The Impact of Narrative In Day-To-Day Life... Part 2! (and some free books)

This is Part 2 of "What Ariele's Been Thinking About Lately" or, in this case, "The Philosophy of Story" so if you missed part one, no problem! I posted it to my blog so just click here. 

If you're just here for the free books, I got you! 

Click here to download a whole slew of fairy tale retellings! I personally love fairy tale retellings, so I've already grabbed a few. Let me know if you like any in particular! 

If you're more in the mood for some urban fantasy & scifi books, this is the list for you! This is an awesome selection of free books, and some of my friends' books are on here too so definitely click through to check it out. 

Okay, so…

Last time I talked about the philosophy of story and how it filters down into my life in particular. But of course, it's one of those really big topics that doesn't just go away once I've thought about it for a little while.

The idea that everything is a story has a really deep impact, if you find yourself able to really believe the idea. And that impact can be dangerous, but it can also be freeing.

For example, if everything is a story, then that means the idea "killing people is wrong" is simply a story society and culture tells. It's a story I agree with, to be clear, but if someone else were to begin believing that it was a story--what happens if they don't agree with it? Do they start killing people? Do they begin justifying all kinds of terrible things?

But if you really think about it, even something that seems like it should be a given has gray areas. We have entire shows, movies, book series, and video games built around characters who have killed people wherein the story presents it as okay.

For example, in Bones, Booth was a sniper and now an FBI agent. We accept that the killing he does is okay. In NCIS, Gibbs killed a guy out of revenge, and it's presented as "a terrible thing Gibbs did for a good reason." The TV show Dexter is all about a guy who kills people who slip through the system--a vigilante murderer.

And think about books and movies like Lord of the Rings: the characters slaughter their way through the stories without even blinking. Legolas and Gimli have a competition for how many orcs they can kill! I personally have killed a lot of perfectly innocent fictional characters in video games. Full-fledged brotherhood assassin over here lol.

The catch is, in all of these stories, the people who are killed are portrayed as being "bad" people who cause far more harm than can ever be undone. Orcs are evil monsters created to wreak havoc on Middle Earth. In Dexter, Bones, NCIS, the main characters only kill people who have done terrible things. In fantasy books and movies, the characters have to kill because people are getting in the way of "the greater good."

So then, sometimes... killing is okay?

And that's just in fiction. In real life, we support our military and emergency personnel, even when they are put in positions where they have to kill people. We bomb other countries. We still have the death penalty. We refuse treatment plans for people with illnesses if their insurance company "doesn't think it's necessary." We all talk about how we would totally have killed Hitler if we had the opportunity.

But the point here is that the story "Killing people is wrong," is no longer an irrefutable truth. It's a story we tell to hopefully reduce the arbitrary killing that goes on. But the story is a lot more complicated than that. It's more like, "Killing people is wrong, except for..."

If we can look at a story like "killing is wrong" and find reasons why that story isn't entirely true, we can do the same for all kinds of things. We can question everything.

It's a can of worms, friend.

Does it matter if I mow my lawn every week?

Does my house have to be clean when people come over?

Does it make me a bad person if I... [insert thing someone told you not to do]?

On one hand, the process of questioning everything you've ever been told can be a bit destabilizing. It can be confusing. But it can also be freeing.

Do you know how many arbitrary rules there are? Take writing, for example. It's one occupation, one skillset, out of bajillions of skillsets. It's just one thing. And yet the rules...

• Don't use adverbs.

• Don't end a sentence with a proposition.

• Don't use sentence fragments.

• Don't use passive voice.

• Don't use parenthesis.

• Don't spell things wrong.

• Don't use 5-cent words unless absolutely necessary.

Okay, I'll stop boring you with a list of writing rules I think are BS, lol. Just google "list of writing rules" and you'll find blog after blog telling you what you should and shouldn't do.

My point is--using adverbs is fine! Prepositions are an excellent thing to end sentences with! Sentences fragments? Fantastic. Passive voice is so useful. I love parenthesis (doesn't everyone?). Spelling is a made-up thing! And I will never say no to a gargantuan, ponderous, voluminous sesquipedalia.

What I'm not saying is that we should give up on every story we've ever heard, every rule we've ever believed, and every social norm that's ever been invented. Because in many cases, these social stories were created for a reason.

There's a reason why we say "Killing people is wrong."

What I am saying is that we don't have to be bound by these stories. We can (and arguably should) question everything. We can work to understand the "why" behind the stories we use to construct our lives. And we can figure out which stories we want to keep, which stories work for us, which stories make our lives better--and which stories don't.

The Impact of Narrative In Day-To-Day Life

Lately I've been thinking a lot about the stories we tell ourselves. My entire life is stories--and not just when I write fiction. When I craft content for websites or write product descriptions, my job is to tell a story about a company or a product that interests potential customers. When I edit something, I try to make the story that writer is telling as clear and concise as possible. 

Stories are everywhere and in everything, though, not just in books and movies and website copy.

