curating ourselves thanks to our technology. So, we’re like architects of our own digital shadows. We want to be seen as successful or interesting or what have you, but the Diogenes would walk through the streets of Athens in broad daylight with a lit lantern holding it up to people’s faces. He was a little obnoxious. And when they asked what the hell he was doing, he would say, “I’m just looking for an honest man.” I think he’d still be looking today if he were still alive. He didn’t find many. He mostly found people who were so deep into their roles that they’d forgotten there was a human being underneath the masks.

Sometimes I feel or I see the functional version of me, the one who pays the bills and answers the emails and etc. But when I think about Diogenes, I wonder what would happen if I just stopped. Not in a quitting my job and moving into a jar way, but more in like an internal way. What if I just stopped caring if I was agreeable?

I think being an outsider involves a kind of radical honesty. If you stop trying to fit into the puzzle, you finally get to see the whole picture. And maybe you realize that the puzzle is actually kind of ugly and half the pieces are forced. It seems like we’re all just exhausted because we’re trying to sustain a world that doesn’t actually exist.

But unfortunately, society hates a person who’s shameless in this way.

But I think deep down a lot of people are secretly envious because they want to be free from trying to fit into this puzzle. You know, maybe the reason we’re all so tired, it’s not just because of the work we have to do. It’s also the weight of these masks that we wear while we’re doing it. And we spend a lot of time waiting for a permission slip that’s never going to come. We wait for the so-called “right time” to step back or for the world to suddenly become sane enough that we don’t feel the need to hide. [Ed.: see When You Experience Grace You Experience This Radical Acceptance that You Don’t Have to Do Anything]

But I have news for you. The world isn’t going to get sane. If anything, it’s looking like the volume is just going to keep going up until the speakers blow out. Yeah. There’s this thing called the great detachment which in simple terms it’s what happens when you stop trying to convince the herd that you have a soul that’s worth saving.

You just resign, and you stay in the room, but you’ve checked out of the building, so to speak. I think about Pessoa again sitting in that dusty office in Lisbon, realizing that being unimportant might be the only real armor we have because if you aren’t the protagonist of the world story, well, then the world doesn’t have a reason to crush you. You’re just a spectator. Wearing a cheap suit or something.

There’s actually a huge relief in realizing that the world is going to keep spinning even if you don’t show up for the performance. Most people are terrified of that realization because they want to be essential in some way. They want to be the porcupine in the center of the huddle because they think the warmth is worth the needles.

But I think I’ve found my middle distance. You know, maybe it’s a little cold and sometimes it’s a little lonely, but you know what? I can breathe here. I have peace and I’m not constantly adjusting my mask to make sure the neighbors don’t see the void underneath.

And tomorrow I’ll step back into the stream again and I’ll play my awkward uncomfortable part in the collective performance with the practical ease of someone who stopped caring about the plot a long time ago. And I’ll do my best to move through the insanity and the social friction as a person who’s had a lot of practice and I have.

But I’ll be doing this with the lit lantern inside my chest looking like we’re looking for the honest man in the mirror. I think maybe there’s a version of the rebellion that doesn’t have to involve setting things on fire and blowing things up. It’s just being functional on the outside while being absent on the inside. And it involves maintaining that fortress inside your head while the rest of the world is screaming about things that mostly don’t really matter.

Okay, I guess that’s it for that subject today. As always, thanks for listening.