Me versus Me

The need for fearless self-confrontation and the power of writing

I stumbled upon a 1979 interview with William Burroughs where, at some point, they ask him what his greatest strength and weakness are. His response: “My greatest strength is to have a great capacity to confront myself about myself no matter how unpleasant. My greatest weakness is that I don’t”. 

I thought the rest of the interview would revolve around that statement. And I sort of skimmed through the article to see whether that was the case, but it wasn’t. Weird, I thought. If I were the interviewer, I’d continue on that captivating theme and come up with a flood of further related questions and reflections and connections to stories and anecdotes. Instead, the interviewer continues with a bunch of seemingly unrelated questions like “Do you remember the first time you ever smoked marijuana?” and “How did you lose your finger?”. I guess the mysteriousness and profoundness of that response went unnoticed, somehow.  

I discovered Burroughs through Steely Dan, one of my favorite bands. Founders Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, particularly fond of the 1950s Beat Generation literary movement, named the band after a steam-powered dildo mentioned in Naked Lunch, a highly controversial novel that Burroughs published in 1959, still considered a groundbreaking work of postmodern literature. Naming the band after a dildo would have probably won me over even if their music sucked. Burroughs' writing was utterly unconventional and defied traditional narrative structure, with plenty of dark humor and fixation on themes such as drug addiction, homosexuality, and the subversion of authority. A countercultural icon, he often employed a fragmented, nonlinear style that reflected the influence of drugs and other altered states of consciousness. 

“My greatest strength is to have a great capacity to confront myself about myself no matter how unpleasant. My greatest weakness is that I don’t.” And then he adds “I know that’s enigmatic, but that’s sort of a general formula for anyone, actually”. 

This statement gave me pause and, in reading and re-reading it, revealed an inherent contradiction that lies within us all: we possess the capacity for self-awareness, yet we often fail to acknowledge some unpleasant truths about ourselves, to confront ourselves about ourselves when necessary. We have the instruments and the courage to do that, but refuse to do it. As if we knew that looking ourselves in the mirror and paying attention and pointing our finger and assessing the depths of our being would unveil parts of us that we despise. Parts of us that we know they’re there, but that if we let them surface, if we let them abandon their dormant state, if we let them speak to us and initiate a dialogue, they will distort and maybe destroy our image of ourselves, and ultimately hurt us. 

I guess the nature of the human psyche is intrinsically and disarmingly paradoxical. We are capable of great strength and insight, yet we are also tormented by our own weaknesses and limitations. And our weaknesses and limitations keep us from exerting the strength that would help us confront and eventually overcome them, and so on in a loop that’s hard to pull ourselves out of. Burroughs’ admission (and depiction of a general human condition) is both admirable and troubling. Confronting ourselves is indeed a difficult task, as it requires a level of honesty and vulnerability that we tend to shy away from. But ignoring our flaws and weaknesses, turning blind to the darkness within us, is a far greater nonsense. It is a trap that we all fall into, leading us down a path of self-deception and delusion. 

Self-awareness is a journey, not a destination. A process of continual discovery and self-exploration, one that requires time and effort and the willingness to face painful truths. But also humility and openness and courage. And persistence, because the strength we speak of is a fleeting one, as it’s easy to be introspective and self-critical when the going is good. The true test comes in dark times, when we’re forced to confront our demons.

Writing, undoubtedly, helps. It provides a safe and private space for self-examination without fear of judgment or reprisal. It’s a therapy session with ourselves, where we both ask questions and provide answers. A place of curiosity and reassurance and relief. A place of no weakness or limitations, where we always find the strength to face our uncomfortable truths.  

When I started writing regularly, things about myself that I ignored would appear on the page like invisible ink. Some have been nice to know, others hard to confront. All have been the product of letting words flow freely and lightly from my consciousness. When I write, fear vanishes and I’m happy to accept a certain me that in other circumstances I’d run away from, or infinitely postpone confronting. I’m happy to accept it, and I’m happy to have a dialogue with it, even though I’m not happy about it. The page turns into a mirror I look myself in, one that’s always brutally honest and transparent, one that doesn’t lie. I don’t know what happens, but something mysterious keeps me there, and forces me to listen to and confront whatever pours out. This is why, if I had to describe my writing experience with just a word, I’d say liberating. I cannot do this any other way. For me, when it comes to introspection, there’s no surrogate for writing.