I think that storytelling is so intrinsic to our nature we don't even realize we're telling ourselves stories most of the time, or at least, that we're repeating stories that someone else told us. 

Imagine for a moment that you get cut off by someone on the highway. At least in my experience, the first story we tell ourselves is, "That person is a jerk!" and "They could have killed us!" 

But both of those stories could be false. We don't know what’s happening with them. Maybe the person was distracted--that doesn't make them a jerk. Maybe they're on the way to the hospital and really stressed--that doesn't make them a jerk. Maybe they didn't mean to cut you off and they're super apologetic but they're in their car so you can't hear them apologizing. And maybe they're an excellent driver and you were in no danger whatsoever of being killed. 

So an alternative story we might tell ourselves could be, "Wow, that person is in a hurry--I hope everything is okay."

Because it's just a story: we can tell ourselves whatever we want. And we don't always have to paint other people who don't do what we like as a villain or annoying sub-villain. 

This concept is a pretty common one for therapists and self-help gurus to talk about--changing the narrative, though half the time their suggestions are things like, "look in the mirror and tell yourself: I can do it!" 

But what I've been exploring lately is the idea that everything is a story.

Everything. 

Absolutely everything.

Most recently, I was talking to my therapist about the difficulty of differentiating wants from needs, and she looked at me and said: "Have you ever considered the idea that the spectrum of want and need is a false dichotomy?" 

So I started thinking about that, and realized that sometimes wants and needs are the same thing, so if we begin with that premise instead of automatically assuming that they're different, then suddenly a two-dimensional understanding of a concept becomes ... don't worry, I'm not going to drag you down that rabbit hole with me lol. 

My point is, the idea that wants and needs are on opposite ends of a spectrum is a narrative that a person or culture or whatever told me, which I've repeated to myself over and over and over throughout my life. And it was a useful story sometimes, like when I made very little money and had to decide whether to pay my rent or go out to eat with my friends--but it was a story nonetheless.

I don't have to keep telling myself that story, though, if it doesn't work for me anymore. If it's getting in the way of becoming a healthier or better person. Or if I just don't like it.

Not that changing the stories we believe is easy, of course. You can't just snap your fingers and "believe" in something. But understanding the power we have over the stories we tell does create a sense of freedom.

I can't control the stories that other people tell me. I can't control the stories I believed in the past. But I can work on disrupting the stories that have rooted in my brain, and I can choose to tell myself new stories moving forward. And I can choose to question any story that someone tells me or which I discover rooted in my brain.

The reason why this matters to me as a writer is because the beliefs that I have, the narratives I tell myself about real life, make their way into my fiction and can either reinforce a reader's stories or provide an alternate story.

Have you ever read, for example, a one-liner in a book (or seen it into a movie or whatever) where a character makes a comment about another character's weight? It's usually supposed to be a joke. Or for example, in early seasons of NCIS, the character Tony likes to "guess" the weights of women who are suspects in a case. (Thankfully, the writers eliminated that in later seasons.)

This reinforces the social narrative that your weight matters. That your weight impacts your value in society. That you "should" weigh a certain amount. That weight is intrinsically representative of your health. And the way that other people perceive your weight matters.

But if you spend any time in the body positivity or body neutrality circles, you'll find that all of these narratives/myths have been thoroughly debunked, not only through personal experience and anecdote, but also by research and science. 

Because they're just stories. And we don't have to buy into them if we don't want to.

The worlds I create, the characters I build, and the words I write reflect the unconscious stories I believe about life, the universe, and everything. I have some control, sure. I get to make choices about the themes I explore, the types of people I write, the ideas I spend time on. But my subconscious does most of the work and the stories it believes make their way into my creative works whether I want them to or not.

Thus, I think one of the most important things I can do as a writer is to keep questioning the narratives. All the narratives that swirl around me, in family and media and culture and life--they're just stories that someone made up to explain (or explain away) an experience or a feeling or something they didn't understand.

But I don't have to hang onto those stories. I can choose to let them swirl away into the void as so many stories have before. And instead, choose to tell and believe stories that are more relevant, more useful, and more kind.

How To Plan An Online Book Launch

Book launches can be fun, but they can also be an incredible amount of work. So how do you pull one off successfully?

This post will just give some high level tips and tricks for pulling off a successful book launch.

Know Your Why

The first time I gave a workshop on this topic, I asked the group: “Why are you planning a book launch?” and someone looked at me with a very confused expression and said, “Because I’m launching a book?”

I laughed, but what I actually meant was: what is the why behind the why? What are you hoping to achieve with a book launch? What is the goal of the launch? What are you hoping to get out of it?

A few common reasons might include:

• Book sales

• Rankings on Amazon or another platform

• Celebration of an achievement

• To create buzz around a brand

• To tell your friends about it

Less common reasons might include:

• As a demonstration of personal growth or healing

• As a marketing event for a non-book-related business

• To connect with a specific group of people

• To make a specific type of impact

Your “why” can be whatever you want it be, but I highly recommend taking a few minutes before actually diving into the nitty gritty of planning a launch, and asking yourself: “What do I hope to get out of this?”

