I made a stupid mistake.

No, I won’t say what – pride overrules candor – but you can trust my characterization. No one saw me do it – not even Jane – so no snooping will uncover my dereliction. If you happened on the consequence of my bone-headedness, I’d explain it away or dismiss it as “no big deal.” Repairing my mistake will cost me a little money and inconvenience, but I will repair it, for its persistence irks. “How could I have been such a jerk!” I will growl silently – the question posed by these paragraphs.

I’ve no excuse for my error that passes the famous “sniff test.” I knew it was a mistake before its commission. I cautioned, then tried to proscribe my goofy idea: nothing doing. “What the hell, give it a try,” said I to I (not seeing eye to eye). “What the hell,” in my experience, is an adverse indicator.

I mention this episode not because it matters in the oft-cited “scheme of things”, but because such perversity is more common than we confess. It happens frequently with food (“what – the whole pint!”), but our rebellions against Reason predictably astonish. Some annoying souls – a.k.a., “goody two-shoes” – always do as they ought, but such subservience to propriety feels timid and ignoble. I don’t want my dog-pal Henry, for example, to be “too compliant.” I want him to tug, balk, defy – a little, not too much – to prove himself his own dog, independent of his all-knowing master.

Origin myths typically commence with an act of defiance. God says don’t eat the apple, the serpent murmurs otherwise, and whammo, consciousness is born with its complications. We “know better” – yet we forge ahead. Why?

Consciousness agitates for eminence. Darwin posited that creatures compete to propagate their bloodlines in preference to the other guy’s. But it’s not just survival we seek, it’s individuality, self-authority, the dignity of differentiation. I’m not just a cog, dammit, or a nodding dashboard doll – I’m “my own person,” special, worthy of respect! These separations occur most conspicuously during adolescence, but such striving is a constant of maturity, until we’re too old to care. Why do you think I’m typing these paragraphs? To amuse you, yes, but also to demonstrate, if possible, I’m not your average schlub.

Defiance is every conscious creature’s nature, and since humans possess the most developed consciousness, we suffer most from this incessant set-to. We mean to be “good,” as defined by our tribe, but we mean also to be ourselves. I knew I was making this stupid mistake – WTF! – but maybe I could “get away with it” and feel smug. Reason moans, exasperated at its impotence. “The devil made me do it,” we whine, fingering some fantastic third party, knowing full well the devil lives in us.

The trick of consciousness is to be both apart and a part, to go along yet go our own way, to acquiesce to our nonentity yet secretly insist otherwise. I’m ambitious to distinguish myself knowing any distinction’s ludicrous. Do dust specks preen? Why can’t I relax and enjoy my futility? – takes the pressure off. Only I can’t. If no struggle tests me, I make one up. Ask Eve.

The harder you pull, the likelier to break harness and wreak havoc. Ambition is defiant and impolite. The higher you fly the likelier to plunge, as Icarus learned. This exhausting tug of war is no aberration but who we are. Our defiance is as intrinsic as our ears, nose, mouth.

I try to channel my self-wrestle into shaping words memorably, knowing it’s impossible. My life sentence.