pas·sion
ˈpaSHən
noun
1. Strong and barely controllable emotion.

— § —

The veneration of “passion” as a basic value and guiding principle in life is everywhere these days, in the self-help literature, in TED talks, in spirituality circles. Passion is applauded as that which makes life worthwhile, and we are encouraged to “find our passions” and pursue them. We are told that we do things more quickly, with more skill, and with better outcomes, when we do them “passionately.”

All of this is by now more or less taken for granted; everyone describes themselves as following their passions, bringing passion to their work, and so on, without a hint of regret or doubt.

— § —

I don’t buy any of it.

What role should passion have in the decisions and works of an adult, a mature and virtuous adult?

In my opinion, none.

© Aron Hsiao / 2002

The canons of western and eastern philosophy stretching from antiquity all the way up until recent times are overwhelmingly oriented toward the regulation of the passions, with those few exceptions being read and understood as polemical and subversive lines of thought and attributions of value.

Passion is dangerous. Passion is irrational and chaotic. It causes people to act against their own interests just as often as not, and more to the point, the impulsivity that it represents and the undermining of social norms that it so often engenders tend to destroy larger social predictability, which is the entire basis of modern social life and indeed of civilization and our ability, as individuals, to get along and lead lives in it.

In short, passion is not the great thing that it is advertised to be. It is, as so many have pointed out across so many, many years, something that must be regulated carefully in adult life. The regulation of passion is one of the basic virtues that wisdom and maturity both comprise.

As children we labor under the illusion that someday, when we have grown up, we will be free of the external forces—parents, school, peers, whatever—that seem to exercise such undue influence over our lives. Fully grown and of the age of majority, presumably working a job and drawing our own income, we will finally be the authors of our own destinies, the planners of our own days.

In fact, growing up is the process of coming to terms with the fact that others will always exercise a significant amount of control over us. We will never truly be either the authors of our own destinies or the planners of our own days; this lovely tableau is an illusion, and always was. Instead, we will spend our entire lives doing more or less what we did as children—trying to use what decision-making power we do have to respond in the best way that we’re able to those people and forces outside us that seem, all too often, to co-author our lives with us.

© Aron Hsiao / 2002

Contrary to popular formulation, parents are not there to “teach this to children” in order to “prepare them for the world.” Rather, parents are simply another dimension of the same principle.

Our lives are not our own, and never were. We have input into them. We do make choices. But the vast majority of a human life is a matter of the forces and externalities acting upon it, rather than a matter of its own initiative and direction.

This is a hard thing to come to terms with. When adults fail to do it, we tend to speak of them as having an unreasonable “sense of entitlement.” What we are really saying is that they believe somehow that they ought to have more influence over their own life than they do, in a way that would diminish the influence the influence of those around them over their own lives.

When we speak of someone as having a sense of entitlement, we’re really saying that they want all the chips, and that they want others to have none, and that we realize that they will never be satisfied with the level of control that they have because no matter how much of it they seize, a meteor could still strike them tomorrow. Until they confront this fact, they will forever struggle for still more power, resources, and control—unconcerned at the implications for others because, so far as they are concerned, they still do not yet have their due.

Anyone who doesn’t understand that no matter the circumstances, and no matter the justifications, they do not ultimately and single-handedly rule in their life as an emperor—is in for a rough ride.

— § —

Most of what is shared on social media consists of people lying to themselves, and of society lying to itself, about hard truths of human existence.

© Aron Hsiao / 2003

Optimism. That’s what it is.

This thing that popular culture is always mocking in men—particularly in dads.

Someone posted to my Facebook tonight and I replied and unwittingly explained it to myself. What dads have—what men have—is optimism. That’s what Hollywood and TV land are always making fun of these days. It is a jaded culture, a cynical culture. What it portrays as idiot buffoonery, if you think for a moment, is in fact the habit of optimism. Believing that things will work out, that I can get it done, that all will be well, believing in one’s own strength and resourcefulness, and so on.

No, if there’s one thing that can’t be tolerated these days, it’s optimism. We must all be as jaded as one another. And more jaded still.

And those dads that keep on keeping on, that refuse to concede and refuse to frown? Well, they’re fools, of course. That’s the problem with men, they just don’t get it. They think they can do things. They think things might just work out. The nerve!

How dare they neither validate nor adopt others’ dim views of the world?

— § —

I have all these people and I honestly don’t know what to do with them.

Life is so funny that way.

