The slippery sense of self

I just started reading Revolutionary Road, by Richard Yates a most depressing beginning for a weekend (the theme of the book is marital stress due to sheer boredom) for I promptly began to detest having to do laundry, dust make beds and such mundane house tasks. What is the friggin' point, my mind keeps saying to me nastily. Useless, suburban curses, these tasks.

How easy it is to question I then begin to think, one's sense of self. What a waste of an intelligent mind to do these foolish tasks. So is it these tasks that define you, your job that defines you? Your partner, your kids? Your work, your hobbies, the meals you churn out, your ideas? What?

It was a funny moment but sort of thought provoking too. My son who is four plays a lot of pretend games. In it he casts himself in a role and me in another, even if I am not actively participating, I have a role to play in his game. You be superman, I'll be spiderman he'll say and take off across the room making sounds that in his opinion spiderman might make. Then suddenly since last month he started saying, I'll be Batman, you be Batman's mom. Or I am Lightening McQueen, you be McQueen's mom. I used to be Mater, Doc or Sally even but now I am the mom! I have become Nirupa Roy! The (suffering) mom in all the seventies Hindi movies. I can't remember a scene in a film where she wasn't crying. Of course I am taking a small incident and making a mountain out of it but like I said it was just a funny moment at best, thought provoking at worst, I suppose in my low moments.

The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation, Thoreau said. I am not for the most part one of that mass, I like to think, or am I? Are we all just one sliver, one slip one firing, one paycheck, one failure away from being part of this desperate group? What a gloomy thought if we are.

I thank my father's genes for giving me resilience and tenacity as qualities I cherish most in myself, a sense of humor in seeing something funny in failure. But sometimes those have been overused, shredded and raw and my sense of self comes to question. Who am I? What purpose life? Why anything? All that wonderfully painful stuff.

Back to Revolutionary Road. I am now at the place the hero is contemplating having an affair with a voluptuous office colleague. Now the writer in me makes me roll my eyes. Not that again. Of course I must go on and see what makes this novel a classic in the words of some. But I also begin to think is it just that all of us are so similar that we keep making the same mistakes, the same cliched foolish acts over and over, never learning from our fellow human beings mistakes. And the answer is a quiet yes. That is what makes us human, no? We make new mistakes, for sure but in the end, every story is either Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet or the Mahabharata. Over and over and over again. It is a relief and yet its also kinda a let down. Like a poor end to an otherwise good movie.

I have put down Revolutionary Road as well as my dust pan to collect myself. Housework maybe a pain but it must not affect one's sense of self. That would be idiotic.

The best among us do one thing and one thing well. They do not accept defeat. If things are going wrong or life has become one endless chore, they stop, or get up from a fall, dust themselves and go on. Create a new sense of self, a new beginning to make life interesting again.

This maybe a low brow source for inspiration but its a good one anyway. One of my favorite TV detectives says this in an episode of Remington Steele. 'His friend is standing on the sea shore awaiting the arrival of a ship he owns and has worked to own for maybe a decade or more. As the ship comes to shore and applause from his friends rings loud, the ship bursts into flames. The crowd becoms silent. The man, however, bursts out laughing. An honest full bellied laugh and says. "Forget it. Its all right." Why? "Why because its all new again!" Time to make a new beginning.

And why am I thinking of new beginnings, mulling on my sense of self? Well, to put things in mundane perspective, I am getting ready to send my novel out for its last shot at publication and must understand that this time too, despite all the work, all the tears and sleepless nights, it might not sell. And I too must then, a few months from now surrunded by rejections from publishers let out a belly of laughs and say "Well, no worries for its all new again now isn't it?"

And I always have the role of Nirupa Roy waiting for me in my son's games. ;-)