Writer Wander 017 - To Care or Not to Care

Wander takes you back to his Last Summer as a Fifth Grader

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:26

Rider Wander seventeen to care or not to care. If you're noticing anything different from the background audio of this video or this podcast compared to the prior ones, it's that for those of you who are more technically savvy or younger, you know that I'm playing Minecraft, which is, you know, obviously I'm a guy in his mid-twenties. Minecraft is naturally a game that has a very deep resonance with me and in my heart. And I feel that for a very long time I've been wanting to like find games that were like Minecraft, but I think I I've just got to come to peace with the fact that like that, you know, there may be games that have their own cool twists and stuff, but at the end of the day, it really is Minecraft really is just a unique thing. There's there's nothing that can quite capture the emotions and the just the vibes that this game is capable of capturing. But this got me down a pretty big rabbit hole in that it started making me reminisce about my youth and all of the time that I spent playing this game or playing a lot of games like this game. And that's like very that's very important to me, right? Um I remember like I used to have like this server where me and my friends we made like uh we we made like this castle and we did it in survival mode, so we baked all this stone brick in like this massive oven, and then it got to a point where when you build a world and you develop it far enough. We were never like crazy good builders or anything like that, but when you build a world and you develop it far enough, you start like almost using the world more as like a hub to just get together with your buddies and talk because it's like you did like most of the main stuff that you were supposed to do with the with the mission, right? So there's there's really there's just not much else left for you to do. And I remember I I would have very long nights where you know I'd get together with you know my closest friend and you know from from high school, and we'd get together in like the living room of this fortress, and we just like circle around uh this fucking table we set up and just chat about, you know, anything, things that were important to us, that you know that matter to us. And it's very funny because the dynamic that we have now is almost uh very similar. It is very similar to that on the occasions we do get together. It is just us um talking. I think uh recently when he when he swung by where I live, we went behind like a little a little place, a little home, and crap, this fucking chicken doesn't want to die. Let me kill this chicken. Okay. So we we we went behind a lake and we basically we just repeated like the same dynamic. It was the same thing, it was it was personally it was hilarious to me, right? And I feel that that took me back. I really miss I really miss those times in a very real sense. And part of the reasons that I I think that I miss them, and you know this is a pretty common sentiment, it's like this idea of a period of time in which you used to just not care about things, right? You just used to just flow and you know just let things go, you know, take their course, you didn't really pay attention, you didn't plan around a lot of stuff. It reflected in basically every aspect of your life as a kid, right? You know, your oh shit, uh crap, I I almost uh fell down. But it reflected in every aspect of of your life because um, for example, your diet, you didn't give a crap about counting calories or or macros. If you were getting good macros or you know, or good a good diet, it was probably because your parents were the ones who were making sure that you that you had that, but you know, back then you had a meal of like freaking uh cheese whiz and and bread. That that was gourmet. That was gourmet shit, man. You were you were the king of the world when you ate something like that. Nowadays, if I sat down and and tried to eat something like that, you know, I wouldn't be able to stop torturing myself over the fact that dude, you need to eat something that's more that has more calories, that's something that has more nutrients, so that you can be more satiated. It's like you know, this feeling of like trying to micromanage every single aspect of your of your life, of your existence, right? That that's you know, and that's in a large degree what it often feels like to be an adult. It just feels like you're in this in this state of mind where you're you're thinking of ways to constantly optimize your life, and similar to to one of the things I touched on in the last episode, I feel that when you when you turn something into a system and you open up the possibility for that thing to be something that can be optimized, it loses a lot of its magic. And obviously, as someone who is interested in in a fantasy genre, I have very much a desire to preserve magic in as many forms as is possible, right? I just found my first little cave. Oh crap, I I thought I got a a message from someone on my single-player server, but it was just an achievement. Okay, I got scared for a moment. This game can be scary sometimes, uh, but that that's uh that's another subject for for another day. But uh give me one moment as I just get my equipment ready to start sealing up this this cave so that I don't die. But yeah, carrying and not caring, and I just I just really miss this idea of like living in the moment, and I