On the Futility of Triumph

A clever scammer may decimate the savings I have built.

I may fall on a path I have trod a thousand times.

My spouse may divorce me and leave me with nothing.

By all accounts, the quest for total control is best abandoned.

But this danger, the hypothetical incoming catastrophe, hums in the background of each individual triumph, like a god-parent ready to issue a sharp rebuke for any juvenile hubris, reminding me of the delicate, squishy, finite, mortal creature I am.

I am always one step away from my back foot.

To make matters worse, my default response when disaster does come is very rarely confidence. It's often desperation. In the absence of real disaster, this desperation is most keen when I am disliked by someone. My first response, however quickly it is quashed by whatever dignity I have, is an unmistakable urge to make them see what a good person I am, if they got to know me.

The feeling is painfully obvious.

The idea of an authentic self can be slippery – different sides of us come out in different situations, the analysis of which, in my opinion, is far more interesting than trying to figure out which self is True and which is Fake. But there's something to be said for remembering what we wanted before anyone told us what to want. According to this criteria, the thing that characterizes me seems to be an essential awareness of smallness, combined with a desperation to be bigger.

The above line is part of a horrifying realization one might come to in adulthood: that you have been buoyed into thinking that life is worth living.1 But what if that conclusion isn't so definitive?

I was listening to a podcast recently, and the guest had gone on a bit about the magical rituals of Christians in rural Asia Minor in the fourth century, specifically that they counted "demon possession" among their possible disasters. To avoid this, they were often advised to take a bit of one of the gospels, put it inside an amulet, and wear this amulet as a necklace.

These stories often get a snort of derision – in our world, we can take a few more precautions than our rural fourth-century Christian – but the scholar had a more thoughtful response.

"When you view it through the lens of existential anthropology," he said, "That humans will do anything, absolutely anything … to augment their agency in this world, then it seems a little bit less crazy to put a little scrap of the gospels around your neck as an amulet to not get invaded by demons."2

This desperation seems to be part of the deal. It is at least part of what characterizes me as a very fortunate speck, determination to assert myself against in a world that is smarter and older and more powerful than I am.

I can save my money. I can go to therapy. I can pray.

But in the end, I will lose everything.

1. Adam Phillips, Terrors and Experts (Cambridge: First Harvard University Press, 1995), 51.

2. Dr. Andrew Henry, interview with Alex O'Connor, Within Reason, Apple Podcasts, April 2, 2023. Podcast, MP3 Audio, 1:12:03.