A Day In The Life

"I read the news today, oh boy
About a lucky man who made the grade;
And though the news was rather sad,
Well, I just had to laugh—
I saw the photograph..."

There comes a time in life when a person’s actions and manners come into conflict with that person’s understanding of self. The experience is, in all likelihood, quite shocking and perhaps overwhelming to the individual, rattling their understanding (world-view) to the very core. It forces us into a state of cognitive dissonance of sorts, as we’re left to rectify this inconsistency between our moral foundation and our behavior.

About a week ago, I had a disquieting experience of this sort. I was at my place of employment, early on a weekday morning, working to get the restaurant open for the day. I hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before and was feeling rather sluggish. The streets outside the restaurant were filled with trucks, loading and unloading, from the distribution center across the way. As I stepped through the front doors to pull out the bench and open the store, I noticed a truck directly in front of me backing up. The driver, blinded by the general enormity of the truck itself, was rendered unawares of a middle aged women standing directly behind the truck, and she, absorbed in her own musings, was also oblivious of the moving truck.

I was just close enough to the scene to alert the woman to her immediate peril, saving her from certain injury and possible death; but, for whatever reason, I chose not to do so. I’ve always though myself to have an unrelenting sense of justice, laboring always to defend the defenseless and protect the undeserving from falling into harm’s way. Needless to say, I was surprised at my own indifference to the apparent peril of the woman in question and my failure to respond to the situation; but that wasn’t even the half of it. Not only did I feel indifferent to situation, but I also felt a sense of exhilaration at the prospect of watching the scene unfold. As it was, the truck happened to stop just short of hitting the woman and she, completely ignorant to her peril, walked away unharmed.

Due to my own conception of self, the thrill I felt was, and understandably so, rather troubling to me and left me feeling quite disturbed. I was unable to understand what might persuade me to react in that way, relishing at the sight of another’s pain or affliction. It was such a new, foreign emotion, yet, how familiar it felt and how easily it came to me. How was I to explain the display of this cold, hard, detached emotion, so uncharacteristic of me?

Contemporary thought would most probably try attribute it to a process of desensitization; the side effect of life in New York City and exposure to more than one’s fair share of horrible sights. With the excess of violence that occurs around the world today, the images on the news, the carnage and bloodshed of videogames and movies; it doesn’t seem so unlikely that one might become desensitized, or feel indifferent when confronted with such violence in the real world. Perhaps we become used to such images, comfortable enough with them that they become the norm, and we no longer react to them in horror and shock.

Still, that seems to be a horribly simplified explanation, and doesn’t really get to the root of my own problem. After all, it wasn’t just a callous indifference that characterized my experience. There was something else there, beneath the indifference; there was that sense of excitement, thrill or perhaps even pleasure as I watched the scene unfold, a sort of hopeful lust for the calamity I believed to be inevitable.

What could lead such unbridled emotions to rise to the surface and how does one push them back down, regaining control and discipline over the self? Answers to such questions do not, most certainly, come easily and probably require an in-depth analysis of the individual in question. As for myself, the peculiar state philosophically that I have more recently reached may have had some bearing on the off-hand enmity I felt; or it could have perhaps been my own subliminal misery with the current state of things invoking a desire to see this agony shared amongst others as well.

More recently, I have come to the acceptance that human life is itself insignificant and trivial. Despite our wishes, we have no meaning, purpose or relevance outside of ourselves beyond the friends and peers (other humans) who have something invested in us. The matter of our life and death is literally inconsequential. To attach a deeper meaning or importance feels so utterly arrogant and represents just the sort of juvenile egotism so characteristic of the modern man. What difference does it make in the course of the planet, the galaxy, even the universe if any one person dies now or twenty years down the line?

This line of reasoning may seem horribly callous, heartless, cruel, and unkind but at least its an attempt at being honest. Even still, I cannot truly comprehend my thoughts at that particular moment, nor wholly understand why I failed to react in the way I did. Perhaps the episode was nothing more than a consequence of fatigue or some other anomaly deep within myself. Most importantly, as humans we should realize that we never understand ourselves as well as we like to think. Incidents like these provide a rare glimpse into our very selves and, with critical reflection and thought, help us to better understand why it is that we act and think in the ways that we do.

"He blew his mind out in a car;
He didn't notice that the lights had changed.
A crowd of people stood and stared;
They'd seen his face before..."