An Essay on Fickleness

a tragic comedy, or a comedic tragedy

Mercurial people have the hardest time getting to the earth. Since the voyage, regardless of where it starts, takes approximately nine months, there is plenty of time for the mercurial man or woman to change their mind, which, by their very nature, they do quite often and quite rapidly. Now, planetary provenance is not the only factor, of course. The germanic spirit, from whatever planet, and for example, is born on the earth above all others out of pure will, which is why the germanic family has been so well suited to aristocracy across the ages, and also, ironically, why the philosophical idea of thrownness arose among them and not, say, among the italians, who are much more easily lured into incarnation and find themselves on the earth oftentimes as a man finds himself on a filthy alleyway after a night of drunken excess, not only remembering nothing, but full of vague self loathing and guilt, or among the portuguese, who, as everyone knows, come to the earth out of resignation. Thus, for Wolfgang, a mercurial germanic, the problem was choice. No one could have enticed him into coming to the earth simply by making promises, no matter how sweet, that he hadn’t previously examined carefully, and never would he have resigned himself to fate before having fought it by every means possible. And this careful consideration, so natural to his german spirit, added to his mercurial nature, and had thus far prevented him from being incarnate.

He was not, strictly speaking, indecisive. No, his problem was that his decisions changed from one extreme to the other so often as to never stick, and this applied to the whole spectrum of decisions a spirit could make, which are frankly much more limited than those a man or a woman can make when incarnate. Because his fickleness was not merely instinctive, but also due to his germanic spirit, and thus the product of extensive and careful investigation, when he changed his mind, he was totally convinced that the particular decision he had made, or the particular opinion he now held, was the right one, the only one, now and forever, even if that eternity lasted very little time indeed, which is how eternities sometimes behave. The problem was that soon the same analytical mind would raise doubts, and come up with arguments for the opposite position or decision, and in no time, he would change his opinion, again, and sometimes not even remember that he held to the opposite just a few weeks, a few days, or even a few hours before.

Many times across the ages he had decided to incarnate on the earth, but he always, and as usual, changed his mind mid trip, utterly convinced it was not the right time or the right place, just as much as he had been convinced it was both a few days or weeks before. Finally, at the beginning of the twentieth century, he made not only a decision, for that was common, but a decision about that decision. No matter how many doubts he might have during the trip, regardless of how many contrary arguments he could conjure, irrespective of their logicalness and fairness, once he had embarked on the trip, he had decided now with the usual conviction, he would stick with it. And, to his credit, he did. But before that he had to decide where to be born. It is true that a germanic spirit cannot be born as a celt, or a roman, or a greek, or a zulu, but it can choose the place where the germanic family that will give birth to his germanic nature is. And germanic blood, in those early twentieth century days, was to be found all over europe, and also north america, as well as, in slightly smaller concentrations, elsewhere across the planet earth.

Here was a challenge for his fickleness, because, say he decided to be born as a german in germany, the most natural of choices of course, during the nine months it took him to reach the earth, he would start to consider that, perhaps, he should have chosen a less natural option, and go for a small germanic pocket of russia, or switzerland, or even north america. The choices were too numerous. In the end, with some sort of logic behind it, though it is hard for us as non germans to understand it, he decided that he would be born in the austro-hungarian empire, the reason being, presumably, that the empire was big, and if in the end he changed his mind, as it was likely to happen, it would be fairly easy to move across the vast lands of the empire and to become some other type of german while also remaining part of his homeland, in a way.

He also had to think about what kind of family to be born in. If he was to be born in a poor family, he reasoned, this would not be to his advantage, and in fact, would only stoke his mercurial nature, and so logically and as usual he went to the other extreme and decided to be born among royalty, or at least in a rich family. But soon doubts about this decision appeared, as was only expected. Too much wealth, just as much or more as too little, would provide him with too many opportunities for changing his mind, too many possibilities for him to choose from. And so, in the end, he chose to be born in a middle class family, neither rich nor poor, without prestige but also without shame, and he chose one whose occupation was in an industry that promised to be not only stable but expand during the subsequent decades, lithography, and this he chose in part because he was intrigued by the method, and also because another part of all mercurial people, as everyone knows, is a fascination with, and inclination towards, writing, printing and all such related activities.

The year was nineteen eleven when he embarked on the journey, and one could say that, for him at least, the trip was mostly free of second guessing, partly because of his decision against changing his mind, and partly because he had carefully chosen the time and place and setting for his birth so as to give very few avenues for his mercurial nature to bubble up to the surface and start questioning everything until he could not help himself but change his mind. No, he held steadfast, against all odds, and early in the morning of the last day of the year, he began to be born. He came out feet first, which is fitting, and was almost fully out of his mother’s womb when he remembered a conversation he had heard earlier that day, that the next year, a mere few hours away, was a leap year, and although it happened so fast, there was a whole discussion within his mind about how beneficial it would be to be born in such a year, that what his nature required was to take leaps of faith rather than examine every single decision and change his mind as he always did, and was even doing at that very moment, though somewhat unaware. And so, as he always did, he changed his mind and crawled back to his mother’s womb, poor woman, until the clock struck midnight, then he came out, assured of himself, at least for the time being, january first nineteen twelve, a leap year.

