Days carry their own texture, clinging to forms of rage or reluctance like canvas draping marble, and we run our hands along the weave to know it, but not how it came to be. These days are addled with simmering resentment calcifying into violence against our neighbor. Furtive glances at the convenience store, the reeking cauldron of online town message boards, an epidemic of mistrust; reality itself the heavy shroud.
If we cannot trust our neighbor and we cannot trust our own faculties with the burden of truth, what ruthless animal crawls forth? What primal tribal instinct obscures civility in favor of survival? If we believe one another the enemy while the world unravels around us, eroding the merits of goodness, of neighborliness, what remains other than fear? Fear, which primes us for the elimination of virtue. Fear, which deprives us of hope. Fear, that thread which, when dragged through our assumptions and intents, leaves nothing but a frayed heap of regret.
I recall the pivotal moment in East of Eden when Lee discloses his long held revelation regarding the various translations of the Hebrew word “timshel”. “I’ve wanted to tell you this for a long time. I even anticipated your questions and I am well prepared. Any writing which has influenced the thinking and the lives of innumerable people is important. Now, there are many millions in their sects and churches who feel the order, ‘Do thou,’ and throw their weight into obedience. And there are millions more who feel predestination in ‘Thou shalt.’ Nothing they may do can interfere with what will be. But ‘Thou mayest’! Why, that makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice. He can choose his course and fight it through and win.”
This stuck with me through the years. As Steinbeck masterfully threaded this conversation it feels revelatory of our agency as we are reduced to our basest selves in this turbulence. We have a choice. Fear does not deprive us of hope without permission. There is no “you must” or “you will”, there is only “you may”. With conviction, we may abate the existential dread that permeates our culture and braces our battle lines; we may choose unity over brutality, the evanescent truth over certain devastation.
