“You know what he’s like, that’s just the way he is.”
We’ve all heard this phrase, you’ve probably used it yourself a few times, usually in justifying why someone is being a wanker, (mostly when justifying why someone is being a wanker in fact.) It’s a ‘get out of jail free’ card for actions and words, as if behaviour is a trait engraved onto the core of a person, as if that person just arrived as a whole and complete character with nothing to be done.
‘We are what we repeatedly do,’ Aristotle said. If you’re being rude, if you’re being ignorant, that’s not intrinsically who you are, but the sum of what you’ve been doing. A reality often forgotten is that we can choose to be the sum of a different set of actions. The best and worst of you is always and utterly in your hands.
You are not a finished product. You will never be a finished product. The day is not going to arrive when you say- ‘yes, that’s who I am, I’m that guy, I get it now.’ The fact is you’re never going to get it. You need to stop, trying, to ‘get it.’
The trick is to see that actually you are on a never ending conveyor belt in a factory where you are choosing what machinery works on you, shapes you, moulds you. You’re a work in progress and your job, the most important job you’ll ever have, is to be aware of what is doing the work on you.
Media, magazines, TV, advertising, internet; it is all a part of our everyday routine, a relentless pounding where we know what we like because we are told what to like, you know who you are in relation to whose name is on your pants, is it Calvin Klein or George at Asda?
Western culture produces a never ending stream of dribble that is undeniably addictive as it taps into the lazy bone in us all- we say ‘hey, we work hard all day, we deserve the easy option of convenience food, convenience comedy, zoning out to episodes of ‘Two and Half Men’ after reading newspapers with no words on the come down after a Friday night.’
It is the fact it is easy that should make you suspicious, and highlights how unbelievably important it is to not just be a vessel- instead take something in and then form your own opinion. Question everything you come into contact with and never stop. If you want to be in control of your life, be in control of the filter you are seeing your world through, because reality is all relative. Media is an offering, an interpretation- not truth.
Be aware when you’re only one in the shop wondering why you’re about to spend £50 on a t-shirt that is worth about a fiver. Feel self conscious in Starbucks, buying hot water and coffee beans for £2.40 instead of the 17p water and beans are worth. Be grateful for these thoughts- it means you’re awake.
The answer isn’t simply to stop drinking Starbucks, but begins with pulling into your awareness what’s going on in front of your face, what campaign or ideal is doing its work on you, the choices you’re making as a result and how you feel about that.
This is an incredibly difficult thing to do, mainly because seeing that cup of hot water and beans is not encouraged as this kind of thinking wouldn’t exactly help the economy to grow. It’s in wealth and power’s best interest to teach that the collective wants a better car, a bigger house, a chai latte to go and a nice life of pretty things – as it always far more comfortable to be a part of the collective than to be alone.
Being arrogant or rude, I’d argue that this is someone who’s merely got sucked into the picture, someone who buys into the poster. You can make your life as big or small as you want, but if someone says about you ‘that’s just the way he/she is’, you’ve got stuck, and you need to wake up.
The fool is the one that lets others think for him, who lets adverts do the shopping for him, layering up in this seasons must-haves before asking himself whether he even likes trousers tight enough to make his bollocks shrink.
So, next time someone is being a wanker, all you need to do is tell them that they’ve got stuck on their conveyer belt somewhere and they better get some new machinery or you’re going to have to punch them on the nose to wake them up.
Ta Da.