As we all know, a spirit loses all memories of preincarnate life during the first years of its earthly abode. But nature is also independent of memory, and it came out for little Wolfgang early into his childhood. Perhaps it was because, so soon into his life on the earth, the great war started, and all the stability he had carefully chosen to partake in and to temper his nature disappeared. By the end of the war, there was no empire, he was a german in a foreign, no longer germanic land, and lithography, the family trade, was on the way out, replaced by newer and improved methods. Luckily for him, there are very few choices of importance that a child can make, most of them are made by the parents, and so his mercurial nature came out mostly in irrelevant details, what kind of toys did he want to play with, what kind of food did he prefer, and so on, as well as in the ease with which he learned how to read and write. Though his childhood was more impoverished than his spirit had envisioned due to the awful events that had unfolded in europe, both of his parents survived the war and the famines and the epidemics that swept across the continent, and so the real trouble for him would come later. Although maybe if fate or chance had forced his hand it would have been preferable, for it would have narrowed down the number of choices available to him. As it stood, the future was still wide open, and if one moment the adolescent Wolfgang was sure he wanted to be an army man and pursue the martial character of his germanic spirit, in another he wanted to be a doctor and help those suffering from ills and aches, and then the next week he would change his mind again and wanted to be a man of letters, which of course as a mercurial man was his true calling, healing and fighting on the page and through the pen. And each week he would be utterly convinced of his destiny, and if anyone asked why this or why that he could justify his choice with the full force of his more than able intellect and the above average command of language that a nature like his guaranteed, providing logically constructed arguments for his decision of the day. But in fact it was even worse if someone did ask, for as soon as he laid out his carefully crafted reasons, he would start to doubt them, and to oppose them, and soon would go to the other extreme. When he was seventeen and able to act on his decisions, he happened to decide he wanted to become a priest, and the primary justification in his mind was that it was a profession that partook of all of the above characters previously considered, a priest is half soldier in the spiritual war, half doctor for the souls on earth, and half intellectual for it was through words that the priestly rites and doctrines came to life, and though there can never be more than two halves to one whole, the young Wolfgang felt precisely that he was made of many halves and no whole, and so ignored the illogical conclusion and pursued it, for a while.

His parents were lutherans, but perhaps in an attempt to go against his nature, he chose to become roman catholic, the universal church, undivided, unlike him, maybe this would cure him. This troubled his parents, but at that age they were no longer in charge of his decisions, and thus his life soon spiralled out of control. He joined the seminary and not even a year into his studies to become a priest, and thus celibate, he fell in love with a woman. He declared his love for her with as much conviction as he had declared his love for God, and soon she became pregnant. He left the seminary and married, his son was born, and by the time the child began to speak, he had fell out of love, and not only that, he hated his wife. The reason was that she had in fact been a temptress, a devil, Lilith herself, and dragged him away from the arms of God and church into her own, even though it was him who pursued her in the first place. Though he felt bad for the child, he reasoned very carefully that a child raised by parents who hated each other would not fare very well, not very well at all, and so he left, again with questionable geometry, half due to this hairbrained conclusion, and half due to the fact that he hated his wife with a passion so great as he had once loved her, and half because he was now enthralled by a new political movement that was sweeping across europe, an so very german too, communism.

So he became a communist, and although he longed to be involved in terroristic activities, his true nature always came to the fore and so he dedicated most of his time to writing pamphlets defending the dictatorship of the proletariat and, even more emphatically, against religion, which he now felt to be the worst thing to ever happen to mankind, God being nothing more than a figment of poor imaginations, a soothing balm at best for the ills that plagued the common man, and at worst, the very chains that held humanity in slavery. But no sooner had he finished his final critique of religion and his defence of the communist ideology, his mind started to see there were flaws, fundamental flaws even, in the doctrine, and having heard of yet another political movement, this one even more german than the last, and after carefully considering its propositions, he decided to join them. With the help of his new group of comrades, he quickly reasoned back to religion, but not the one he had been born in, not even the one he adopted for a while, no, definitely not any variety of the morally slavish religion of the crucified man, now he exalted strength in body and mind, affirming life and vitality, the supremacy of the strong and the subjugation of the weak, and who could be stronger than those of germanic spirit and blood, the superior representatives of all that is valiant and noble and, especially, powerful.