And write it down. This can help you during the process, giving you some context as you choose what launch tactics you are planning to participate in, as well as after the fact, when you are trying to determine how successful you were, as well as help you make decisions about future launches.

Launching a book, especially if it’s your first or second one, is a really emotional process, and it can be easy to get caught up in the minutiae and the feelings and the momentum, but taking a few minutes at the beginning and at the end can help you refocus on your purpose and goals.

Types of Book Launches

There are two types of book launches: hard book launches and soft book launches.

With a hard book launch, you pick a day, plan the event, and build all of your marketing tactics to coalesce on the day of the book release, sort of like a very slow explosion. With a soft book launch, there is a lot less planning, it doesn’t have to be on a specific day, and it focuses around a simple announcement.

The key difference between the two types of launches is this:

• For a hard book launch, the communication about it is focused on the day of and before

• For a soft book launch, the communication about the launch focused on the day of and after

Hard launches have a set date, are usually organized around an online or in-person event, and are designed to slowly build buzz and momentum while pulling other people into the process and getting them excited about the launch.

Soft launches have no set date or time. They are more nebulous and vague, and typically start with the launch of the book. They don’t often have a specific event, though some authors will plan a last-minute Facebook Live or Instagram event. Fewer people are involved in it, and it tends to focus around communicating about the launch in whatever way is most convenient for the author.

I have done both for various reasons. I tend to use hard launches for the first or second book in a series, and then switch to soft launches for later books in the series.

Most authors choose which type of launch to do based on either their personality or their marketing strategy. Some people love the adrenaline and the excitement and build-up of a hard launch; other people prefer for it to be a quieter and simpler event. In addition, certain marketing methods rely on hard launches to build buzz with every release; other methods (like the backlist method) don’t rely on the hard launch and so author opt to save time and money by going for a soft launch.

Step-By-Step Book Launch

Technically, you can plan and organize your launch however you want to. And you should do whatever makes the most sense for your brand, marketing, and personality. But for anyone who likes to have some sort of format to at least start from, I’ve put together a series of steps you can follow.

For a hard launch:

1. Pick a date.

2. Decide on your marketing tactics.

3. Build out a schedule.

4. Develop any required content or tools.

5. Schedule as much as possible in advance.

6. Launch the book!

7. Review the process and outcome.

The steps are pretty self explanatory, but a couple quick notes:

• When selecting a date, especially if you’re working on your first or second book, it pays to wait until the book is done. The reason for this is because the publishing process always takes longer than you think it will. Once you get a few books under your belt, then you’ll have a better idea of timing, but you don’t want to keep moving your pub date out if you don’t have to—that will likely mess up your marketing and launch plans.

• When you decide on your marketing tactics, it can seem overwhelming. There are a lot of options. A few I recommend considering (though there is no guarantee they will work for you) are: sending out newsletters to your own list, posting on social media, paying for newsletter promos like BargainBooksy or RobinReads, setting up paid ads if you know how, getting a few reviews with ARCs, and setting up some kind of event on launch day, like a party, a FB live, or something similar.

• When creating the schedule, start at launch day and work backwards. There should probably be more content, posts, and event-type things closer to launch, and fewer farther away.

• If you need ideas for potential social media content, check out this blog post.

• When you review the success of your event, ask yourself: Where did I start and where did I end? What small or big successes did I have? What didn’t work so well? How can I change or adapt my strategies to have a better launch next time?

If you want steps to do a soft launch, I have those too. But keep in mind that a soft launch is a lot more nebulous than a hard launch.

Here’s what I do:

1. Launch the book.

2. Decide how to communicate about it.

3. Send out a newsletter and post on social media.

4. Do any other necessary stuff.

5. Continue with your regularly scheduled programming.

Common Mistakes When Launching A Book

I’m a big proponent of the idea that you only know what you know once you know it. So I don’t think there are a lot of “mistakes” when launching a book that aren’t worth making. The best way to learn it is to do it.

However, these are three mistakes that I think can be avoided, and which I see new authors do a lot:

1. Not having a good product.

   • It always hurts a little when I see a new author put immense amounts of time and energy into launching a book—only to have it essentially be unfinished. Poor quality cover design, unedited, incomplete books won’t sell well no matter how good the book launch is.

2. Oversharing.

   • There are a lot of ways to overshare, but the two most common ones I see are spam posting on a particular social media platform about your book, while never posting about anything else or considering what the followers might actually be interested in; and, sharing information that makes the person reading it uncomfortable. That might mean literally oversharing personal information about health or relationships or even content in the book that is uncomfortable, or trying to get people to engage intimately with a world or universe or characters from books they haven’t read or have no interest in.

