“Relax!”

I clench my teeth not to snarl. I’d relax if I could, trust me, only I’m not the boss of me, in my grandchildren’s parlance. Might as well tell myself to cheer up – or get furious – or fall in love. Reason’s free to appeal to the Department of Feelings, but the Department’s not obliged to respond – or explain. Of all tyrannies, Feeling’s the most tyrannical and perverse. Some lucky stiffs have sleepy or sensible administrators, Phlegmatic they used to be called, in the days of the Four Humors: calm, self-possessed, judicious, imperturbable: the sort of worker you want. Mine tends toward Choleric – unless it’s Melancholic – or Sanguine – sometimes in quick succession like a weather vane in a gale. Last night I slipped to sleep cozy, dozy, kissing Jane goodnight thinking wow, am I the luckiest guy or what? Woke three hours later bleak, frantic, worthless, wordless, to hell with it. Took three Advil and gripped my pillow like a spar midocean not to drown. Woke just now jolly and serene, eager as dog-pal Henry to frolic, fingertips fidgety to start typing – type what? – anything! – the world was so grand! What, pray tell, had altered in the interval? This changeable inner weather makes no sense: if only I could relax sur commande! But no dice. I must ride the horse assigned me, praying not to get thrown.

I can’t be the only one bobbled this way. Albeit sometimes disagreeable, I’m not dysfunctional, check with Jane. I “keep myself together,” as the phrase goes and when I can’t, shut my door till the squall subsides: no monster, I’m pretty sure, squarely on the spectrum of genus homo. Yet ordinary language does no justice to my inner commotion. I am asked, “How you doing? How are things? How you feeling?” – I ask such questions myself – where would conversation be without them? To which, I reply with a congenial fib: “Fine. Dandy. Couldn’t be better.” Because my truth is incommunicable, sometimes incomprehensible – and evanescent as a soap bubble. I never am; I was. Even now I’m not the fellow who commenced this froth three paragraphs ago.

Reason – accompanied by its servant, Language – is mankind’s most fantastic delusion. We imagine we can say what we mean, explain why we feel, tell “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” We feign sanity, knowing better, dreading worse. We casually deploy the first-person singular – in all languages, I believe – as if this fiction, “I,” were probable. I am I, only as a rope is a rope, a clutch of many strands.

I use language to communicate, convivialize, but more importantly to convocate my various selves into a single voice. My “self” is an imaginary construct – which I imagine certain – so am always startling. I scold myself, “That’s not like you, Carll – that’s not who you are,” when, of course, it is, q.e.d.

Reason is humanity’s gift and curse. Consciousness is easier for Henry and all other creatures for they are one, denizens of a perpetual present, where whatever is is their whole reality. Henry relaxes – or tenses – when he feels like it and that’s that. We humans must “pull ourselves together,” and it’s not always easy. A multiplicity of selves can be quarrelsome. My bedtime, midnight, and morning selves must agree to get along.

Human variability makes pride preposterous. Innumerable accidents produced this result – how can I take credit? I can, however – and must – accept responsibility. To survive together we must master ourselves. Morality commences with our duty to one another. I cannot command myself to “Relax!” – but I can act as if.