All that I do and for all that I feel

[Left: Richard Armitage before the Hobbit life event, New York, November 4, 2013. Screencap from a vine vid.]

In the midst of mindlessly mampfing the popcorn, I’d read something particularly punishing toward fans, written by someone who claimed to be a fellow fan, but clearly wasn’t, and I had the thought that I suspect a lot of us have from time to time, is this really worth it? Why do I keep letting myself do this? I won’t reproduce the comment I read, but it was an intentionally baiting remark that a lot of us have heard over the years about the pointlessness of caring about all of this in the face of much greater, more troubling things happening in the world. I’ve always found that a stupid argument (because some people suffer terrible things does not make my comparatively minor suffering totally meaningless), and moreover, the fact that I care a lot about this particular thing doesn’t mean that I care not at all about many of those troubling things. Of course I didn’t say anything, because the person who made the comment made it on purpose to anger fangirls.

But thinking about it tonight it made me contemplative. It’s interesting that we only ask ourselves this question — why do this? is this worth it? aren’t there more important things to be worried about? — at bad points. At all the good points we are so euphoric that we never bother to wonder about the merits of being a fan, of the cost of all of the work (fan labor, to use an expression I learned from AgzyM), of the appropriateness of all of the love we feel. What we feel at those points justifies everything, makes all the attention we pay to this topic worth it. Conversely, that effect explains why flames burst out during periods when little is happening, I think, because a flame that ignited during a period of high activity and lots of new data to feed our affections tends to get ignored. And when I see a flame, I’m more vulnerable to self-doubt than at any other time (except perhaps when a troll is focusing on me). Why all the negativity? It’s like we’ve forgotten all of the positivity, all of a sudden. (When that happens, the happiness thieves go home with their pockets full. I often wonder what they do with all the happiness. Is there a stolen happiness market somewhere on eBay?)

[Right: Richard Armitage, WonderCon 2014, Las Vegas, as photographed by Heather Sieimon]

And, of course, that’s the answer. We do this because it makes us feel good, because it relieves sorrow or provides escape or makes us laugh or unites us with each other, because it makes us feel, and solidarize, and think, because it feeds creativity and transforms our relationships with the people around us in positive ways, because it helps us see our lives differently, even if only for the moments in which we’re submerged in the feeling and fantasy that allow us to forget the allegedly more important and more “real” circumstances in which we live.

And it’s enough. We prevail in seeing the world through the glasses of the fan even at low points — because these are such amazing benefits, because the feeling is precisely what we need and what moves us forward and part of what allows us to care about things outside of ourselves, things that might admittedly be more important than the cut of a tie or the way Richard Armitage acts a particular scene.

Because doing this lets us see the world in a different way.

So yes, this is important. The feelings of joy we feel on good days are not ridiculous, or less important than our awareness of the problems in the world around us. And thinking about “why” in the context of the wonderful moments makes the less-than-wonderful ones, wherever they come from, much more bearable.

I feel like I’m repeating myself here, but then this blog courses around certain themes anyway, one being the permission to feel and another being the triggers for flow experiences and creativity. In particular, despite my own trained proclivities toward rationality, I’m starting to see the way in which the demands by hostile forces to be rational end up as a sort of greatest possible moral hammer to sling at people (and maybe that’s how the happiness thieves mine their happiness). I don’t know why people feel the need to stand on a moral high ground — let he who has not sinned cast the first stone — but I know that those who occupy that place with the primary goal of harming others are not really standing on any moral high ground that I can either recognize, respect, or allow to be applicable to my own experiences.

In the end, then, we turn to this because of the good times and maybe the main thing we can do for each other is to try as hard as we can to make as many days as possible good times so that when we are asked, in a baiting way — why are you doing this? — the best possible answer ends up being joyous laughter. Don’t you see how it transforms us, how it transforms everything we touch?

~ by Servetus on May 16, 2014.