3. Targeting other authors instead of their target audience.

   • The argument goes: “Well, other authors read too!” and technically, that is correct. But other authors don’t care what you’re writing because they’re not your target audience. Even if you write books for authors, all other authors are not your target audience. “Authors who need help with marketing” might be your target audience. "Or “Authors who are interested in learning about dialogue.” But no. Please stop telling other authors that you’ve published a book with the expectation that they’ll care.

Conclusion

A book launch can be as complex or as simple as you want to make it, and you and only you get to define what success looks like for you, your brand, and your book. And no matter how much work and effort you put into your launch, and no matter how much response you get (or lack thereof)—don’t forget to celebrate, even if it’s just you and your cat and a pizza.

Because here’s the thing: the book launch is just the beginning.

On Absurdism: Part 3

Still in the emergency room, if anyone was keeping track, and I’m going onto hour 5 of waiting. For a while, I kept wondering—if everything is meaningless, why am I here, subjecting myself to this utter boredom, off some pain which will probably turn out to be nothing?

Well, because it might turn out to be something, obviously. A something which could ultimately cause more pain in the future than I’m experiencing right now.

So leaving would be the wrong choice—not because the universe somehow cares if I stay or if I go, but because I care about me, and Me doesn’t like pain.

And while yes, the universe is meaningless, I still have meaning. I am interesting to myself. I think that the things I think and write and say and do are interesting, and I’d like to keep thinking and saying and doing them. And there’s no reason to just let myself die (potentially) early, because I’m too lazy or annoyed or uncomfortable to sit in the emergency room waiting area all day.

Pain.

In the last episode, we talked about pain and how it relates to the way we judge our own behavior. So I want to go into that a little bit more. But I want to step sideways for a second, because while I’ve been sitting here, watching this horrendously boring house flipping show (to be clear, I actually enjoy shows about architecture and design—this one just happens to be really, really dull), I’ve been trying to think of more practical applications of absurdism.

Most of the conversations I’ve seen about absurdism on Discord or Reddit are so fricking depressing. It’s all people who are just like, “Let’s read more books on absurdism. They’re hilarious because these guys hate everything and the picture they paint is so bleak and… absurd!” or “Life is meaningless! Why ever live in the first place?”

Like, I don’t know—why not?

So figuring out some actually useful way to apply absurdism to life, seems like a valuable line of thought. I even wrote a post in which I asked other people on Reddit how they apply absurdism in a practical way to their lives, and pretty much everyone just said something along the lines of, “I just laugh when things suck,” which, to be honest, isn’t all that practical, in my opinion.

But it does get at what I think the heart of what a practical application of absurdism could look like. It’s about changing the story.

You’re having a bad day? Things keep going wrong for no reason? To the point of utter absurdity? And for no reason?

Laugh.

Okay, cool. But why are you laughing?

You’re laughing because you’re changing the story. It’s no longer, “God hates me. That’s why everything sucks today.” Or “I deserve this.”

Instead, it’s “Everything is meaningless, so the fact that this is happening? It sucks, but it doesn’t imply that I’m a bad person or that God hates me or that the universe is out to get me. It just is. And tomorrow or the next day, I’ll probably forget all about this.”

Granted, this doesn’t really apply to trauma, but for the moment, I’m mostly talking about getting pooped on by a pigeon type stuff. (I’ll dig into trauma later—my own trauma, at least. I don’t presume to know anything about yours).

When I think about the idea of ultimate meaning (or lack thereof), I tend to think about Christianity, since that is my background. I grew up in an Evangelical environment, and am now an #exvangelical. Regardless of my own personal experiences, I think most religious and non-religious spiritual people have some concept of reward or punishment that comes after death, and which of those happens to you is based on your actions and intentions during life on Earth.

So I’m going to start with that concept:

If you are a “good” person, then you get rewarded in the “afterlife.”

If you are a “bad” person, then you get punished in the “afterlife.”

I’m not going to talk about purgatory because while the idea of having a second chance to determine your fate is nice and all, it’s really just an extension of “good” and “bad”—or more like a delay between your ultimate reward or punishment.

Also, I want to mention here that I am operating under the assumption that a possible reward or punishment is the “ultimate meaning” in question, and we’re not talking about something else, like the universe being a giant computer trying to solve a difficult math problem or something. (42?)

To start, we have competing concepts of good and bad. And as we walk through life, we assign labels of “good” and “bad” to a wide variety of things.

For example:

• Love = good

• Hate = bad

• Eating = good

• Starving = bad

But we all know that these blanket statements aren’t necessarily true depending on the context. When love becomes obsessive, it is bad. When we hate something that is culturally considered bad (i.e. Hitler or child pornography or racism), that is good. If you overeat, that is bad. If you starve in preparation for a surgery or starve a parasite, that is good.

The meaning behind a thing or concept changes based on context. A bed in a hospital is a very different thing than a bed in a hotel. (Sorry about all the medical examples, lol. I am still in the ER, though I’ve been moved to a room now. Except that they are overfull, so the room I am in is a crisis room, which means really harsh florescent lights, flat blue walls that kind of glow under the lights, and three cameras surrounding me. It’s quite anxiety-inducing, if I’m going to be honest. But there’s nothing like a good discussion about absurdism and abstract concepts like “good” and “bad” to keep a person distracted.)

