Vagrant Or Vagabond

The other day I finished André Gide's The Immoralist. It was published in 1902 but read as if it was released a few years ago, though that could be due to the translation. It's a brief book, and when the pacing is that good, it feels modern to me. So different from the tomes I had to trudge through in high school.

I'm not sure what the moral was, though it's been years since I believed that books generally had morals. The guy, Michel, tries keeping his life together, but after a near-death experience, his perspective is changed, and he can't force it to go back to how it was.

Though it's not the same thing, I feel that a similar thing has happened to me. I've been struggling to find a good-paying job the past few years, even though before that I had several years of solid full-time employment. It pales in comparison, but it is an experience that's shifted how I look at the world, at pleasure, at chasing goals.

The guy is rich, yet after his inner change he mostly chases new experiences, and all the trappings of a luxurious life become annoying to him (he's luckily self-aware about how he romanticizes things, and acknowledges that he'd feel differently about his jealousy of the lower class people he meets if he was ever in their shoes). In my life, I see that while I need to be chasing down a career path with vigor, I have also never been so unmotivated by money. 

My own present circumstances beg the question: do I spurn wealth because I don't have it, or do I not have it because I spurn it? Well, one clue is that I never had it; such was my upbringing. But some time post-college, I thought I might eventually have some. I've found, though, that the uphill climb is so arduous, that I'd rather be chasing love or peace in life rather than money, because they're more stable investments (I know we don't invest in money but you get the idea).

Perhaps both are true, but I also believe that when you find you cannot attain a thing, the human mind craves to have reality be aligned with one's desires, so as to make one's self feel like "everything is happening for me". But since we can't change reality, I think sometimes we retroactively change our desires. I had desires for a stable, financially-secure life, but after circumstances made that hard, I believe I convinced myself that I didn't care for it that much after all. But if anyone can see through our bullshit, it's ourselves.

I could relate to the guy in the novel a lot - not too ambitious, and aware that I should care about living the good life that everyone approves of, but there's a deviant part of me that just wants life to be really simple, and to have some variety. I related, too, on the feeling of trying so hard to keep up appearances, all for the sake of other people. Anything that's a true desire, I keep to myself and enact by myself, but seeking joy in isolation rather than out in the open can drive you crazy over time.

In The Immoralist, he had had an experience that no one around him could relate to. That was the same for me; I have friends who have been laid off, but it never lasted long. They tended to find something in just a couple of months. So with no one to commiserate with, I do not know how to live, and I become lost. Michel's lifestyle became that of a wandering vagabond. Mentally, I feel the same way. I'm not sure who's life to map mine onto.

While the overall moral is unclear, I took away a lesson specifically for me: if you feel alone in a circumstance, try to find someone who can relate, otherwise you'll be wandering and searching for an answer for a long long time.