I’ve always been aware of my poor ability to persevere, to endure, to keep at something. I know that I’m like that. Perseverance -- or lack thereof -- is my demon. Not finishing. Getting tired of. Leaving early. And it’s not that I give up on things -- giving up implies an awareness of not being up to the task, an awareness of impossibility. I’m not good enough -- that’s the essential and crude narrative behind giving up. Here, I’m talking about not being able to keep my motivation high, about falling prey to doubt and distraction, about failing to maintain the necessary level of excitement and awe. I know I can take something to the finish line; I just don’t. I let it lose traction in my mind, as if no longer worthwhile. And I know I can confront this, I know I can have a dialogue with it, and I know I can hear what it has to say, no matter how unpleasant. But I shun it. I avoid it like the plague or a deadly virus. 

The inability to persevere is the cause of (almost) every failure in my life. And I’ve failed a fair amount. See? I couldn’t have said this to myself in front of a mirror, let alone to anybody. But I can write it, and by writing I can face it, I can have an exchange with it. And wait, It gets better: failure generates frustration, especially when you know that what you failed at, you could have completed brilliantly. Precisely my case. I never failed because I wasn’t good enough. I failed because I decided to. And frustration generates regret. If only. My life has been an infinite sequence of if onlys. If only I’d tried harder to keep my marriage together, if only I’d maintained a positive and constructive demeanor at work instead of dismissing everything as unworthy or preposterous or intellectually empty, if only I’d kept at playing music, if only I’d continued almost everything I left off because no longer worth the effort or because it just felt not good anymore. 

But I had my reasons, I counter. Every single time, I decided to indulge impulse at the expense of reason. To prioritize emotion over logic. That’s how I felt, and I couldn't -- didn’t want to -- go against nature. My nature. This is wrong, the other side of me continues. You were simply being stupid, superficial, reckless, irresponsible. You had great things on your plate, and you blew them all in the name of impulse and emotion. And now, what do you have? Wait, I interject. If things don’t find the necessary traction by themselves, why should I work on them, why should I try and correct the course? Why should I waste time and energy on something that has no future? Because life is about balancing impulse and reason, not fully (and only) embracing one or the other, other me continues. And now it’s too late to go back and fix things. Perseverance is a fundamental virtue, and you should work on it, lest more of your life will be sent to waste. But I also have great things in my life, it’s not all a waste because I was unable to persevere, I maintain. I do have to work on it, though, you’re right. I just don’t know how. Maybe I should write about it more.                 

But as much as writing helps in confronting ourselves about ourselves, at the end of the day only a tiny portion of our thinking drips down onto the page. In the same interview, Burroughs says: “[...] one invention that would certainly rule out one kind of writing would be a tape recorder that could record subvocal speech, the so-called stream of consciousness. In writing we are always interpreting what people are thinking. Well, I mean it’s just a guess on my part, an approximation. Suppose I have a machine whereby I could actually record subvocal speech. If I could actually record what someone thought, there’d be no necessity for me to interpret”. 

It was the year 1979, and there’s still no trace of such a device. And thinking about it, I’m not even sure it’d change things for the better. Maybe we just have to trust writing with the mysterious process of filtering the essence of our thoughts and making them discoverable, even to ourselves. It’s a matter of feeling safe, after all. And the only place we feel completely safe in is our head.  

While writing this, I’m listening to Any Major Dude Will Tell You by Steely Dan, released in 1974. Burroughs always makes me think of Steely Dan, and Steely Dan of Burroughs. In my mind, the two are so linked. There are all sorts of bands and all sorts of music, but if I were to mention one band that would fit in the definition of “intelligent music”, I’d say Steely Dan. Just pure genius. What are they like? Sometimes people ask. They’re like Steely Dan, I respond. 

Any major dude with half a heart surely will tell you, my friend
Any minor world that breaks apart falls together again
When the demon is at your door
In the morning it won't be there no more 
[…] 
I can tell you all I know, the where to go, the what to do
You can try to run but you can't hide from what's inside of you.

And I don’t know why, but these words are so appropriate in closing the piece. Or maybe I do. 

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