Already, with just a few examples, the concepts of “good” and “bad” are starting to feel suspect.

• Is a hospital bed good or bad? Or both? Or neutral?

• Is a pigeon good or bad? Or both? Or neutral?

• Is buying an organic tomato from a national corporation good or bad? Or both? Or neutral?

• Is filling your tank with gas good or bad? Or both? Or neutral?

• Is spending 20 hours of time and electricity watching The Good Place good or bad? Or both? Or neutral?

What gives “good” and “bad” meaning?

Eternity? Heaven and hell?

Except, why does our behavior or the relative “goodness” or “badness” of a thing, concept, or action matter if there are no ultimate consequences? What happens when you take ultimate meaning away? How do you know if something is truly “good” or “bad”?

According to absurdism, you get to choose your own meaning. But it’s not so simple, right? How do we judge what is good or bad in the world with no cosmic consequences? Is it just a gut feeling? An instinct? Or is there a pattern that we can pick up on that doesn’t rely solely on ultimate cosmic consequences to keep its head above water?

Enter: pain.

Pain is everywhere. Pain is ubiquitous. I am in the ER right now because of… you guessed it—pain. And pain comes in many varieties and is felt by every living thing (yes plants, and probably the Earth, included).

There is physical pain, mental pain, emotional pain, even spiritual pain. There are all forms of discomfort (which I am including as a form of mild, bearable pain) and conflict. And alternatively, there is pleasure, which comes in the same varieties—physical, mental, emotional, spiritual.

Pain as a measure should start first with us.

We exist before our pain. Or perhaps, in spite of our pain. We exist whether we are in pain or not, which suggests that any pain we feel is not us. It is a separate thing, though it can feel as if it is intrinsic to us. Within us. A critical part of us.

But I would posit, that though our pain is separate from us, our ability to experience pain or lack of pain is as inextricable from us as our consciousness. Perhaps it is the same thing as our consciousness. It is the entire role of our consciousness to describe and understand what we are experiencing.

Any meaning that we want to find or create in our lives is centered around who we are, what we want, and what interests us. Therefore, our pain starts with us, as in, we experience it as though it is part of us, yet it is still separate from us. Our consciousness works to understand that pain or lack of pain.

And other people experience pain too. We might not know or fully understand other people’s pain, but we know they feel it.

To use pain as a measure for determining meaning, we must first acknowledge our own pain and accept that it is a constant across living beings. If you don’t want to accept that as a basic premise, then I suggest skipping the rest of this essay, lol.

So first we acknowledge and validate our own pain.

Then we recognize that others have pain too. It may be different than ours, or less or more, but it still exists. Then we have to acknowledge that our actions can have one of three different types of impact:

• It can increase pain in either ourselves or others

• It can not increase or decrease pain in ourselves or others

• It can decrease pain in either ourselves or others

You might have noticed an interesting parallel to this particular structure:

• Pain = punishment

• Pleasure = reward

In the same way that hell is an eternal punishment and heaven is an eternal reward.

The good news, is that we already do this pretty naturally:

• I feel sick, therefore sickness is bad.

• My brother hitting me causes me pain, therefore my brother’s action is bad.

• My child has said that my words caused them pain, therefore my words were bad.

• Taking medicine reduces my pain, therefore medicine is good.

• My brother giving me a gift as an apology reduces my pain, there for this action is good.

• My child has said that my words caused pleasure, therefore my words were good.

We can continue to do this but minus the moral judgement of bad = you’re going to hell, and good = you’re going to heaven. Instead it would look like: bad = it causes pain, and good = it does not cause pain. Heaven and hell have nothing to do with it.

In this system, we can ask ourselves, “Did I want to inflict pain? Did I intend to inflict pain?” and know that even if the answer is yes, there are no ultimate consequences to that. Which means that a person could potentially make, “inflicting pain,” the meaning of their life. Or “inflict pain because it causes me joy,” and use absurdism as their justification for that. I think most of us would call that person a psychopath, and guess what—they’ll continue to exist whether or not ultimate, cosmic consequences turn out to be real.

We will all experience pain in our lives; it’s not something we can control. But we can control how we respond to our own pain, and how we respond to others’ pain.

I believe that we can us relative and varying pain as an equivalent to the cosmic reward or punishment measurement system, as a metric for understanding the impact of our actions on ourselves and the world around us even in the lack of cosmic consequences. Especially as pain can be changed or influenced through direct and immediate action, and we can see the results of our actions. As opposed to cosmic consequences, where we cannot see the results of our actions until after we die.

This allows us to be more agile, willing to change, and able to adapt our behavior if we realize that we’re causing pain (if our goal is to not cause pain). As opposed to waiting around until we’re dead to find out if we did it right. We get to decide in the moment how we’re doing and react accordingly.

