I’m confident that wanting a pet, specifically a fish, during your early teen years is an universal experience. I was lucky enough to get a couple of them: my parents bought a tank, my dad changed the water weekly (at the beginning…), and we’d all feed them throughout the day multiple times. They stood in one corner of the kitchen, on a spot that once belonged to a tv. Although it was a short lived experience, given that my dad accidentally broke the tank while cleaning it, and that the fishes all passed away too soon, it is one that to this day I remember with some bittersweetness.
When my parents got those pets, they made it a big deal of how they were my responsibility. Truth be told, most chores fell on my dad’s hands, but the words they repeated quite often back then was that I’d have to take care of them: feed them properly, make sure they were healthy and happy. It’s the typical talk many caretakers will use against you , to stop you from wanting a cat or a dog or some other pet. The first taste, the cold jerk of adulthood: it’s not all fun because they mean work. Hard work at it sometimes.
Years down the line, I took it upon me to take care of our cat. I’d be the one to fill her tray and change her water, give her the attention she’d sometimes beg for, take out the lovely, smelly gifts she’d leave after a whole night closed in the kitchen, comb her fur and pet her ears, as gentle as I could. It was labour that I did almost mindlessly, the actions were so deep rooted that their importance went unnoticed.
Our actions always have consequences. And experience has taught me we’re to be responsible for what we do, and therefore, what comes afterwards. Experience, which is almost laughable. I’m on my way to 22 and I’ve never had a job, or a lover, perhaps my greatest accomplishment to most is that I finished an undergrad. Experience, funnily enough, always feels like water, escaping through the gaps between my fingers.
In my (very) humble opinion, most of us don’t really know what we’re doing. This gigantic spinning ball we call a planet didn’t give us instructions, and isn’t it hard to know what to do if you don’t have a guide? An example? If you don’t have options before you? If you can’t foresee the pros and cons?
It’s a concept that wraps around my brain like barbed wire, scratching endlessly. What really is accountability? What does it mean to be responsible for my actions? When I look back, there’s this sense that I’ve lived my life in some invisible type of debt. Like I’m making up for what I’m already failing. An innate feeling of inadequacy, as if everyone got the clues, the memo of what to do to make others proud, to carve a path one would be happy to cross. When you make a mistake, how do you catch it before it falls? Before it stains who you are?
Today I’d like to share with you a poem, ‘December’, by Michael Miller.
I want to be a passenger in your car again and shut my eyes while you sit at the wheel, awake and assured in your own private world, seeing all the lines on the road ahead, down a long stretch of empty highway without any other faces in sight. I want to be a passenger in your car again and put my life back in your hands.
When thinking about responsibility, I can’t help but relate it to the idea of control. Driving is a clear example of that need to control. I’ll shamelessly admit that sometimes I am so focused on the road ahead, I fail to be aware of my surroundings, of the need to slow down before a certain passage or change a speed. It’s as if I allow my brain to drift away, I’ll be lost in my own discomfort: the safety belt that it’s too tight, the chair that is either too close or too far away, the uncomfortable sweat.
I already miss being the passenger, even when I don’t drive anywhere besides the classes. It’d be so easy. So effortless. Are we humans always this tempted to the path of least resistance? I chose to learn for a multitude of reasons: because it’s a skill especially valuable, because my parents aren’t growing younger, because I craved the independe and the confidence that comes along with it. Yet my plate is empty, only ever full of insecurity, and the feeling of each and every decision becoming a burden.
Naomi Shihab Nye says in ‘Sometimes I Pretend’: I'm not me, / I only work for me. I grew up hearing the phrase ‘treat others like you’d like to be treated’. These days I’d like to imagine our actions as not us per say, but extensions (can’t tell if I’ve shared this here before, although it feels familiar). Does it take away the weight of duty? The control? Bell Hooks argues that love and dominance cannot coexist. I wonder if the same could, should be applied to life.
It’s not as if I never want to be responsible. If anything, I’m keen on taking ownership of my mistakes, of both perceived and real rejections, I’ll take the blame so easy as if it’s an exhale. Rather, I wish more actions would be like changing my cat’s water tray. You knew it was the best thing to do, that it’d do good, that reassurance and confirmation would come quickly, as she approached the tray and drank the fresh water.
Google tells me one of the meanings for responsibility is ‘the opportunity or ability to act independently and take decisions without authorization.’. But why is it that so much of what I do is a mirror? Copying, in hopes I’ll be doing it right. Truly, taking chances, seeing if the shoe fits. Is it a fault of independence that stops me from owning up to my actions?
But I know so little. I do know it’s inescapable, the trail of karma, how our actions usually meaning something, anything. They’re pebbles we throw at a pond, they create ripples upon ripples. I feel as if I am both the rock and the hand that threw it.
Earlier this year, I shared something among the lines of ‘let this fear be the sign that we have never been as alive as we are right now’. The fright of accountability is one I approach slowly, placing my faith in the thought that we are all doing what we can. Some of us surely with more confidence — I hope so. Even if we can’t, if we shouldn’t be precise mirrors of each other, maybe there’s strength in the belief that fearing responsibility isn’t all that strange. So lonely. That is a common hardship we all carry.
Thank you for reading delicate this week. I’d like to take a moment to thank you for sticking around until the very end, and also share how grateful I am that you recommend delicate to others in your own newsletters. It’s an overdue thank-you note, yes, but it’s here. Thank you for making delicate bloom.
DELICACIES OF THE WEEK
‘The Day I Saw The Rainbow’ is the last album in a series from Takashi Kokubo. Kokubo produces ambient music, which I can only describe as healing, to a degree. His works date back to the 90s till today, and this specific album, which uses mostly harps, has been a very recent refugee of mine. It calms my heart.
I watched the newest Puss in Boots movie with a couple of friends recently, and it was such a treasure. The animation was superb, fun, and perrito was too dear.
Remember the Daisy Jones & The Six adaptation I mentioned on the last letter? It’s incredible. It doesn’t go word by word, and I’ve heard a couple of lashings at the styling, but I’d say the chemistry between the cast and the music makes up for it.
SONGS OF THE WEEK: not strong enough by boygenius, let me down easy by daisy jones & the six and sunrise by norah jones