Library of Inspiration: Demian

There exists an enchanting world of concrete slab. Strip malls spread their wings in a never-ending, exploding sprawl of dull. Down the street from the Dominick’s is another Dominick’s, only nicer. Newer. SUVs crowd the asphalt. They are adorned with patriotic bumper stickers purchased at CVS checkout lines in order to proclaim support for anonymous troops who have not yet been blown into the sky by distant, imaginary roadside bombs.

A disenchantment falsified and blunted my usual feelings and joys: the garden lacked fragrance, the woods held no attraction for me, the world stood around me like a clearance sale of last year’s secondhand goods, insipid, all its charm gone. Books were so much paper, music a grating noise. That is the way leaves fall around a tree in autumn, a tree unaware of the rain running down its sides, of the sun or the frost, and of life gradually retreating inward. The tree does not die. It waits.

Our summer sunburns begin to peel before they fade completely. It’s sometime around prom or a first kiss or the first time we are forced to shower at school with our classmates when it starts. Questions percolate. Why is Corey so developed, so hairy, or why are Sara’s tits so big when Sheila doesn’t even need a bra? Why is our school all white or all black? Why am I not attracted to who I am supposed to be attracted to? Why do we have a used Buick Century when Johnny’s family has a four car garage full of brand new Cadillacs? We begin to see differences that were invisible before we sat in the glow of the homecoming bonfire.

Gaze into the fire, into the clouds, and as soon as the inner voices begin to speak … surrender to them. Don’t ask first whether it’s permitted, or would please your teachers or father or some god. You will ruin yourself if you do that.

For those not quarterbacking the seniors to regionals or beyond, high school can prove to be anything but the best years of their lives. Worries about pimples paralyze more than a few on the eve of the dance. O’Neill’s Hairy Ape is left to wonder, at last, where in the world he belongs.

I wanted only to try to live my life in accord with the promptings which came from my true self.

Why was that so very difficult?

But it is in the search where we begin to find answers (even to questions we didn’t know we had). We say goodbye to old friends as we are saying hello to new ones. Grandpa dies. We were never even aware of the concept of death. This introductory course in mortality leaves us bewildered and alone, as only it can. Our terror was a prerequisite. We know this now. Somehow, it begins to sink in. And in the pain of such awareness of our world and of ourselves, we are finally born.

What invigorated me was the progress I had made in discovering my self, the increasing confidence in my own dreams, thoughts, and intimations, and the growing knowledge of a power I possessed within me.

One by one, the secrets (good and bad) continue to be revealed. During it all, it seems to be such a painfully slow process. But then, it is over in an instant. How silly it was that we visited so many colleges before deciding on the one, or thought that our majors and minors actually mattered. All that unnecessary stress over jobs and bosses, cars and condos. Rent or own? Things.

Each man had only one genuine vocation—to find the way to himself. He might end up as poet or madman, as prophet or criminal—that was not his affair, ultimately it was of no concern. His task was to discover his own destiny—not an arbitrary one—and live it out wholly and resolutely within himself. Everything else was only a would-be existence, an attempt at evasion, a flight back to the ideals of the masses, conformity and fear of one’s own inwardness.

In the end, we uncover the most shocking secret of all. That so many answers were never even hidden. They were right under our nose all along.

I belong to my fate and to no one else.

-G