I see an Instagram post with pretty graphics that reminds me: “You are the boss of your life.”
And I think, yes, of course. Personal responsibility. Individual choice. Extreme ownership. I fucking agree.
But it’s also hitting another trigger point for me and I find myself inexplicably thinking: Yes, but, you’re taking it too far.
I’ve been thinking about the individualism that is the backbone of America’s rhetoric. The inherent message that we, at the end of the day, answer to ourselves. And I believe in that. In being the boss of my own life. But this year, more than ever, has shown the stark divide we have between individualism and collectivism (self-interest vs the community good) that makes up our beliefs and political backings and I am on the firm side of collective over self.
I am in the process of pushing both those truths about myself together.
I read a book recently called Natural Born Heroes by Christopher McDougall. It’s a book about human endurance and mythical heroes, but it’s through line is a story about Crete during World War II. Towards the end of the book the author asked a man named Yiogros if he would do it again — ‘it’ being pulling off an incredible operation to capture a German general on Crete, but by extension putting his family at risk at a time when Germans were murdering entire villages.
Yiogros, then ninety-one, answered:
“It’s a good question. When you live in a place this — small, by itself — you’re brought up to give help, not wait for it. When your neighbor needs something, he needs you. The person he knows. Not the army. Not the police. You. And if you’re not there, someday you’ll have to look him in the face and explain.
“The Germans didn’t know us, and they believed they could not lose. They believed they’d never have to look anyone in the face and explain. They’d never have to pay for what they did. And I believe that’s why we defeated them. Because we have to answer to one another, and they did not.”
Since I read that passage, I’ve thought about it every day. I’ve thought about what people answer for in this country and how they don’t believe they have to answer to anyone but themselves. I’ve thought about those 70 million Trump voters and how they look their neighbors in the face — their black neighbors or trans neighbors or neighbors dying of COVID — and explain what they have done.
I’ve thought about it for myself and all the ways I fall short of this creed too; and all the ways I don’t want to. I want to live my life answering to my neighbor. But saying that also feels hard and terrifying for reasons I can’t explain other than it feels like I am giving up some of that control. I am giving up a piece of that slogan — you are the boss of your life.
Because maybe you — anyone, my neighbor — should be the boss of me too. Maybe that’s what keeps us from tearing each other apart. Accountability.
With Love,
Natalie