Revolt

We are told to be car-salesmen selling ourselves with teethy grins, competing for friends and positions in high places.  Those who do not comply out of petulance or pride sink beneath this orgy of being heard.  For those that are car-salesman by design, wired gregarious with a glint in their eyes, this world must seem like Providence.

When introducing a new food to my two-year old son, I have learned that the best method for success is to set it before him without much coaxing, allowing him to receive it on his own terms.  The more I try to force, the greater the resistance; even at so young an age there seems a natural inclination towards freedom of choice.  My adult life seems likewise defined by a resistance to the brute force of an other, that societal mistake, imposing with a strict hand how I ought to behave, ought to think, ought to achieve success.  As if we were all one and the same.

I am not a car-salesman.  I see through personality, as I suspect many others do.  What else can I do but revolt?  It is a rebellion of the spleen, the a priori fact of my being.  Life is but a struggle to repatriate the inner voice and the temperamental choice.  I ask only of the world to permit me to receive it on my own terms, with a degree of tolerance, patience, and respect.  And I will return them in kind.