He completely changed his demeanour and his habits, he stopped smoking and drinking, and started to pay a lot of attention to the cultivation of his body and his muscles, and even changed his diet to an exclusively carnivore one, as that was believed by some theorists he read to promote the most vitality. And he was even happy for a time, especially as his new adopted ideology rose to power, and hoped to occupy some kind of powerful position in the newly formed government, but his nature being what it was, suited only to think and write and think in writing, because only on the page can two opposite things be juxtaposed so quickly and seamlessly as his shifting ideas did, he became an official mouthpiece for the regime, and as usual, his conviction soon drifted and then disappeared. Now he saw the error of his ways, the error of that regime and ideology, and sympathizing with his jewish neighbors, and even more so with a jewish girl he fell in love with. And, following the course he was so used to following, he completely renounced his ideology, quit his position, and decided to marry the girl, convert to judaism, and flee to america.

The new couple reached the promised shores of the new world as the old world was preparing for war, settling in new york. He of course quickly became the most jewish man in the whole family and perhaps the whole neighborhood or the whole city, following every law with the utmost seriousness, especially the ones about diet, which frankly annoyed and even preoccupied his wife. But for once it seemed that luck was on his side. America was a haven in many ways, and specifically for his nature. Nowhere else in the world would someone like him, who changed his mind so often, feel so at home, so at ease, except there, the country of extremes, the country of contradiction, so that even if he fell out of love with his wife, even if he abandoned the two daughters she had given him, even if he decided to reject judaism with all its laws, all was well and good, america was the land of opportunity and second chances, especially as the war drew to a close, and social life went forward to a new normal. He found employment there once again as a wordsmith, this time writing advertising copy, first for the united states department of war, as it was called in those days, and then for a private agency.

He was now fully an adult and although his mind was still regularly pulled in every direction with the most intense ferocity, his germanic will had something to say, and he persisted in a course of action and a train of thought even after it had proved to be untenable on his own terms, no matter how painful it was. Though he was unhappy, he persisted in the marriage, and in judaism, longer than anything he had chosen before. This resolve was broken, however, when he met an indian sage, and by listening to him speak with tremendous affectation and with a thick accent realized that this is what he had searched for all his life. The reason he had always flip flopped between extremes was that nowhere in europe was this wisdom of the mean to be found, this wisdom that told him that nothing mattered at all, that all these trials and tribulations, all these conflicting feelings and ideas were nothing but illusions, and behind them was the pure essence of nothingness, the One with capital O, where all opposites were resolved, and thus where he would find, at last, nothing to choose at all, but where he could just be, or not be, it was much the same.

It is well known that jewish wives only become more jewish with time, and thus his own jewish wife was unimpressed by the eastern wisdom his husband had found, and unwilling to abandon her native religion. Left with no choice but to follow his conscience, he left her, and followed the indian sage to california, shaved his head, became a vegetarian, started wearing robes, participating in orgies and taking psychedelic drugs. Yet for some reason he was unhappy, the emptiness that had seemed so logical and so filling had lost its appeal, the spiritual quest of robes, vegetables, orgies and drugs led him nowhere better than any of his other pursuits, but he was now old enough to admit that jumping from one idea to the next, from one extreme to the other, was not an answer. But to abandon his new spirituality was to admit defeat. He had tried everything, and nothing had satisfied him, except the sweetness of choice itself. The answer he found now was to drink too much, for at least this slowed down his thoughts, and prevented him from changing his mind enough to follow through.

Ironically, it was the alcohol that finally allowed him to face the truth. His open mindedness and ability to change were not the virtues he once had convinced himself they were. In fact, this is the one conviction that he had never once gone back on. Until now. Now he saw it for what it was, a disease of the spirit, an inability to choose a path and stick with it, and all his reasonings and arguments for the contrary position had been nothing but excuses he made to himself to justify abandoning his principles, if he ever had any, and everyone he ever loved and who ever loved him. And the reason was as trivial as could be, he simply got bored and desired novelty.

On the first day of the year, his birthday, nineteen sixty four, another leap year, drunk out of his mind, he finally made a decision that could not be taken back, he leaped off a bridge to his death, at least it was poetic, although in a pathetic sort of way. Of course, as soon as he jumped, and despite his drunkenness, he started to have doubts, and before he hit the water he had changed his mind completely, though obviously it didn’t matter much at that point. To this day he is torn between the choice of heaven and hell, able one day to make up his mind about which one he deserves, and then the next day making up equally reasonable arguments for the opposite position, thus remaining stuck in purgatory. Although, after having met an eastern orthodox monk who was also stuck there, he is sometimes sure that it is not purgatory at all, and in fact, he is instead going up and down what the orthodox tradition calls toll houses.