You are whipped like butter—remarkable and unremarkable.
The marrow of humanity is navigating the dissonance of being cotemporally consequential and inconsequential.
I will begin with a thesis.
The marrow of humanity is navigating the dissonance of being cotemporally consequential and inconsequential.
“I feel everything, and yet, should I feel nothing?” is our sounding cry.
It’s seeking justification for existence as a speck of dust grazing on a speck of light in a gaping, ever-expanding universe, while digging our toes into the sharp gravel of aspiration, affection, and merit.
Whether we get it right or wrong, this world we find ourselves in keeps spinning. And whether we get it right or wrong determines the velocity of the thoughts in our heads.
They spin like their lives depend on it. And we don’t have the heart to kill them. Nor should we, necessarily, flaccid and unformed as most of them are. Harmless even, until they flash hot-white, speed-of-light, against our skulls.
So what happens when that feeling—you know the one I’m talking about—bores down to the napes of our necks? How do you chase down the solace?
I’d like to talk about it.
When you finish reading this, the exigency of your centrifuge will be yours to determine:
What is gravity, and what is unremarkable?
Can this sedate me, or should it electrify me?
Am I the center of this moment’s universe, or can something else shoulder the weight this time around?
Am I consequential, or inconsequential?
When you finish reading this, you must come to the frightening realization that no one will determine it for you. And then you must come to the truly terrifying realization that you are going to get it wrong.
Getting it wrong is the genesis of dissonance. I’m almost sure of it. And, just for fun, what happens when we swap out the word dissonance for the word inertia? Does it change the gravity in your brain? Does it answer the questions that any reader worth their salt should ask at the beginning of someone else’s essay?
Why this? Why like this? Why you?
Me. Well, my ethos and my existence are synonymous. You may take me, or leave me. But this brain I have believes that although humanity must be held gently and mercifully, we get nowhere if we do not hold ourselves up to the mirrors of objectivity, reality, and atonement. And before you pluck each gentle finger of mine off of your shoulders and ribs, or before you close your eyes, know that they must happen together. A gentle atonement. A merciful reckoning of the true state of things. A simple diagnosis.
Before we go any further, here is another thing that you must understand: Religious or not, you are endowed with heavy hands that cannot help but create your reality. It is yours to shape and mould as you wish. It is yours to break, amplify, question, and abandon. If there is texture, in the form of prejudice and uncertainty, you put it there. If there is flavor, like preference and perception, you tasted it somewhere and added it to your palate. It’s all real, but only because you, the decisive element, made it so.
If you cannot overcome the feeling that life is paternalistic, that it happens to you without your consent, then we will get nowhere. Your ability to seamlessly navigate consequence and inconsequence will only be awakened if you choose to believe that you are your own.
Once you own your marrow, the rest will soften into place.
Shall we begin?
Or have we already begun?
Recently, so recently that you could say the moment still breathes, I found myself surprised, caught under the beck and call of someone who could almost mean something to me. The emphasis of that sentence is on the word “almost,” and you should infer that I am suspending myself above any decisive feelings on the matter. Do you know what that does to a woman? I’ll tell you what it does. It sends her spiraling into over-analysis.
What a lovely place for dissonance to fester.
The situation is mildly unconventional, but opaque enough to warrant hesitation. If I didn’t think they’d find me on this platform, I’d spill all of the details for you here. As far as details go, sufficeth to say that I have upended some paradigms in my brain, have begun to notch myself into a fascinating, lovely person. One whom I trust, but who hasn’t given me a reason to do so. Or not to do so. Just an invitation to coexist slightly.
What are we? Humans, living, sort of colliding, and definitely not talking about it. It’s early. I don’t like looking stupid. I’d rather feign anonymity, or ignorance, or passivity for as long as I can, since two are playing this game and, if stupidity is on the line, I’d rather not go first. (It’s a flaw, ignore it for now.)
The problem? I am not a passive person. Nor am I patient, really. Nor do I like to pretend like there is nothing to be said when there is everything to say. And yet I sit, paralyzed by trying to produce unnecessary respect for boundaries that haven’t been drawn, by trying to uphold curiosity and choose openness, and find a lackadaisical “I guess we’ll see” attitude somewhere inside of me. But you’ve made it this far into this piece. Do you think that I am capable of lackadaisical? Do you think that I’m interested in it?
No, but I am a woman. Complicated by nature. A being who wants to be explicitly wanted. And not like that, you gutter-dweller. (But also, at the core of the desire, yes, exactly like that.)
What I have come to, as far as conclusions go, is that to be loved is to be treated as consequential. And I don’t feel consequential here. The “yet” that clings just outside that sentence is the one I will tackle on my own. The feeling that things are not as they ought to be lives and dies at this outset: I feel inconsequential when I believe that I should be made to feel consequential. And I do not know if the “yet” has real weight. Thus the dissonance.
The funny thing is, “consequential” in this context could exist as a single sentence of directed intention. But I cannot create that for myself and feel vindicated, supplicated, subdued, calmed, etc. And so I must try to outline the choices I see in front of me if I want to overcome the inertia and quiet the dissonance:
I can squash the desire to be consequential and decide that this person is right, and because I haven’t heard it, I matter very little.
No, Jillian, you say, don’t do that. You haven’t been told that you don’t matter, and who are you to place your worth in this person’s hands? Stop that.
I can double down on my value of consequence and walk away, choosing to believe that someone who isn’t there now will never get there.
Wait, Jillian, you say, don’t do that. Can’t you just give it some time? There may be something good here. Be more patient.