“So, I should avoid all pain and seek only pleasure in life, then?”

Nope.

Because sometimes short term pain is necessary in order to reduce long term pain.

It’s all about feathers on a scale.

I mean, be a hedonist, if that’s what you want. But my personal opinion is that hedonism is a short-sighted philosophy. Because pain is everywhere. And sometimes, pain that others experience can ricochet onto you.

Every action we take has an impact on the world and people around us. Sometimes that action has a neutral impact, not increasing or decreasing anyone’s pain. Sometimes, that action increases our own or someone else’s pain; sometimes it decreases or provides pleasure to ourselves or another person.

And sometimes (more often, I’d wager) it is extremely complex and can cause a little bit of everything—good, bad, neutral—and it’s impossible to tell whether the net outcome of the statement was to increase or decrease the amount of pain in the world (or neither).

Take for example, the doctor coming into tell me what’s wrong with me. On one hand, I now have an action to take. The doctor has done his job. I can leave the hospital once my discharge papers have been delivered. On the other hand, it is very difficult to listen to a doctor tell you what’s wrong with you. It is stressful, anxiety-inducing. In addition, if I’m not actually technically fixed, I will have to go see another doctor to follow up on the issue. And who knows what else that doctor might find that could cause not only me pain, but my spouse or my family?

The doctor at the hospital could have chosen not to tell me, chosen to send me home with no information. I would have still felt some pain, but probably moved on with my life assuming indigestion or muscle spasms. Perhaps the issue would have resolved itself over time. Or perhaps it would have caused more pain down the line.

So, the doctor telling me his hypothesis about what’s wrong with me has caused me pain in the short term, but will allow me to take the steps necessary to reduce pain in the long term.

Most actions we take are extremely complex and have a cascading effect that we can’t even see or predict the results of—the reason why people say you shouldn’t step on a butterfly because it might cause a hurricane. Or the whole premise behind time travel stories.

Let’s say you go for a walk. The walk is “good.” It feels good, and creates pleasure for you. However, during your walk, you step on an ant. As a result, there is a slight increase in cosmic pain because of the ant’s pain. Then you cross the road at the wrong time, and a Black man who was walking toward you perceives it as a microaggression, even if you didn’t intend it that way (in this scenario, I am assuming “you” are white. I am also white.). Though the man probably eventually forgets about it and gets on with his life, you have caused another slightly higher increase in cosmic pain, and if this was the third or fourth microaggression of the day, the man might be experiencing higher than average levels of mental or emotional pain. Then, a few minutes later, an acquaintance walks by and says hello, but you are listening to your podcast and don’t see or hear them, and they think you’re upset with them for some reason—more cosmic pain.

So you’ve gone for this lovely walk, but accidentally caused some pain along the way—and you’re not even aware of it.

The point here isn’t to say that you should always be constantly aware of every potential impact of every action, and be constantly trying to measure how much pain or pleasure you’re releasing into the world. We can’t possibly know that. (Speaking of which, watch The Good Place for an interesting, hilarious, and well-done exploration of this.)

However, I believe that if we strive to behave and act in a way that reduces pain in the world (and for us), and gives pleasure on a cosmic scale, to the best of our ability, I think we could equate that to “good” even if the whole concept of “goodness” is technically meaningless. Likewise, if we strive to behave in a way that increases pain in the world (and for us), and causes pain on a cosmic scale, I think we could equate that to “bad,” for lack of a better term.

Practically speaking, if we wanted to use increasing or decreasing pain as a measure as we find and create meaning in our own lives, I think we could draw a few conclusions:

1. It is important to understand the potential impact of our actions and the things we say, not only on ourselves but on others and the world around us.

2. It is important to put in an effort to try to understand other people’s pain, even knowing we will never fully succeed. (Absurdity, anyone?)

3. In a vacuum, all pain is equal, but in context, it is not.

4. Our own pain, though it may seem enormous, is not as big as it seems to us (on a universal scale) and it does not automatically mean we are deserving of immediate attention from others.

5. Believe people when they say they are hurting.

6. Be patient with people and always strive to be kind.

7. Let other people be themselves. Especially if it costs us nothing.

This whole time I’ve been in the hospital, I keep thinking that if only I could let go of meaning somehow. Life is meaningless, after all, right? We might desperately seek meaning, but the universe has none to give. We can only give it to ourselves.

So why can’t I let go of it? Of the weight of being in the hospital? Of the fear? Of the stress? Why can’t I lean back and say, “Whatever is, is. Whatever will be, will be.”?

And then I realized: because it’s me.

I’m the one in the hospital. The pain is mine. The solution, if there is one, is mine too. And I am meaningful to myself.

I will always be meaningful to myself, even at my most apathetic, even at my darkest, saddest—I value me. Because without me, there would be no way to experience the world around me. Without me, nothing else would exist—at least, not to me. (Actually, this is crux of the main argument Camus makes for why suicide is not the answer to ultimate meaninglessness.)

