We have a natural tendency for self preservation. I don't want to fall apart. I want a long, happy, picturesque life where I can enjoy all the many joys of being alive, in good health.
But for the sake of this article lets suppress the nesting instinct. Lets forget about building our homes and working our jobs, maintaining our health and appearance. Just for a bit lets evolve, and let the chips fall where they may. Lets look at this masterpiece by Chuck Palahniuk.
"You buy furniture. You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. Buy the sofa, then for a couple years you're satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you've got your sofa issue handled. Then the right set of dishes. Then the perfect bed. The drapes. The rug. Then you're trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you."
iPods, clothes, blackberries, purses, wallets, cars. Same shit , different pile. Even without a nest nest.
"If you don't know what you want, you end up with alot of things that you don't".
"You're not your job. You are not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You are not the contents of your wallet. You are not your Grande Latte. You are not your name. You are not your age. You are not your fucking khakis."
All this anxiety. Our whole lives we are like rabbits on a treadmill chasing the carrots of perfection. One more phone, one more home, one more relationship, one more fix. The reality is that, "a moment is the most you can expect from perfection".
Once you realize that, it stops feeling like life is shorting you on every experience. When you experience perfection, you revel in the moment, instead of teasing yourself. The only place that perfection can last is in your mind.
"At the time, my life just seemed too complete, and maybe I have to break everything to make something better out of myself."
This is not about ego. Your no more a man for winning a fight. "Fight Club isn't about winning or losing".
Sometimes you need to lose a fight. Justify it to yourself however you need to, but sometimes you need get beaten, badly. Not humiliated, I'm not talking about prestige here, but it can be a healthy experience to have your head stomped, to find out how much you can take. To get up after getting put down hard and look around and say; "Whoa". Not angry, not threatened. It's difficult, but worth it. Detach from the ego. You haven't lost if nothing was at stake.
Once your comfortable with how much you can suffer, you learn all kinds of things. "No fear, no distractions, the ability to let that which does not matter truly slide".
Tyler kissed the back of my hand. He holds a bottle above us and sprinkles white flakes of sodium hydroxide down to where he holds me by the wrist. This stuff lands all over my hand and lays there idle. Everywhere except where his slobbery kiss or my sweat has left a liquid residue. When it lands there, it bubbles. I swear you could hear this stuff as the basic sodium hydroxide mixed with the mild acid of his saliva and my sweat. "chemical burn" he said. My eyes bulge and the smell brings me to my knees. I hope I didn't get any on my shirt, I payed fifty bucks for this shirt. Tyler slaps me upside the head and brings me back to the searing bubbling mass on my hands. I have to wash this shit off.
"You want to wash this off?!" Tyler laughs, "I'm your best friend in the world for not letting you do that. You know what would happen if you put more water on your hand right now? You would fuel the reaction and burn your hand beyond recognition!"
I'm gone, I'm in Ireland. The Caribbean. A public pool.Tyler hits me again. "No!" he shouts, "come back to this! This is the greatest moment of your life, and your off missing it!" "Fuck damnation," He says, "and fuck redemption."
I'm crying, and every tear that falls starts another searing bubbling spot in the coating of lye on my arm.
"Listen," Tyler yells, "you can go run water over your hand and make the reaction worse... or you can use vinegar to neutralize the burn."
I beg him for the vinegar.
"First," he says "You have to give up. You have to know - not fear - but know that some day you will die."
"Okay!" I tell him and my vision goes hazy. He lets go of my wrist but I don't dare move. Where would I go. I kneel with my arm in the volcano.
"Only after disaster can we be resurrected, It's only once you've lost everything that your free to do anything," He tells me, smiling.
He waits for the longest six seconds of my life, and then poors a pitcher of vinegar over my arm. Salvation.
I pass out on the floor, clutching my wrist to my chest.
"May I never be complete. May I never be content. May I never be perfect. Deliver me, Tyler, from being perfect and complete"
The next day at fight club... I have never been so aware of my own existence. I feel every bump in the concrete under my feet. I hear the men watching, speaking in tongues. I feel every punch in its entirety. I taste my blood like holy water and I feel his lips split when I strike him.
"After the fight nothing was solved, but nothing mattered."
"After a night in fight club, everything in the real world gets the volume turned down. Nothing can piss you off. Your word is law, and if other people break that law or question you, even that doesn't piss you off."
Oh but this isn't enough, where's the vision?
"Recycling and speed limits are bullshit," Tyler said. "They're like someone who quits smoking on his deathbed..."
"For thousands of years, human beings had screwed up and trashed and crapped on this planet, and now history expected me to clean up after everyone. I have to wash out and flatten my soup cans. And account for every drop of used motor oil. And I have to foot the bill for nuclear waste and buried gasoline tanks and landfilled toxic sludge dumped a generation before I was born."
"This is my world, my world, and those ancient people are dead..."
"We wanted to blast the world free of history.... picture yourself planting radishes and seed potatoes on the fifteenth green of a forgotten golf course. You'll hunt elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center, and dig clams next to the skeleton of the Space Needle leaning at a forty-five degree angle. We'll paint the skyscrapers with huge totem faces and goblin tikis, and every evening what's left of mankind will retreat to empty zoos and lock itself in cages as protection against the bears and big cats and wolves that pace and watch us from outside the cage bars at night."
"Imagine," Tyler said, "stalking elk past department store windows and stinking racks of beautiful rotting dresses and tuxedos on hangers; you'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life, and you'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. Jack and the beanstalk, you'll climb up through the dripping forest canopy and the air will be so clean. You'll see tiny figures pounding corn and laying strips of venison to dry in the empty car pool lane of an abandoned superhighway stretching eight-lanes-wide and August-hot for a thousand miles."
Something that should be noted about the Fight Club movie is all the subtle product placement. Yes it gets destroyed by Project Mayhem but it is there and I bet the producers got paid for it. - The more you know.
published may 17 2010, 13:44
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