The Conditions of Will

by Jessa Hastings

Conscious feelings are present on the surface, and you make decisions around them, but subconscious feelings exist under the surface, and they dictate your decisions too, arguably even more so, but often you only realize that in retrospect.

There’s no doubt in my mind that my sister thinks what she’s calling me about is important, but it wouldn’t be beyond her to have seen me write something anti-Trump on social media and feel like it was a personal attack, which is a thing that’s uniquely American, in case you didn’t know.

Because—honestly—neither party is great these days, and when you personalize something to the extent many people do in politics, any time anyone questions something the party does, it can feel like they’re questioning you, and that’s just plain unhealthy.

It’s a natural fear, I get it. All humans, whether they know it or not, are profoundly impacted by their imminent deaths. Mortality is unbearably confronting, so much so that lots of people spend their whole lives trying to live as though it doesn’t chain them like it does the rest of us.

The idea that it ends—that it all ends—that everything you spend your life doing and building toward one day amounts to actually nothing the second you take your last breath.

You can tell yourself you don’t even really want to be wanted by people like them anyway, but it isn’t true because the same way parents are supposed to want their kids, kids have a genetic predisposition to want to be wanted by them.

I do try to switch it off, try look at everything like a person who hasn’t taught herself to see the world stripped back to its sinew and bones, but sometimes it’s hard. It’s hard not to keep seeing things that are there in plain sight once you’ve taught yourself to see them.

It’s a funny part of growing up, actually… Accepting that things that are better for you, healthier—they can still be painful. That the worst, most shameful day of my life to date would in turn become the most defining.

Think about how being a “Christian” has so little to do with acting Christ-like now, especially these days, and especially in America.

You survive whatever you need to, however you can.

I think sins are weighed by their intent and their destruction. Jean Valjean stealing a loaf of bread for his starving family isn’t the same as Scar killing Mufasa and letting Simba think he did it.