Well the car almost didn’t make it back to the main road. The way was very steep, and very rutty, and went over a bunch of non-flat, foliage-covered terrain. Going down was hard and slow enough, but going up, the car nearly decided it didn’t want to be our friend any longer. It strained to pull with just one or two wheels at a time through all of that.

When we did finally make it back to the road, I got out and inspected the undercarriage just to be sure that everything was still intact. The air dam was pulled off, but I can get that reattached. Other than that, all seems to be well, and when we finally got back on real pavement, I could swear that the car actually enjoyed the easy race down the long, winding road. It revved and ran and didn’t complain a bit—as opposed to our experience trying to get back to the main road up a very steep and uneven grade, during which it shuddered and choked a lot.

— § —

Being entirely off the grid works a kind of magic.

It’s been many years since I was completely disconnected. Disconnected from everything in society. These days, the general tendency seems to be to introduce one or two reassuring artifacts of civilization even into “roughing it” situations.

Source unknown

Safety nets. I get it. Things to ensure that there is zero risk and so on. Things to let you know that you are still a part of society, and that if you disappear, society will come looking for you.

But we were off the grid entirely. Out of visual contact of any roads whatsoever. Unmarked area on maps—it just looks like flat “wilderness” on every map. No cell service. No electricity. No water. No structures. No vault toilet. No evidence of humans whatsoever. Just us.

I didn’t think you could experience anything important in the space of an evening and a morning, much less with two kids in tow, but we did. At the very least, I did.

Coming back to the main road was like a strange dream. And when we finally reached the lower part of the loop and emerged into Sundance and had cell service again, it was like being that person in the movies who is brought forward from the past into the future. It was all amazing again.

Being off the grid, you, just you, a tiny handful of humans on your own, changes your perspective on living. It reminds you both of how small you are and of how powerful you are, you the human with the big brain who can march around a natural area and do things for yourself, make fires, clear paths, erect shelters—yet who is also helpless in the face of nature’s larger picture—in the sheer scale of it all.

It’s been a long time since I had that feeling of stepping back from society, of stepping back from the bullshit and understanding something deeper about being, and about myself.

— § —

I think the last time I really felt it was when I drove highway 101 by myself more than a decade ago—just myself, my car, and beaches for hundreds of miles.

I also remember feeling it years ago when C—, D—, and myself got lost in the Moab deserts, ran out of water, and thought we were about to die (we nearly did, but a ranger happened by and found us unconscious).

I felt it again this morning, coming back from the mountain. The big picture:

• Most everything in day-to-day life is pointless, and a lie.
• We all have our priorities wrong.
• The truth is hidden from almost everyone.
• Underneath it all we are naked and alone, and we will be that way in death—sooner rather than later.
• It is worth it to enjoy the little things for that reason.

I have always been a bit of a monk, disconnected from social norms, not because I am dysfunctional (as some have imagined) but because I honestly believe that they are a bit like lipstick on a pig, as the proverb goes.

They are about modern man (and woman) lying to themselves about mortality and the meaning of life.

— § —

One thing that strikes me as interesting as I reflect on last night’s experience and on my life of the years since I last had a similar experience is the degree to which people want to change your mind about all of this.

Every time I make a new friend or get into a relationship or whatever other similar event might share characteristics with these things, there is, over time, a great desire to talk me out of them. To get me to “buy in” to the illusion, to the American Idols and Facebooks and real estate and organic food and manners about wine when arriving and parties and so on and so forth.

I’m told over and over again how important they are, sometimes in humor, sometimes with anger.

And over and over again in my life, I’ve slipped. I do start to listen. I bow to the pressure. I begin to buy in. I lose sight of what I’ve learned.

And then I have an experience that reminds me.

No, no, it really is all bullshit. It multiplies like the colors in a rainbow, each social milieu graced with its own brand of lies and bullshit. But in fact they are—for the most part—all equally embarrassingly full of it.

© Aron Hsiao / 2016

Only here and there do you spot enlightened individuals that actually know the score. And you can always pick them out in a second. They aren’t antagonistic, but they’re not onboard with the program, either. They’re good-natured. They’re amused.

And, big picture, they’re doing something entirely different from everyone else around them.

— § —

After we got back, the kids were dying to do something. The adrenaline hadn’t worn off. They wanted back out into nature, something fierce.

