Becoming a King

Have you ever talked with a stranger and had your life changed forever? I haven’t.

When I wonder why this has never happened to me, I don’t doubt that these conversations exist. Whenever I imagine a life-changing moment with a stranger, one of us is usually in a state of desperation while the other is an insightful, dignified fellow with warm eyes and a kind smile. It could be that I just have a wrong picture of how these conversations look. Or maybe I have never been in desperate enough for a stranger’s advice to be meaningful to me. Maybe I’m just a scary person who people are intimidated to approach. Maybe this age is just in short supply of insightful, dignified strangers with warm eyes and kind smiles.

In my opinion, I just don’t let strangers get involved in my life. I don’t think strangers want to get involved in my life either. I don’t mean for this to sound cynical though; I think several people share this distrust of strangers.

Imagine that you are sitting alone at McDonalds (or Jack in the Box, or Wendy’s, it doesn’t really matter) and someone pulls a chair alongside you, sits down, and begins reference your insecurities of being overlooked by people. He then proceeds to tell you how you are wonderful person and do not deserve to be overlooked. Either this stranger is insane and rambling off whatever comes to his mind, or he is correctly assessing your emotional state and trying to combat one of your biggest insecurities. At this point, all of your defenses have swiftly been pierced and shattered, and it seems reasonable for a person be put off in such a situation.

Maybe this image is too unrealistic. Instead, imagine that you are sitting alone when someone comes to you and says “I couldn’t help but notice that you are eating alone. Would you like some company?” Regardless of if you prefer to eat alone or the prospect of eating alone terrifies you, I’m sure most people would be suspicious of his “true intentions” and quickly respond “No thank you” to such an offer. Maybe I’m wrong, but I think most would be made uncomfortable from such an offer.

Perhaps even that example was too unrealistic. Imagine, once more, that you are sitting alone. Someone comes up to you and says “Hello, my name is Anthony. How are you today?” You shake hands, introduce yourself, and begin to talk about what’s been going on in your life lately. Yet I doubt anyone would respond like this. We’d probably just try to find some way to push this invasive stranger away as soon as possible. Or maybe we’d talk about the weather or our commute, thinking that we should say something, but nothing too personal.

  

Now place yourself in the position of the stranger in any of these situations. I doubt very many of us could do what these strangers did out of a fear of appearing abnormal. After all, even if we have something good to offer a person, they will not listen if we have dubious intentions. Ironically, it seems like those who might be able to be one of the strangers in a life-changing situation are those do not really care what others think about them. It seems like those who are likely to listen to a stranger is someone who takes anyone seriously. It is these anomalies in society that are able to participate in a real discussion with a stranger.

It is those who are insane that treat people sanely.

In an issue of Sandman entitled “Three Septembers and a January,” Joshua Norton insanely believes he is the Emperor of the United States, yet this belief defines all of his actions. The dignity he has as Emperor keeps him from falling into Desire’s temptations of women, money, and power. His care for his subjects makes him quick to listen and slow to speak. He makes little money and most of what he has is a gift, but he is able to find contentment in “the people in his country treating him well.” He dies alone in a gutter, but he never Despairs. Death herself is impressed with the life that he has lived, and 10,000 people pay homage to the kind, insane, homeless Emperor of the United States.

This madman changed San Francisco.

This comic made me wonder: What if we were insane enough to act like Kings and Queens? It is always tragic when a person’s insanity keeps them confined, but what if we chose insanity so that we might be able to do what is right, kind, and rational. What if we tried to comfort a person who is alone because a King cares for his fellow man? What if we behaved with dignity not for the sake of vanity or pride, but because royalty is dignified no matter who is watching? What if we sincerely and kindly listened to strangers and friends because we have no reason to be threatened by them? What if we simply behaved how royalty ought to behave?

I imagine several unspoken societal rules would be broken if we believed ourselves to be royalty, but this chosen insanity brings freedom. We could be free to treat people how they need to be treated. We could be free to have a life-changing conversation with a stranger. We could be free from the burden of what random judgmental strangers think of us.

After all, who cares about their petty judgments? You’re the Emperor of the United States.

(If you are interested to read the comic that I have referenced, here is a link: http://www.comicoo.com/sandman/Sandman31/index.htm).

Prelude to a Blog

Finding a name for this blog was not easy to do, most likely because I was not sure what I wanted to do with it. I knew I wanted a blog because writing in the first-person like this is very comforting for me and I like talking about things that do not come up in normal conversations, but these small attributes did not readily provide a name for a blog (much less a theme).

 My brother told me to name it something that expresses myself in some way, so I did something like that.

            In the more cynical moments of my life, I have felt that people use me very much like a stepping stool. Much like how a child needs a stepping stool to reach the tools that bring them to adulthood, it was my assigned purpose to help people move from one stage to another. I suppose that this is not a bad thing in-and-of itself, except stepping stools are discarded or put away when they are no longer deemed necessary.

I believe that things should be allowed to mature instead of being discarded entirely. A teacher becomes a peer when they have nothing new to teach their student. A mentor becomes a colleague to the apprentice who has mastered his trade. A parent becomes a friend. The only type of destruction that works with love is a type of progressive demolition. You may have to discard parts of relationships, but you discard them because they are toxic to more mature forms of love. Parts of relationships are destroyed so things even more beautiful can begin to form. It would be terrible for a relationship to never change, but it would be worse if they were discarded whenever they did.

It helps me to think about it this way. Suppose you were to marry your best friend. It would be very silly if you only loved her as a friend loves another friend, never once holding hands, kissing, or continually ditching her so you can see someone else. But it would be even worse to forget the reasons you first loved her: because she can kick your ass at Halo, because his favorite movie is Moulin Rouge, because you both compete over who can win the heart of Neil Patrick Harris, or because she was your first dance partner.

What I hope for this blog is that it helps me better love the things around me. After all, you only bother to try and know something because of love (whether it be healthy or unhealthy). In some sense, I don’t really mind if my blog is unknown by everyone, but I do want help on this project of mine. I want this blog to be a stepping stool to something better, with thoughts and loves that evolve and are never forgotten.


"And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. "