Unreasonable by Slade Ham
Be unreasonable.
I love the sound of that. I’m not sure where I first heard it put that way but it stuck. We are taught our entire lives to function within the confines of “reason”. There are rules and guidelines and borders and walls that you cannot cross or question. I don’t accept that. We knew those rules were meant to be broken as children and then we somehow lost that little liberating nugget of wisdom.
On the surface, this would appear to have the makings of a very optimistic, “take charge of your life” kind of rant. I don’t think it’s going to be though.
It seems so pointless sometimes, pushing upstream against everything that’s flowing the opposite direction. I don’t know who to cast the blame on but someone deserves it. Someone should be crucified for drumming these things into our heads. Fall into the pattern if you want things to be easy. That’s the lie they tell you. It’s such an easy sell, too. We buy it because we somehow think that that is the path of least resistance but it’s not. The rub is that the road is full of difficulty and disappointment and heartbreak no matter which side of the fork you venture down.
That voice is relentless.
“It’s good that you enjoy playing the guitar, but you know you can’t make a living doing that, right? You’re parents won’t ever approve of you two falling in love. Who cares what you feel? Stop wasting your time painting. You need to learn calculus. You’ll never be a movie star. Get your head out of the clouds. Just buy a house in this little town and settle down. Nobody breaks the pattern. The few who do are simply lucky… they’re lottery winners. You can’t do that though. Not you. That road is full of let downs. Don’t do that to yourself. Come back over here where it’s safe. You can get hurt out there, and it never pays off.”
But that voice doesn’t tell you that it sucks pretty bad where it comes from too. Credit card bills and mortgages have to be paid. That requires a job. A job means you have to go to bed and get up at a certain time. Even if you hate the job you can’t leave it because you don’t have any time during the day to look for another one. It keeps the lights on though, so you’ll just stick it out a little while longer. A few drinks after work will take the edge off for sure.
Those few drinks happen at some bar full of other people trying to escape the same thing. These people don’t know that’s what they’re there for however. These are the ones that are completely gone. This night at the bar has become a highlight for them, part of their pathetic little story. Now you have to sit there and talk to them, knowing the whole time that you don’t belong there. You’re above that, above them. That realization flickers on and off like lightning somewhere in your head, just often enough to keep your own tendency to be amazing illuminated.
You remember a time when you took a chance, and then you quickly squelch that memory. That memory makes you accountable. Maybe you have a flash of how much you loved to play the piano, how much it meant to you, and then you beat it back down. You hear notes of piano music in restaurants or in songs on the radio and you tune them out or change the station. You can’t play, you have to be responsible. The really talented can even convince themselves that it is the piano’s fault. With effort, you might even grow to resent the piano entirely. You ignore any desire to play whatsoever, until one day, you have honestly forgotten how much you loved it. Even when you try, it’s been so long that you can’t remember what it was about the piano that made you feel so good in the first place. Oh well, things to do, people to please.
And that’s the reality.
The parameters have been defined. You have to wrap a tie around your neck and wear some uncomfortably starched shirt to go have conversations with passionless people about things you couldn’t care less about. Relationships have to fall within certain boundaries regardless of how you actually feel about the other person. We’re convinced we have to stay with people we don’t love and we let them convince us that we can’t be with the ones we do.
We forget that we really do only have one shot. We’re shooting live. Another thirty or forty years and we’re out of here… and we are so willing to waste it. We make decisions based on flawed logic and bad facts. We put things together in our head and decide it is reasonable.
Put simply, we give up.
And that’s what kills the optimism in me. Too many people have thrown in the towel. They forget that they are allowed to be unreasonable, that they can defy the expectations of everyone else. They buy the bullshit. They listen to the “experts”. They also listen to that debilitating voice in their heads. Not the good one – that one has been beaten into submission - but the chaperone one. That conniving little Thief of Joy.
We forget that the experts and that voice are both wrong a lot. The experts said space travel was impossible. They said personal computers were impractical. The experts also told us that gas could hit $5 a gallon by the end of last year and oil would keep rising to $200 a barrel. The experts are idiots.
And that voice? That voice is the reason you’re in this mess to begin with. Its guidance and counsel is exactly what got you here. Find that other voice. Wake it up. Listen to it.
Violate other people’s standards. Challenge your own. Take it back. The clock is ticking. It’s going to be hard regardless of the direction you choose. You might as well pick the one with the better view and a group of people you like. The only reason you haven’t is because someone said you couldn’t.
Defy that. Who cares if it makes sense?
Be unreasonable.
-Slade Ham