So we hopped back in the car and drove to Red Butte Garden and Arboretum where we had one of the loveliest visits I’ve ever had there. It was different, largely because of the moment in which it occurred.

It was leisurely, unhurried and without urgency. We wandered, played, relaxed. We dug for a very long time in the sandbox in the Children’s Garden. We fed a squirrel by hand. We looked out over the water.

And then we came home.

And here we are.

— § —

Once you decide there’s nothing for you in something, there’s nothing for it but to leave that something behind.

Life is short, and lying to yourself serves no good purpose. Most people believe otherwise.

I don’t.

I’m typing this a few miles off the SR-92 Alpine Loop summit and hundreds of yards away from any road. High country. Not a developed campground. No running water, no restroom facilities, no pavement, no concrete, no signs, no nothing. Just us in a clearing with some rocks.

There is of course no connectivity of any kind up here, unless you can send messages across distances by cricket relay. When you see this posted later on with a particular time and date, know that it was set after the fact when we got back, to 10:24 pm, the time it is now.

It’s pitch black outside, with mostly cloudy cover, but a few stars here and there. The only sounds are the crickets and the tiny brook that is just 30 feet or so from here.

Well, that and the snoring of kids.

Of course, it’s getting colder by the minute, so the time will soon come when I need to put this away and hunker down in my bag. The kids are definitely hunkered in theirs.

— § —

Why are we up this far, in an undeveloped campground with no fishing and no trails, just mountainside all around us? Because it’s one of the last weekends before school resumes, and because it’s been warm. So the entire mountain down below was packed. If you want to reserve, you have to do it five days in advance, otherwise it’s “walk up” on a first-come, first-serve basis.

© Aron Hsiao / 2016

So by the time I knew we’d have this weekend, it was already too late to reserve for us. And though we tried to “walk up” early in the afternoon, everyone is camping this weekend.

We hit every single developed campground in American Fork Canyon and on the loop. Every single one had the “Campground Full” sign out.

At first, I balked at the idea of going up that tiny, winding road to camp in the middle of nowhere, but actually this has turned out to be very, very nice.

Rather than the endless sounds of gasoline engines (just about everyone camping on this mountain seems to have brought along an armada of all-terrain vehicles) we have silence, crickets, and brook. No neighbors. No conveniences. No irritations. Just us and the woods.

We whacked our way through the forest for a while in several different directions, just to have fun.

And now we are set for the night on top of a mountain, or nearly so.

— § —

It took me a while to get into the mood, I have to admit.

The picture of “camping” that I have in my head from childhood is of a peaceful and bucolic experience, all about communing with nature in reflection and simple activities. You hike. You fish. You look at the flowers.

We’re on a brook branch far too small for fishing here, and the hiking is limited without a compass, a forestry map, and much more serious gear. We went as far as I dared, but then came back. So we were more or less limited to our own campground, and to stationary, “California hangout style” activities, if that makes any sense. Telling stories. Tic-tac-toe in the sand.

And on the lower part of the mountain where we were several hours ago, the developed campgrounds sound more like racetracks or car dealerships than they do like the camping experience that I was looking for. It’s all motor sounds and loud whistles and catcalls and people in steel-tubed contractions tearing up and down across and over the mountain. They have a beautiful, stocked stream right there next to them, and dozens of hiking trails. What is the matter with people?

— § —

At length, when I realized what a good time the kids were having, I managed to let go of my expectations and take it in. We live in a different time, and Utah is a different place than it was thirty years ago. I shouldn’t be surprised that you can’t drive four or five miles out of no-longer-very-sleepy American Fork and expect to find Mother Earth alone there waiting for company.

It’s a retail world. Utah is a retail place. And these days the “old naturalism” of fishing, hiking, hunting, and so on is vaguely frowned-upon, as though it is somehow a gateway to racism or sexism and ought to be discouraged.

Well we don’t have the fishing, or the easy hiking up here.

© Aron Hsiao / 2016

But what we do have, in the end, is solitude and relatively untouched natural spaces. I can take the kids into the forest and we quickly lose sight and sound of everything—the car, the brook, the sky. It is pines and undergrowth and a dim universe of branches and leaves and flora and fauna.

It is beautiful—and as the father in this picture, just dangerous enough to keep my alertness gene on all the time.

When night fell and we put out our fire, we were able to see stars. Not all of them, but a very decent number. And up here that’s enough. Because up here they are bright.