I can decide to be okay with the randomness, the uncertainty, the leading to an unknown pasture, and stomach the dissonance for longer. I can know that I am consequential and allow someone else to potentially disagree.
Well, Jillian, you say, don’t you think you deserve better? Is it worth the ambiguity? Do you think you’ll get hurt?
Spinning. Dizzying, if you let them rattle you. Depending on your frame, depending on the details you have about the situation, any one of these could appear entirely wrong. I have decided that they all are, fundamentally and concurrently.
They are not mine. Only I am my own.
One day, there will be a resolution to this anecdote. But I share it not for the sake of resolution, but for the sake of reverence for the brain that created it. For you to both understand the weight of your choice of reality, and to realize at the same time that it might not matter anyway.
I can choose to walk away, deal, or stick with it, and that will affect everything.
I will continue to collide with people. They will find me consequential, or they won’t. My perception of the matter won’t change theirs.
But to be loved is to be treated as consequential. That will still be true. Here are a few more:
To love is to decide that you are inconsequential.
To aspire is to gamble on consequence.
To waste is to bask in inconsequence.
To regret is to drag consequence into inconsequence.
To hesitate is to drown in both.
I’d like to tackle each of these individually, if that’s alright with you.
We’ll begin with my anecdote’s foil.
To love is to decide that you are inconsequential. This is true in the way that mothers lug shredded bodies around, enamored by the perfect newness in their arms. It’s true in the way that some choose to drool over eyes that never look in their direction. Lovers know nothing but sacrifice. Lovers open their whole selves to get even a glimpse of another. Lovers amalgamate. You, not me. We, not I. I will choose to be inconsequential if it means that you know that you are my whole world.
The beauty is that, when executed perfectly, every last sentiment is returned. It doesn’t annihilate dignity, it magnifies it.
Dissonance creeps in when we, as lovers, are faced with the consequences of our selfish nature. Things aren’t as they ought to be when we feel that we must choose ourselves over the one we thought would choose us eternally.
How you remedy that feeling is in your hands, not theirs.
To aspire is to gamble on consequence. Plenty of people cannot and will not aspire to anything beyond plodding around this Earth because they refuse to create artificial consequence in their lives. This is a world that wants to take your money and give you comfort and ease in return. And you, unfortunately, are a human biologically wired for comfort. Choosing otherwise is inviting an unknown amount of pain into your being for unknown dividends. It’s raising stakes for the sake of raising them, and deciding that you will make it matter.
This is why failure stings in our veins. Because we chose to embrace the consequence, and we were wrong. We are existentially betrayed by our own existence, and we knew it would happen. But we hoped that it wouldn’t.
Can you meet me in this hardened, sacred space for a moment? Can you understand what you are doing when you choose ambition? Try. This can be artificial, too. What does the gamble taste like as you chew on it? Is it metallic like blood, or like silver you will never see again?
Can you afford to let this sedate you, or should it electrify you?
The choice is in your hands. The outcome may not be.
To waste is to bask in inconsequence. The sun on your face burns, too, you know. And yet it’s warm and lovely, and the freckles that form around your nose are precious, and the tan is attractive, and doctors say that vitamin D is good for you.
If you think that embracing inconsequence by default creates space for mortality, then you grossly misunderstand mortality. There is more in this world that is cancerous than what is benign. Abdicating to it, with blind, sun-glassy eyes, is not woke or deep or brave or authentic. It’s wasteful at best, horrifying at worst, and dangerous because the choice blends into the landscape better here.
I am perfect as I am, is not false.
But it quickly morphs into: everything I do is also perfect.
Into: I will always be this way.
Into: My actions are inconsequential because I am untouchable.
It is a small, almost invisible leap from valuing the self to absolving the self. And you choose the slippage. It may not have been vocalized. And it likely wasn’t localized to one incident of indulgence. It spreads.
Is there anything more dissonant than feigning inconsequence while elevating yourself to the status of worship-worthy deity?
Are you lucid? Do I still have you? Can we keep going?
To regret is to drag consequence into inconsequence. Mistakes are not the point of existence, but they are its currency. And while I raise a skeptical brow at anyone who offers a “no regrets” position when it’s clear they haven’t thought about what they truly think, I can appreciate the sentiment. Why bring back into utter consequence what you cannot change? Why dwell on the gravity of a situation that’s no longer potent, much less relevant?
You can choose to dwell on yourself all you want. You can drag yourself through the mud of past mistakes and never let yourself grow out of them. You can believe that this makes you a better person, if you so choose. But it does not mean that there is true consequence in living it again here and now.
Sometimes things happen. And because of them, other things happen. And you are still alive. Still breathing.
Real atonement has nothing to do with holding your breath, you know.
Gentle atonement gives space for things to become inconsequential again.
To hesitate is to drown in both. This is where I’m sitting right now, and it’s unsettling. I am letting my life continue without my consent, under the guise of “being patient.”
What more is there to say? This is lackadaisicality at its finest. Inertia at its core. Hauntingly human, and all too easy to step into.
And utterly my choice.
So, we have arrived.
Only arrived is the wrong word, because I wouldn’t dare conclude what has been started.
Are you frightened yet? Terrified yet? Can you feel the tender hands that have been guiding you along? Have you been reconciled to the reality imbued in your fingertips? And do you reverence it?
No book or bylaw states you must get it right.
Your brain may beg you to sometimes.
And when it does, and when you want to listen, there is a simple diagnosis:
At the center of this moment’s universe, are you consequential or inconsequential?
Your marrow spins, whipped like butter, spread thin over the lifetime you’ve been granted.
You are your own. And you soften into place.
You are remarkable and unremarkable; surrender to it.