The Rena!ssance Man:

This is a test to see if Word will print extra plus signs.

It does not. The test is a success.

I thought it might be Joe because I saw an art student in the Programming Building: a rare occurrence. It turns out that it was neither Joe nor, apparently, an Art Student. I had simply been so eager to see Joe there, working on his Art, that my mind had filled in the details before its rational part could analyze them.

I was raised to value hard work, education, and the ideal of the “well-rounded Individual”. I supposed that, if my lot in life is a reflection of my efforts, then my efforts would be recognized as equal to my virtues. In other words, taking four classes as a full-time employee would in itself be a success, simply because anyone who endeavors down such a path is committing himself to an incredible workload, and of course it is often fear of this same exertion that prevents otherwise qualified young men from even trying. I have learned bitterly that it is not the fear of work itself, however, that is singular in discouraging my fellows, but rather the fear of “failure”. But what failure can there be in a man who has expended his last heroic efforts and asked for little in exchange, even surrendering a great deal of his basic needs? The very description of it appears to be the definition of success; here is the man who gave his all. Surely that is enough, for we are all finite beings, and our expectations ought not to transcend our abilities. Yet time and time again I am reminded that when the expectations of others transcend my own abilities, I am blamed by them, for I fell short of my own expectations, for both myself and them. I expected them to care and to recognize my effort. But as it turns out, my coworkers seem to care very little about my education, my classmates seem to regard my job as a means towards my OWN ends, and all of them feel inconvenienced BY me because I cannot meet their expectations in the way I USED to. All the while my fellows who’ve committed themselves to a relatively easy life seem to enjoy all the rewards, and I am forever excluded from their company as if on principle. I used to feel them to be my allies, but all of my efforts to make friends with them have not only backfired but been systematically discouraged. When I finished my first semester this year I took this job in a state of wonder, and my self-esteem was rather high; I’d gotten straight A’s (for the first time in over a decade) and in several notoriously difficult classes. I felt proud, and I knew I’d earned that pride, though for some reason strangers whom I told this to seemed apathetic to my achievement. And this dawns upon me too: for some bizarre reason, people only seem to care about what you do so long as it affects what THEY do, even though they’re all theoretically equal, so there’s no reason, for instance, for my Chef to compete with my Conductor for my time; both the Culinary Arts and Music are theoretically noble in their separate but equal ways. Now that I’ve surrendered my success this second semester to a demanding paid workload and the false promise that it would abate as I’d improve, all I have to show for it is an empty bank account and a few artistic investments. These should render me content, but the deeper situation renders me apprehensive. I had all ways imagined that both my classmates and my coworkers would encourage my artistic endeavors; after all, why should they pay me or reward me with good grades if I have no skill by which to USE these “rewards”? OBVIOUSLY the ultimate goal is to blossom as an Artist, for that is the primary distinguishing feature (and therefore the central virtue) of the Human Being from all other animals. Comrades along this Quest would do well to treat me with respect so that I can conscientiously reciprocate the same respect in my Art, especially should I feel moved to depict the situations (and as such the people) I have found myself involved in.

People are incredibly self-entitled. They do not care that you have Life Outside of their own lives; they only seem to want results to serve their own ends. If I can present my schedule to any man or woman and be met with recognition for my social involvement, then being involved in society makes sense. If, however, all of my efforts amount only to “my own business”, then they are all pointless, for they only hold social value insofar as I am present, and as social functions that may be the only value that they hold, unless I give them personal value as memories in my absence. (In that case: an artist requires all property rights to all of his sensory stimuli, lest he be exploited by the sources of those stimuli.)

All I ever wanted was to be part of something Greater Than Myself. But it was too great. NO question can be made now of my intentions. If I only wanted what everyone else wanted, then I was entitled to it insofar as they continue to pursue it. When they renounce it, then I shall call it sin, and only then.

We are social beings, after all, and I have NOT been antisocial.

This one irony looms like the sore from a discarded bee-sting: should fortune favour a man in my position, he finds himself attaining recognition in the form of Soft Power and Status. Apparently, most of my problems are the result of other men and women having “attained” this, at the expense of, or by contrast to, my own Status.

There is no singular, Absolute, objective and sensible, permanent and immutable means of measuring this phantom called Status. It is purely fantastical.

If getting lucky in a gamble makes one respected, why not the inevitable failure that accompanies the miserliness of fortune? If all of the Great Men whom I must answer to were simply in my shoes and managed to pull it off (the task, if not the shoes) then why is it that I, having taken shoes too big to fill, or having been given them by men with even bigger shoes, am suspected not of simply falling short, but of having poor intentions? If status is not rewarded for the means, how and why does it accompany the ends? If trying is a sin, or leastwise I’ll be treated like a selfish sinner, by all of my leaders, for making the attempt, then why should I answer to those leaders if they had to try to get to where they are? Is their own Kingdom not built upon Sin? Is Power not reserved for the well-meaning and well-rounded, but rather for the self-serving, privileged, and one-pointed fanatics who must all ways compete with one an other for human resources, with our lives all ways caught in the crossfire?

Dm.A.A.