And so yeah, the hospital has meaning. My life has meaning. My health has meaning. And that is good (if such a thing exists).

Everything is meaningless, except for me. And in this, I am free.

To be continued…

On Absurdism: Part 2

In my last post on absurdism, I more or less defined the philosophical construct of absurdism, talked about how we can apply it to the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and our lives and the world around us, and then asked:

If your mother asks but you don’t want to, should you or should you not go to Thanksgiving dinner?

And I ended with the idea that if there are no ultimate consequences, then other people’s opinions about whether or not you “should” go to Thanksgiving don’t matter.

It only matters what you think.

But that’s not the end of the story.

Does skipping Thanksgiving make you a “bad” person? No.

But how do we know that if there are no ultimate consequences?

Should you go to Thanksgiving?

That depends.

Do you think family is inherently valuable? Does the idea of family and maintaining family relationships have meaning to you? Even if you don’t want to go to Thanksgiving dinner, do you still think it is an important action to take?

If yes, then go to Thanksgiving dinner, whether you like and get along with your family or not.

If no, then feel free to skip.

It is rare, however, for answers to be so simple.

Because there are a lot more variables and moving pieces in a situation like this than simply whether or not “family” is something that matters to you or not. Because perhaps you don’t believe that “blood is thicker than water,” but you do have other reasons for maintaining relationships with family.

Like money, for instance. Maybe you like watching drama. Or maybe you don’t care about Family with a capital F, but you do care about specific family members, like your mother. Or a niece or nephew.

In which case, going to Thanksgiving despite your dislike of your other family members will make your mother happy, or allow you to see the people you do care about, and therefore bring you meaning.

Or maybe staying connected to your past has meaning to you, and going to Thanksgiving would give you a simple reason to visit your hometown. Perhaps you’re not sure what you think of your family or how you feel about the whole holiday in general, so you decide to go to learn more about your own feelings and priorities.

One of the challenging parts of figuring out this whole absurdism thing, is creating a new system for evaluating the pros and cons of actions. Because even if there is no ultimate meaning in the universe, your actions still do have consequences.

If you skip Thanksgiving, you could get written out of the will, for example.

Or you will never find out that your aunt died.

These things could have implications down the road in a way that does matter, in a personal or contextual way.

Regardless, there is great freedom in allowing yourself to question everything. But it is also challenging. For example, let’s look at the story which states: “Killing people makes you a bad person.”

Question: does it, though?

There are tons of stories that question this narrative just in pop culture. Look at NCIS. Bones. Pretty much every cop or military show features characters who have killed other human beings.

But to make it more palatable, we give the characters PTSD, or make them feel guilty even though it was state-sanctioned, or we couch it with “buts” like, “but he was a really bad guy,” or “but he was about to kills someone else,” or “but he was pointing a gun at me.”

Not to mention, we are surrounded by military men and women. They are an integral part of our community. Are they bad people? Not only for potentially killing others, but for choosing a profession in which it is likely they will eventually be in a position to kill someone?

I was only 18 when I 19-year-old friend of mine who was a service member who had already served time in Iraq confessed to me in whisper at 3 AM what it felt like to kill a person.

Were they a bad person?

Was it bad to kill Osama Bin Laden? Was it bad to kill Mussolini? If a person murders a serial killer or a serial rapist or a child molester, are they bad? What about police officers in high stress situations where someone is shooting at them? What about soldiers, following their commander’s orders in war?

And many people imagine that they had a time machine, they’d go back and kill Hitler. Would that make them a bad person?

No.

On the other side of things, there are some actions that I do believe to be wrong. For example, I believe that molesting children and rape in all instances is inherently evil or bad or wrong or whatever phrase you want to use, even though I do not believe in cosmic consequences.

And if I get called into a room in emergency (though at this point, it seems unlikely that this will ever happen—I’m going to become like that character in that movie who gets trapped in the airport and just lives there, except I’ll be trapped in the emergency waiting room, slowly starving to death), if the doctor deliberately lies to me about my health, I would believe that was wrong or bad or whatever.

But without ultimate meaning, and without the consequences of an eternity in hell hanging over our every move, how do we draw these lines?

So there are two different sides to this. The first is how do we make judgements about our own behavior, and the second is how do we make judgements about other people’s behavior?

I’m going to start with talking about my own behavior, and then in the next episode, I will talk about other people’s behavior, because that’s a lot more complicated.

There are two ways I can make good/bad judgements about my own behavior.

1. Does it hurt?

2. Does it align with my own personal meaning?

I am going to get more into the pain side of things in the next episode, but let’s say I decided to leave the emergency room without seeing a doctor.

Mysterious abdominal pain? I can handle it, right? It’ll probably go away. And surely, the physical pain is much more tolerable than the emotional boredom I’m experiencing and the physical discomfort of these god-awful waiting room chairs.