We’ll pack up and head back down that incredibly narrow, winding road with the cliffside drop-off views early tomorrow. We won’t hang around all day because I have work stuff early on Monday. I hope the car manages to make it back to the main road when it’s time.

But we’ll start in the morning with pancakes, bacon, and sausages grilled outdoors on a cast-iron skillet and we’ll take some time to walk around a bit again and thank Mother Nature for still managing to exist.

When all of the lower campgrounds were full, I wasn’t really sure that heading all the way to the top and bivouacking in the brush far away from everything would be worth it.

But, in fact, it has been worth it. More than worth it.

I’m very glad we came.

© CTW / 1980

• There is no better indication of where we are as a culture than the reduction of Sesame Street to a half-hour HBO program devoid of human characters.
• Steve Jobs’ biography is only usefully instructive if you are young. If you have reached middle age and have children and a particular life trajectory already, it is unable to help you.
• At some point, even the most patient person must face the fact that time is no longer on their side.
• Cultural differences are like riptides—massive, but subtle and invisible until you have given up caution. It is easy to be lulled into a false sense of complacency until you are drowning without any hope of rescue.
• There is a reason for all of the advice that the old give to the young. Nearly everyone will eventually learn this. Those that don’t mistake their having won the lottery for wisdom.
• As a child, an hour is forever. As a teenager, a week is forever. As a young adult, a year is forever. As a middle-aged person, a decade is forever. In your final years, only forever is forever; everything else is literally instantaneous, as durable only as a fleeting flash of memory.
• I cannot think as clearly, as acutely, or as rapidly as I used to. By the time you reach forty, you can sense the decline of your faculties.
• I still long for the day when I will be free to say what I think on every occasion without fear. It may never come. That may be the meaning of the admonition that “Happiness is being able to tell the truth without ever hurting anyone.”
• Despite what I said above, the very young have a wisdom all their own, unclouded by self-serving sentimentality and rationalization. It is probably closer to truth. The problem is that mere humans do in fact have to live life, and this is all but impossible over the long term without self-serving sentimentality and rationalization.
• As teenagers, everyone thinks they’re “different.” Young adults realize that no-one is actually different and have to make their peace with it. Then, a few arrive at middle age and have to make their peace all over again, this time over the fact that they really are “different” after all—and that far from being a happy thing, it is a cross that will be borne alone for the rest of their years.
• Voltaire’s admonition to tend one’s own garden may be noble in a way, but it turns out that nobility is not inspiring.
• Talk is cheap. Action is also cheap. Humans are cheap. Everything seems so consequential because we are so inconsequential. Yes, this is a variation on a common theme.
• Indignation is the most powerful force known to humankind. Unjustified indignation is the most needlessly destructive one. Justified indignation is the most impotent one. Neither can be measured by the person experiencing them, and in no way does it matter.
• My grandfather was right. There is only one calling that matters. The calling of the poet, in the classical sense. The rest is all children petulantly throwing rocks at the gods.
• Christianity is the bedrock of Western civilization, its analog that interestingly replaces the body of Christ with the body of society the bedrock of Eastern civilization. Lose either of these and civilization goes. Despite having access to both, we are on the verge of losing both.
• Love and hate are certainly not two sides of the same coin, and neither has much to do with the other at all. The fact that people mistakenly believe this silly assertion has everything to do with the fact that in our society, we have lost any knowledge of true love, much to the detriment of all. The psychologists are wrong because they have never seen the genuine article either.
• There is nothing more abhorrent to the narcissist than the accusation that he or she is a narcissist. They are upset by such an accusation not because of its personal nature, but in fact because of what they find to be its impersonal nature.
• Childhood ends at the precise moment when evil and danger become objective, rather than subjective, forces and presences in the world.
• There is no such thing as a happy J. Not an NJ, not an SJ, not an EJ, not an IJ. Js are never happy. Es are rarely happy, ES types even less so. Best to be an IP, where you are not at all dependent on bending others to your own curious will to try to find meaning of some kind in life.
• People are afraid of people that appear different to them, not just at the level of culture, but at the level of individual personality. They are afraid because this difference shatters the lie that people are all the same “underneath it all.” They are afraid because the reality of difference undermines their alibi.
• The greatest people I’ve ever known were people who were “marked” in day to day life. They failed at all the little things, but were in tune with truth at a deeper level. People who are focused entirely on the little things of culture (this is, in fact, most of the world’s population) expend much energy maintaining what doesn’t matter in the end, and have nothing left for much that does.