Taking hold

All of us have our personal reasons for applying for our EVS programs, and while most of them have roots in our lack of understanding of the direction our lives are heading in, I felt as though putting mine down on paper might help me to better understand them while shining some light on the steps I must take towards bettering myself as a person in months to come.
As many writers do, I will use popular works of fiction as a medium through which I can channel my inner turmoil in a love-hate dichotomy both related to my relationship with the works themselves, but also in how they represent my hopes and fears. Those two works are the movie American Beauty and the novel Crime and Punishment.
While the main actor of American Beauty, Kevin Spacey, has gained a considerable amount of notoriety over the past year (for rightful reasons), his role as Lester Burnham has stood the test of time in this shining example of a metanarrative breaking work of art. The metanarrative that I am talking about, of course, is the idea of the American dream.
At the very beginning of the movie, Lester shares with us a set of goals presented to him in his youth as a pathway down a road that ultimately leads to a happy and fulfilled life. A set of goals that he never chose to question, believing that people who shared this divinely inspired knowledge knew something he did not and a set of goals that ultimately lead him down a path of misery. While seemingly innocent, these goals (find a decent job, get married, have a child) hide a darker truth, one which he came to find much too late. Their completion, in and of itself, does not grant happiness in any way, other than the short term, and yet they are presented as these eternal truths meant to guide our lives through trials and tribulations many of us cannot begin to imagine whilst still in our youth.
Although late, Lester’s realisation of this truth sets him down a path of discovery on which he regresses to a child-like , more carefree state, releasing himself of the shackles that bound him. Finally free, he is able to experience life in a new way and reassess his choices, hoping he will come out of this journey as a better man than the one he was before.
At my on-arrival seminar I had the privilege to meet some of the most amazing people, all of us sharing a common thread, a lack of sense of direction that was created once we had to stand face to face with our own choices and realise that some of them we did not make because we so desired, but rather because it was expected of us to do so. And now, after having made them for so long we look down at an endless abyss of possibilities and find ourselves unsure how to navigate the stormy sea that is life itself.
Before delving too deep into Crime and Punishment and its relation to my past and present self, there is another concept that I wish to add and expand upon. That concept is Nietzsche’s Übermensch. Those familiar with both of these authors will know that there is a considerable amount of overlap between their works and it is only fitting that when talking about Dostoyevsky one brings up the fatal German Existentialist.
For the past one hundred or so years there have been two main ways in which people have interpreted the Übermensch. One where he is seen as a man who stands above others, a Superman of sorts, able to walk over others as though they were ants, superior to them in every regard and another, a more faithful interpretation which sees him as a man capable of rising above his surroundings, and Overman with the ability to act morally not because he was instructed to do so by a divine authority, but rather because such a thing is just. A man who is good for goodness sake.
When talking about Raskolnikov, the protagonist of Dostoyevsky’s seminal work that has influenced minds far greater than I could ever hope to become, one cannot help but notice various similarities between himself and what I have just now described at The Superman. He firmly believes that he is better than others, that he needs no help from anyone and that he is able and should be allowed to do whatever he so pleases for no reason other than his own perceived superiority over those around him. It is this very belief that ultimately leads him to commit two acts of murder, crimes so vile one could only justify them by assuring oneself they are in the right for doing so and that the victims deserved their fate due to their inherent lack of any kind of superiority in this vicious, dog-eat-dog world. Unbeknown to him, though, he is not The Superman he imagined himself to be, but a mere cockroach.

A term he uses to describe others, which has now fallen upon himself as his primary identifier. Throughout the rest of the novel he struggles with what he has done, going into a feverish delirium where he relives his life, realising his whole belief system was built on a lie which has now made him into something he never wished to become, something he may never change and something that would require of him to pay a hefty price if he ever wanted to atone for his sins.
With the help and care of those around him, our now disgraced protagonist comes to terms with what he has done and admits to his wrongdoings, albeit with great hesitation at times.
He confesses his crimes and gets sent to Siberia where, with the guiding hand of his love, Sonya, he begins the process of healing, trying to mend his wounds and make himself into a better man, an Overman, worthy of Sonya’s love.
It would be a lie not to admit that I have had similar views to those of Raskolnikov in the past.
Perhaps not as extreme with regards to how others ought to be treated, but certainly very similar in how I perceived my own abilities and what this self-perceived superiority should entitle me to.

Unfortunately for us both, reality does not care of your own grand illusion and hits you like a ton of bricks when your complacetness makes you stop striving towards bettering yourself, much like was the case with Lester.
It took me a long time to understand that I was no Superman, and even longer to realise that the life that I was living was never the one I chose.
It was set before me by others, and while their intentions were good, I deep down knew it was not the life I was going to lead. It was this gradual rejection of everything I knew to be true that had lead me down a path of complacency, billowing in a pool of my own hedonistic desires until I started drowning in it, seemingly with no way out. Only with the help of friends, each of them acting as my own little Sonya, was I finally able to realise the fault in my ways and to find a reason to want to take hold of my life and better it. Not because there was a voice from up above that was telling me how I should act but because I knew that this was the way I should act. It is for this reason I have gone to my self-imposed exile to Siberia, my EVS is the first step that I take on my lifelong journey towards becoming closer to an Overman.