Owning Uncertanty

This post has been a while in coming. I first drafted it almost two months ago while still on break in LA. At the time, it only felt like a half-baked idea. Now I think I’m ready to complete it:

Sometimes I could swear I lead two lives. One is European. The other remains in the U.S.  When I’m a part of one, the other seems as if it’s only a dream. Or, sometimes a nightmare.   

I first became interested in living abroad after a summer working as a broadcast media trainer in Maldives. That was almost 7 years ago. It all seemed so simple. You travel. You make your home in unheard of locales. You make your life your own.

But, in reality your life remains tied down to various obligations.  Culture, language and family are factors that divide. Yet, they pervade the planet.  It’s not so simple as I thought on the plane back from Male. Because of said complexity, this post will be an amalgam of many things. So, bear with me.  

I’ve already mentioned that I spent part of my February-March break at my family’s home in Los Angeles.  For part of that time the Sochi Olympic Games were televised.  Much of the coverage focused on so-called ‘extreme’ sports. Usually Americans dominate them in the Olympics.  I’ve always thought them too subjective to be included in international competition. The scoring is often about the ‘coolness’ of a performance. Contestants gain points for tricks of their own invention. 

One such trick was named the 'Yolo' Flip. Its inventor had to change citizenships from Russia to that of a country in the West in order to create it.  My father joked that he didn’t understand the necessity of leaving one’s country whenever it was brought to light that an athlete had sought another nationality in order to move forward. To him, national loyalty was a singular commitment defined by one’s birthright.  For me, that view betrays other possibilities of success. Ideological  assuredness regarding one’s current situation prevents one from aspiring further.  

Most my age learned the first part of the Yolo flip’s name as a matter of popular discourse.  It wasn’t until college that a friend defined to me it as ‘the teenage Carpe Diem’.  Except, Carpe Diem wasn’t originally meant to signify it’s usually accepted modern meaning.  During graduate school, I was informed that the Latin term was not coined as an excuse for unmitigated risk taking. Instead it’s an exhortation to do what we can today.  Tomorrow cannot be dictated; your day may never come. Yet, you must plan for it.

Thus, the concepts of ‘Yolo’ and Carpe Diem are opposed. The first implies a false positive causality between present rash action and future success. The second focuses on the now. But, it denies a possible promise of what may come through rational action.  Between these two options, it is easy to adopt a siege mentality.  To protect and preserve in personal mythology what one perceives as past achievements amid dubious promises of the future.

 Transmuting the above philosophical conflict to a national level, it seems almost fitting that Ukraine and Russia came into conflict over Crimea and Ukraine’s Eastern regions after the Olympics. Ukraine moves toward its own future. Regardless of prohibitive losses to practical consequences, it lives in the moment.  Russia protects regional interests. Reasserting influence it conceives as its own, it works methodically toward a future that may not be as bright as past glories.

I traveled to the disputed areas in the above mentioned region a bit over a year ago. Many there are of a dual heritage.  Each lives one life.  Paradoxically, it seems that they must now choose between two opposing, yet related sides. Neither philosophical attitude towards the future provides a mutual solution.

There’s a third version of understanding the Yolo/ Carpe Diem concept. I heard it from from a Star Trek Voyager episode: ‘Own the Day’.  A battle cry, it carries baggage from past consequences but no expectations for what is to come. It allows for the possibility of re-defining conceptualizations. For making two identities one, wherever they may end up. Semantically, it does so by striking a balance between throwing caution to the wind and internalizing future pitfalls despite best efforts. ‘Own the Day’ acknowledges that one only does what one can, given certain goals and circumstances.      

One cannot control the future, nor deny its existence. One can only own the day.