Newsletter from Jay Wilcox - January 2020: On Myths and Meaning

Good morning/afternoon/evening!

I know life isn't a movie. Even if it were, I wouldn't be the main character.

However, one can know that and still splice film in their head, connecting reels for larger meaning. It's healthy to build a story--to craft continuity and heroism in all our small actions. For example, I love washing dishes. I love it because I need to be the kind of character who keeps an ordered house, and washing dishes reminds me of countless small habits that progress my story. Minutiae make up character arcs.

I write every day. I do this in part because, like washing dishes, it's therapeutic--but also because I need to contribute to something larger than myself. I understand that I'm ultimately just another guy who looks for discounts on coffee and gets whimsically sad when he thinks about Mr. Rogers, and that any greater meaning might be fabrication. I know this but can't kill off my myths. I exist as a writer and as a Writer.

Of course, maybe the future belongs to those who get high on their own fumes--who believe it's still possible to Make a Difference and that existence consists of more than just buying spinach and watching it go bad in the fridge. Contrived meaning keeps my life from simply being a series of errands. I don't get stuck in traffic--I am traffic, one more person pretending the radio's songs are a soundtrack. Construction rules everything around me, even if the life I build can't be empirically proven greater than the sum of its parts.

I think about a lot of futile stuff while I'm driving.

I teach because I want to save the world. I write to join a vast conversation--to become a mitochondria in some massive, moving life form. Where did I get these weird notions? From what do we construct narratives? While a personal story can't become more important than one's reason for writing it, perhaps such stories allow us to time and again punch above our weight. If it's true that we only help others in order to feel good about ourselves, consider any time you've ever helped someone feel less alone--and then remember what it feels like to be made less alone.

Evolution may have tricked the fish into thinking its life demanded preservation. At the same time, if existence can't be conclusively raised to higher meaning, then it can't be reduced to less--and maybe in order to do something cool, one needs a belief in their own bullshit. If a cause matters to you, get involved. Even if you can't save all the beached fish, a few might think you moved the entire sea.

Infinite Regards,

Jay