th I think it's definitely a theme we've touched on here before. It's nothing new for Rider Wander. You're you're probably tired of hearing me say some variation of this, but you know, the best things in this world are worth repeating. They're worth repeating, they they just are, man. They just are, and this is one of those things, and I feel that there's often a dichotomy at play within myself as to what kind of man I want to be, what kind of person I want to become, because on the one hand there is this primal instinct in my soul to become like this this person who is like in this perpetual state of of not of not caring. But on the other hand, obviously, I'm I'm an adult and I I recognize that part of of growing up in a very real sense part of part of growing up is is is that it's it's that you you have to you have to become a person who cares about things. You can't just be an irony bro for the rest of your days, right? You can't you have to take a stand for something, you have to move towards certain objectives and and given goals. However, the I think that you catch 22 is the phrase that that's used. The catch 22 to that is that um you lose a lot of that feeling of being in the present, you know. I don't I genuinely don't know if I will ever be able to have a feeling similar to how relaxing it was to just go over to your buddy's house, order some pizza, and just spend the day playing some playing some games, you know, just lazing about where, you know, years, you know, back in those days, years really felt like years. It really felt like time went the way that people tell you it's supposed to go. Because nowadays, you know, obviously we know that years are passing and it it's the same time that we that we live in, but it just goes all the more faster. It just goes so so quickly. And, you know, obviously the older you get, the faster those years sneak up on you. But maybe there's some hidden power in just realizing that fundamentally we're we're just working with the same time that we've had since we were like six years old, seven years old. We're just working with the same time. And that that's that's that's the reality. And so I guess I I wanna I wanna sit back and and picture a little bit of that archetypical image of the preteen male's um little uh side quest in visiting his friend's house and what exactly that was like dissecting dissecting every nook and cranny, every every little every little bit of it. Let me cook some some chicken. Very important. Cooking chicken is important. But one of the one of the there's a lot of like essential things you have to go over. And the first thing I'm gonna point out is the pizza. Of course I'm gonna point out the pizza. Why the pizza? Again, you know, nowadays you eat pizza and on a fundamental level you just feel like oh man, this is empty calories. What what am I doing with my limited time on this earth consuming freaking pizza man? Like, I need to get in shape, I need to be healthier. Why am I eating pizza? And not just that. An entire afternoon spent playing video games. Just lazy about. You know, a lot of things that, you know, nowadays I would we would all, a lot a lot of us at least, especially those of us who are in the workforce and have many responsibilities and who knows, maybe you probab possibly have a family and whatnot. You know, we we'd we'd uh flagellate ourselves, we'd punish ourselves over it, you know, how dare I think that this is a good use of my of my time. But back then it it felt like it felt like the world. And it it really in a sense it it kind of was the world to us. It had such a profound meaning to us. It meant so much to us. Let me get a create this stone axe. It meant the world to us. And a moment like that is equal parts moment and mentality. And you know, I I could recreate the same material circumstances that that led me to spend a very relaxing sleepover with my friends when I was like in eighth or or ninth grade. I I I could I could do that. But I wouldn't be the same person. So even even if you recreate similar experiences in your own life, we are incapable of truly recreating them because we that headspace that we were in, we'll never have that. We will never have that. We will only have approximations of what that is supposed supposed to be. And even in our attempts to actually get to the point of what that is, they will quite possibly just be recontextualizations of of how we perceive the past to be almost like a historian looking back. And that that's just uh I guess it allows us to reflect on the nature of things that every moment really is unique, it it cannot be recovered. There was a book I read once, well, listened to, I think it was called Die With Zero, and it was a book about finance, but the finances in that book were motivated by a particular philosophy, and it was this idea that a very basic idea, your money should serve you. And the book is targeted at people who know how to invest and save their money and how to manage it. And the author's argument is that you know we should we shouldn't aim to die with a huge nest egg saved up. And in the United States, at least, a lot of baby boomers are dying with excess amounts of money that they never put to use in their own life. So, so so many years of delayed gratification for a reward that they're not even that they're not even putting to action, right? And that book, one of the concepts in it is this idea of seasons of life with an expiration date. And there are only there are certain things that you can do in certain ages