I'm giving up beer for Lent. It's going to be a long forty some days. Aside from actually drinking it, trying a new kind of beer is the best part of having a bottle or two on the weekend. There are so many different kinds of beer and so many breweries constantly releasing variations on those varieties that it's easy to discover something really great. I won't be making any discoveries over the next several weeks. I've already had to pass on buying a new beer from one of my new favorite breweries.
It's this eagerness to try new beers that helps me convince myself that I'm not all that conventional. I can try new things. I don't limit myself to the choices that mass marketers put in front of us. I tell myself the same story with the books that I read and the restaurants that I'm willing to try. But in the end, sampling different kinds of beer or reading a variety of books is really just another way of observing the world. It may be more active than just watching things go by, but it's about consumption rather than production. I'm choosing to consume what others produce rather than producing something that makes a statement about who I am and what I'm about. I'm not really putting a part of myself out there for others to see. I'm just sitting back and judging what other people have produced.
I even try to put a spin on my day to day work in order to make me feel that I'm putting something out into the world that forces me to express my humanity. I'm a chemist. I work in a lab. I tell my wife all the time that my work is creative. It is creative in that I have to generate original insights into technical problems, but the creativity that grows from that process is more of a statement about the system I'm studying than a commentary on my preferences and taste. The problem defines the limits. The space is set for me. I don't have to put up the boundaries, or choose to ignore the boundaries put up by others. I'm merely capturing what nature has already expressed. I'm not expressing my view of the world.
Sharing my view of the world would be an active statement. That would mean saying that this is me, and, just as importantly, these things are not me. I would be open to judgement and criticism. My perspective would be open to commentary by others as either right or wrong. It would make little difference whether or not there is a right or wrong. Insecurity in my sense of what is right is my prime insecurity. In wanting to be right, I give up the ability to feel secure in my choices. To be right requires submission to an authority. The authority is always superior. Nobody will challenge my thoughts on a beer as I sit in my living room taking sips between these sentences.
A strong expression of self through clothes, appearance, or pursuit of a particular something, particularly when those things would make me stand out, shifts my position from observer to participant. Once I'm participating, I'm open to judgement, and that may mean rejection or criticism. Those are things that I just cannot abide, so I hang out in the shadows, blending in and repressing my vulnerabilities and emotional needs. I also have to ignore the needs of others. Noticing that somebody else in my life may need some reassurance would require me to make myself vulnerable and expose myself emotionally. That might hurt. It's easier just to watch. It's easier just to go along.
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