Swagger

Had a conversation today that got the old gears turning. A friend asked what it would mean for me to “raise a little hell,” and I proposed something ridiculous: “Give a girl a false name and number, go home with her, disappear the next morning? Hell, I don’t know; I've never raised hell before.”

Before you react too strongly, let me finish. A little later in the conversation I qualified my suggestion—“It really isn’t my nature, you know”—which led me to wonder, “Of course, that may be the point. Maybe what I'm doing—maybe what I need to do—is transcend what I think of as ‘my nature.’”

I’m not suggesting that what I ought to do is become a “playah.” (I’m not saying it isn’t, either—it’s an honest question: “What does it mean to ‘transcend’ one’s nature?”) What I am suggesting—or maybe what I’m wondering—is that—if—transcendence is something so far outside outside one’s usual behavior that whether or not something is “one’s nature” is actually irrelevant.

This whole adventure “isn’t my nature,” which is part of my reason for doing it. I am not altogether satisfied with who and how I’ve been. Going to Hawai‘i—without concrete prospects or a fat savings cushion or a concrete, detailed plan (or even an escape route)—is significantly about reinventing myself as someone more confident, more daring, more carefree than has been “my nature.” That’s a big part of the point.

Maybe you can see how all this relates to a casual suggestion that what I ought to do is “raise a little hell” and subsequent ridiculous wise-assing about what that might entail?

There are few circumstances I can imagine in which I would intentionally deceive someone: not for big, life and death issues and certainly not merely for selfish gratification. And the whole thing smacks of using someone; not a value I endorse or subscribe to.

What I’m trying to do is invent myself as someone with the confidence often associated with the kind of asshole who would do those things, but without the asshole-ishness.

Because really, there are enough assholes in the world without me adding to their number.

at the end of this transformation I still want to be the compassionate, caring, considerate, loving, all around awesome guy I am right now.

But I want some swagger, too.