The Element of Moving On and Its Hope for Discovering New Selves

When I was a young adult, I liked to argue.

I argued about everything.

I was an atheist and I argued there was no god.

I was a feminist and I argued women should have the freedom to do everything men do, including drink and smoke.

I prided myself on being rational, and argued against astrology, psychics and esp.

I was a capitalist and argued Dhirubhai Ambani was making a greater contribution to society than Mother Teresa.

I argued about everything under the sun.

Someone would innocently share an opinion with me, then find themselves on the wrong side of an argument, which, like a Mobius strip, would have no end.

Once someone suggested to me that he thought the Beatles were over-rated, and Duran Duran was a superior band to them. I chewed off his ear. Every time Hungry Like the Wolf wafted from a Nakamichi tape deck, I would chew his ear off again.

I needed little provocation, because I would argue, even if I had limited knowledge on any subject. 

For instance, when I started writing songs (instead of going to college, and being able to get into Google), I became an instant expert on song-writing.

“First they compose the music, then they write the lyrics” I declared.

“I know for a fact, it’s the other way round,” Shreekant shot back at me, “I know that when Elton John’s songs are written, Bernie Taupin first writes the lyrics, then Elton sets the lyrics to music.  This is a fact. Rocket Man, Crocodile Rock, Candle in the Wind, Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me, I Guess That’s Why They Call it the Blues – you name it – the lyrics were written first.”

Shreekant knew a lot more about music than me.  Still I pooh-poohed this. “No, cannot be,” I said, “I’m sure the music comes first”.

This was how I was.  If I believed the sun revolved around the earth, then the sun must revolve the earth.

William Blake said “Without contraries, there is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence.”

Contrariness is a rite of passage.

We come to a certain age and then we argue.

Even if we cause people to get headaches.

Even if we cause people to lose it.

Once, at a gathering, I was arguing with someone, and the person dashed across the room and grabbed hold of my hair in frustration. That's the kind of effect my arguing had on people.

Neal Stephenson says, “Arguing with anonymous strangers on the Internet is a sucker's game because they almost always turn out to be—or to be indistinguishable from—self-righteous sixteen-year-olds possessing infinite amounts of free time.”

Stephenson nails it.

16 is the age when we are self-righteous, think we know everything, have oodles of time on our hands, and find our voice.

That voice we had to suppress all through school.

Only this 16 year old continued to be opinionated and self-righteous well into her 20’s.

John Milton said, “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”

Indeed, freedom to argue is an important freedom.

We need to be able to think for ourselves and question everything.

And so this is what I did.

However, John Keats also said “Nothing ever becomes real til it is experienced”.

Eventually, we will discover the truth, or falsehood, of everything we believe in.

Here’s what I found out about song-writing - thanks to Wikipedia and song facts.com: Shreekant and I were both right. Bernie Taupin wrote the lyrics first for all Elton’s songs.  Al Stewart composed the music first for all his songs. (All those amazing songs in the Year of the Cat album were scored, orchestrated and recorded before the lyrics were written).

In some things, I learned, while it’s easy to spout words, such as “I think all women should be able to smoke and drink” it’s not so easy to put words into practice.

I discovered that, as Lemony Snicket says: “A new experience can be extremely pleasurable, or extremely irritating, or somewhere in between, and you never know until you try it out.”

Smoking was in the “extremely irritating” category for me.  When I tried to smoke, I coughed and choked so much on the first cigarette, it was a one and done thing for me. 

The pleasure factor was much better with alcohol. I found if you dunked enough orange juice in vodka or beer, or enough coke in rum, and threw in some ice cubes, it tasted quite refreshing.  Plus alcohol would have a salutary effect on my emotions and spirits. Often, I would feel expansive and magnanimous after a glass of alcohol.

But unfortunately, other than my taste buds, the rest of my biology was not for alcohol. My liver, my enzymes, whatever was needed to help me metabolize alcohol and not make a fool of myself and cripple me for days after, none of that was on board.

I so badly wanted to “drink any guy under the table” as part of my feminist attitude. But I would often pass out from my valiant efforts and need to be carried home. The day after, I would have the most terrible hangover - I would become a Humpty Dumpty that all the King’s Horses and all the Alka Seltzer Men couldn’t put together again.

So eventually I had to accept that alcohol was not for me.

There was a plus side to being stone cold sober at social gatherings. I was always in 100% form for any argument…. and you would find me on the winning side of late night Pictionary games.

Experience changed my views about Mother Teresa and Dhirubhai Ambani. I learned it’s harder to live a life of sacrifice, as Mother Teresa did. It is easier to live the life of a Dhirubhai Ambani. In fact, aren’t we all miniature Dhirubhai Ambanis – trying to accumulate as much power, recognition, success and money as we can, and as fast as we can? We may find room for “a little philanthropy in our lives”, but “a little philanthropy in our lives” is very different from dedicating your life to sacrifice, as Mother Teresa did.

Experience also replaced my stubborn atheism and rationalism to make room for what I would like to call “a more expansive spirit.” Some of my heroes such as Diogenes or St. Augustine had spiritual wake-up calls, which I would have considered corny when I was younger.  Today, I am a point when I have had several spiritual wake-up calls myself, starting with my mother’s death.  I go to Bible Study, I read religious texts of different religions, and I believe I have started having telepathic experiences. “Minoo has gone cuckoo,” some will say.

I never knew I would move on, and experience new ways of thinking and living and being.

I never knew I would discover new selves.

I never knew my life would be recast on so many different fronts.

I now know we are not yoked to a fixed identity for life.

We are not trapped by our current personality, our current habits, our current values, our current wants, our current needs, our current identity, our current reason for living.

We can wake up and be a different person at any time.

When our lives change, we may be surprised to find we like our new selves better, even though others would not be able to understand.

In 2011, when my income dipped below the poverty line, no one could have understood that it was the best year of my life: A year in which I learned to meditate, I started writing again, and I made bold new professional and personal choices.

My choices, then and now, might make no sense to any one but me, no sense even to my former self.

How could my former self (that brash 16 year old) understand I don’t need to drink and smoke to feel liberated, or to be one with the crowd; I can go on a girls night out, and nurse an iced tea while everyone else is doing tequila shots, and still feel as if I am the most liberated woman in the group.

My former self might be baffled by what I do with my leisure time these days - going to Bible Study, and spending an average of 8 hours a week writing this blog.

My former self would never be able to understand how the former thriving business owner of a creative shop, could want so little, and live so simply.

“The fire’s gone, Minoo, how can you stand to be just a shadow of what you used to be?”, I would hear it say, if I listened.

My response would be a hearty laugh. 

I am not into arguing anymore - even with the reproachful voices in my head.

The truth is I have never been happier, and I am living exactly the way I want to live, and I have everything I need.

While I am grateful for all the experiences I’ve had, including starting Purple Patch, I am happy to move on.

In moving on, I’ve discovered a new self. Or rather, several new selves. And guess what – they are pretty cool to live with.

I will end with this quote by Dorothy Parker, “And if my heart be scarred and burned, The safer, I, for all I learned.”

Thanks for reading and have a great day and week.  Thanks to Abbas and Ajay for their comments on Facebook, and thanks to the rest of you for your votes…..M…..a Pearl Seeker like you.