Well, I’m the most important thing to me. Because without me, I wouldn’t exist. Without me, I wouldn’t be having this pain, I wouldn’t be having this experience, I wouldn’t be observing or experiencing anything, so this conversation wouldn’t even be happening.

So I have to make a call: which will hurt more? Sitting in this stupid chair watching other people cough outside their masks during a pandemic, or going home and hoping the mysterious pain vanishes on its own and then it turns out there wasn’t anything wrong with me in the first place?

Sometimes these value judgements are impossible to make. We can’t predict the future—we can only guess. We can look at statistics and probability. And just make a choice and hope for the best.

But sometimes we can also add another dimension to the judgement—which is pain + relationship to our own personal meaning.

I would like to wait to die for as long as possible, so I can write more books. So if my discomfort at waiting in the emergency waiting room and my physical pain are about equal, all I have to do is say: well, the chances of me dying if I leave are slightly higher than the chances of me dying if I stay. Probably.

I’d like to stay alive, so I’ll stay.

Alternatively, perhaps I find some personal meaning in my health. Or this essay I’m writing. Or the simple experience of being in a hospital.

Is staying here good or bad?

Let’s go back to the Thanksgiving example.

Your mom wants you to attend Thanksgiving dinner. Is skipping good or bad?

1. Will it hurt?

   1. Maybe. You don’t like your family. It will be an uncomfortable day. (Neutral.)

   2. No. You don’t like your family, but it’s more of a passive apathy, not an active dislike. But going will make your mom happy and not going will make her sad. (Skipping is neutral/bad depending on the nuance of your relationship with your mom.)

   3. Yes. Your family is cruel and unkind. They will do everything within their power to insult and demean you. (Skipping is good.)

2. Will it align with your own personal meaning?

   1. Maybe. You do believe family is important, but not more important than anything else. (Neutral.)

   2. No. You think your family members are vocally racist, homophobic, and cruel, and going only lets them know that you’ll suffer through that type of behavior for the sake of “family.” By not attending, however, you can communicate that you won’t tolerate this. (Skipping is good.)

   3. Yes. You love your mother and want to make sure she knows it, so attending will ensure that you can maintain at least one relationship that has meaning to you. (Skipping is bad.)

Let’s shift the example slightly. This time, you are the mom. You want your kids to come to Thanksgiving. You believe that family has value. After all, you chose to birth them, you gave up your body, suffered a lot of pain, and spent 18 years raising them and spending money on them. You have decided and devoted your life to this particular meaning.

One of your children has decided that they don’t want to attend. You are disappointed and want to tell them. Would telling them be good or bad?

1. Does it hurt?

   1. Maybe. You want them to know your feelings, but you don’t know how they will take it. They may be understanding about it, but they might also not care how you feel. (Neutral.)

   2. Yes. You know your child will not respond well to hearing of your disappointment. They will tell you it’s their decision, not yours, and be upset because they feel you are pressuring them into trying to attend. Then they would withdraw more from you and it would likely hurt your relationship. (Telling is bad.)

   3. No. You believe your child will respond well to hearing your feelings, and appreciate that you expressed how you feel. And even if they still choose not to come, you think that sharing your feelings will strengthen the relationship. (Telling is good.)

2. Will telling them align with your own personal meaning?

   1. Maybe. Family has a lot of personal meaning to you. You want good relationships with all of your kids, even if they don’t get along with each other. You’re pretty sure your kid would be okay knowing your feelings because you’ve worked to have a strong, open relationship with them, but there is a chance they will feel like you are manipulating them. (Neutral.)

   2. Yes. You believe that in order to have strong relationships with your children, you need to be able to express how you feel. (Telling is good.)

   3. No. You believe that in order to have strong relationships with your children, sometimes you have to accept their decisions and deal with your feelings about it on your own. You believe that it doesn’t always help to share every feeling, and that by not telling them, they won’t feel pressured and therefore be more likely to come to a future family gathering. (Telling is bad.)

One of the catches to this process is that you could always be wrong.

Because the thing is, guessing the future is always, always, always telling a story. We guess the future by making up stories about what we think will happen based on things we believed happened in the past.

We get cut off on the highway. We tell ourselves a story: that person is a jerk.

But we don’t know that person. We have no idea if they were a jerk.

Perhaps they didn’t see us. Perhaps they were rushing to the hospital. Perhaps it was a simple mistake.

So when we get on that particular highway again, we might say, “Yeah, someone will probably cut me off.”

It’s a story we tell ourselves.

“Yeah, my kid will probably fly off the handle if I tell them I’m disappointed they’re not coming for Thanksgiving.” Because perhaps they flew off the handle last time we said the same thing.

So we choose not to tell them of our disappointment—but it turns out our kid really wanted us to talk them into attending, but since we didn’t, they assume we didn’t want them after all, and the family divide actually widens.

Because our stories… they were just stories we made up. Inaccurate stories. Stories that reflect our understanding of the world.

Were we wrong to tell those stories?

No.

Because stories are all we have.

To be continued…