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I didn't choose my identity,
it chose me,
like eye colour and hair,
length and shape of nose,
height and brains;
a common refrain.
The many choices life offers
are more or less lies.
If you don't believe me,
just look at any photo;
all the smiles.
I was given money,
and didn't care about money.
I was given love,
and didn't care about love.
I was given life
and didn't care about life;
Still I tried and tried.
So they taught me
about God,
but it wasn't enough -
I needed something hot
like the burning sun,
something cold
like the icy moon -
I could not believe
in words,
and yet repeated words;
how absurd
to be free.
4 comments:
Well, this one doesn't sit so right with me. The argument that life is all about fate and determinism doesn't resonate with me. It's not a very Jewish idea. It's actually quite Greek. The Greeks were big on Fate, the Jews on Freedom and Free Will. This emphasis may be the most salient reason for the success of Jews throughout history, and for their propensity to change the world. Fate, on the other hand, inevitably leads to tragedy. It doesn't accomplish anything. Also, the poet's insistence that he doesn't care for money, love or life seems a bit disingenuous. Unless the point is that he was after all free to disown himself from these things, or unless I have read the poem completely wrong ... which is entirely possible!
I never really think of a poem as an argument. But I get the way you are responding to this one. To me it has elements of determinism and elements of choice. First and second verse deterministic. Third verse free will: the choice to reject whatever you are given. Free will is a misnomer. There’s nothing free about it. Every choice comes with a price. And it’s always within boundaries. In the Jewish tradition it’s like the choice between the blessing and the curse. What kind of choice is that? To me that determinism dressed up in choice. A choice with a gun to head, to overstate it. The last verse I think attempts to reconcile what comes before it. Essentially my choice is to live according to my physical being and not abstractions. And yet we need the abstractions, the descriptors, the labels, to make sense of it (as in a poem).
There is "the blessing vs. curse" which, I agree, is not much of a choice ... but there is also the temptation of something which seems pretty terrific vs. sticking to the discipline of what we know we're supposed to do, as in the story of Adam and Eve, or the lure of adultery, etc. In any case, I have re-read the poem in light of your comments, and I kind of understand it a bit better, I think. There are many ways to read the line "how absurd to be free" and I guess I read it as a kind of argument (sorry!) for determinism ... when it could also be read as a kind of statement of wonder, like when Paul Simon sings "how terribly strange to be seventy ..." ... or perhaps, as you say, as a kind of reconciliation of free will and determinism.
"What we are supposed to do." That gave me pause. My instant response is, by what authority? But I fully understand what you mean. Back to the fundamental question of determinism. For those who believe there is only one authority, then there is really only one question, to fall in line or defy the ultimate (true) authority, which, again is no choice at all. A statement like 'what we are supposed to do' carries the undertone of 'we know/ possess the true path.' That kind of certainty is not in my DNA. So yes, mystery, wonder, uncertainty is definitely what the poem speaks to for me.
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