that you can't do as easily or at all in other periods of your of your life. And those those lazy days as a kid, those were seasons of life with an expiration date. And they're gone now. I can't I can't have them again. None of us can. You know, I can get into just on just on that point. You know, just having this conversation, it reminds me of the my one summer in fourth grade, because I was only in fourth grade once. Um a young man who was my best friend at the time, and uh I haven't spoken to since. I I think he's doing well. We he was going to move back to the states. And or to you know, he he was gonna he was gonna move away. Right? I guess I kind of gave myself away there. But he was gonna he was gonna be moving back, moving back to the states. And part of the you know, I was never gonna see him again. And I haven't seen him again. But him and his mother and and my mother, we we sort of made a deal so that basically that entire summer I'd come over to his house and we'd chill, and you know, we'd play video games. We we both love Ben 10. That was like our thing back then. And we we just lazed about, you know. I remember like one day, one of my greatest m memories uh his father, you know, he was this um Lebanese well, I think he's an Italian man, and his wife is Lebanese, and his father they made us like this massive plate of burgers, and it was awesome. I I don't think I've ever seen so many burgers put together outside of a buffet, and obviously these these were homemade, so we're talking quality stuff, and let me tell you that that was that was delicious, and you know the other thing, his mom, his mom made a cookie cake, and it was awesome, and I enjoyed every second of that time of that season of my life with an expiration date because the amount of time that I was gonna have that close friend of mine was limited, and in effect, that time has come to an end. I no more have I heard of him, and I I probably will never hear from him again, and even if we did catch up, we're completely different people now. We were best friends in fourth grade. You know, you can't that that's that's a context you can't recover. Right? You know, we probably had a lot of similar experience of since then, but who knows? Who knows what things he's gone through that have shaped him, that that I haven't even conceived? Who knows what kind of things have happened to him that I never would have even considered as as an option. Yeah, these are just fundamental realities that we that we have to live through. That that you know that they're just fundamentally true. And there's always a desire in me to just retreat into this this childlike space of wanting to not care again, of just wanting to be that kid who's at the house of his best friend for their last summer and acting like that summer is gonna last forever. But fundamentally, I I can't. That's not the phase in my life that I'm currently in. Maybe one day I'll find well, I don't think you can really find experiences again, as we've already discussed. But I do think that, you know, the past does return sort of like in a Hegelian sense, where there's like the antithesis and the thesis, and as as history moves on, both of those come together to form a synthesis. I think that something similar to that could could happen where I find some equivalent to that sense of peace that I felt as a child, and I somehow reconcile it with this sense of duty that I have as an adult, but I I fundamentally feel that right now, in this phase in my life, in reality I should be on my hero arc, right? And in this sense, I I feel very different from a lot of the people around me, because I come from a very lax culture, and I'm probably lax compared to a lot of the people that I look up to, but I personally feel that I am a more diligent person than is common in the place that I come from, and that leads to me feeling like I'm often taking life more seriously than than most people, and that has its pros and cons, and you know, when I enter this phase of wanting to return to that to that childlike lackadaisical attitude, um it I rem I remember the fact that um I I think of the fact that a lot of my colleagues and a lot of my friends they they they often seem more relaxed than I do on a on a daily basis. And oftentimes I I'd argue that that you know relaxation is is not truly earned, but not always. Sometimes it you know it it is earned and there. There's nothing and there's nothing wrong with it. It's just that, you know, due to my own ambitions and and goals, I uh or you know, this desire to be a hero. I I don't I don't have that as often. Right now is a moment where I I I am feeling that relaxation, I'm indulging a bit, I'm I'm slouching down in a in a dark apartment, playing Minecraft uh alone, and it's it's very soothing. There's really like I said before, there's nothing else like this game. There's some cool alternatives like Evergwind, but even that, that's not gonna be that's not gonna be what Minecraft is. It it just it can't be. It fundamentally can't be, right? So that's the tension that exists within me, this desire to go full hero mode versus you know this longing for a time where I didn't care. And I know that intrinsically caring, sincerity, these things are always going to be more powerful and more meaningful than not caring or insincerity, but the desire is always there, and to some extent I have to indulge it, right? And you know, you have to you have to find a way to reconcile both. That's my genuine my genuine belief. Yes, Rider Wander Out.