“If we make it through we gon’ walk it upright” from Soul of Freedom ft. Cise Starr by Uyama Hiroto.
Spike is in his ship, it’s rushing towards the ground. Inside this narrow space the sound of a lighter reverberates. Spike takes a deep breath: “Whatever happens, happens”
Devil may care is an idiom with the meaning of a careless, live and let live attitude towards life. I am not sure if this is its accurate origin but it is often expanded to: “The devil may care but I do not”. This idiom and the “philosophy” behind it is applied in various different ways, sometimes to the extreme. It is a very attractive ideal for sure, a life lived by one's own merit.
Because of how attractive it is, it’s an attitude seen with a lot of the coolest characters in fiction, characters like Spike from Cowboy bepop, Mugen from Samurai Champloo or Dante from Devil May Cry all carry a devil may care attitude. All of them see death for what it is. Yet there is a bit of melancholic undertone to all of these characters and their journeys, one of both strength and immense vulnerability. I am not out here tryna defang the cool characters we all grew up with, but…
The Undertone
Drifting like a log taken in by the flow of a lake. Spike questions whether he is living or not, drifting through the cosmic lake of the universe.
A fulfilling life could be compared to a dance, the only purpose lies in the dance itself. Yet what happens when one does not care for the dance? Well… the dance of life is in some ways unavoidable so one dances even more vigorously as if to test life itself. In essence it is a way to live that masks the real vulnerability behind the rash high risk behavior engaged in.
To explain this in more clear terms it is running away from something. The reason this pattern is so attractive is because within it there is some deep truth. By dancing more vigorously one is still dancing in the present and it is a highly attractive dance at that. The problem is that it is a dance almost comparable to dancing mania, a unconscious dance performed to one's own detriment. Dance mania or the dancing plague was a phenomenon that happened in Europe between the 14th and 17th centuries, it involved a group of people erratically dancing as if controlled by something. Often these people would get really hurt or even end up dead.
Bang.
Stop Running Away
You are not good enough, you are not enough you never will be, you are not needed nor necessary. I had some of those thoughts at a pretty low point in my life, I so deeply wanted to be everything I was not, so I took the easy path. I decided to not face myself and in that same vein to not face reality. Then I adopted a devil may care attitude, one adopted not out of authenticity but out of survival.
Most of my friends encouraged this, it seemed like such a healthy attitude towards life, one of taking things as they came, of not stressing about anything. Honestly it would not be a lie to say that adopting this mentality helped me out of my lowest point in life.
Yet it ended up slightly bittersweet. When this same attitude got me into a lot of financial trouble, I realized I actually cared. Way more than I thought, I cared about how I looked to others, I cared about what people would say about me, I cared about life. I wanted to live. But after running for so long, turning to face what I had been running from was both cathartic and deeply painful.
Uncertainty
Honestly I would love to say I have a beautiful way to wrap this letter up and conclude it in some witty way. But honestly, I don’t. There is no grand conclusion, this is the present. Even if in the future, I might go back and weave a really beautiful thread connecting this moment to the moments in the past. Almost like the weavers of destiny, choosing which moments to highlight that would make the story more coherent.
Honestly though, life isn’t all that coherent, it is a chain of moments and then you die. This sounds depressing but honestly looked at from a slightly different lens it is really freeing. Life is uncertain. The closest thing I have to some sort of conclusion is that there is no conclusion. One acquires more and more wisdom to realize just how little one knows and the delicate threads of “fate” keep being woven. I do believe though that everyone benefits from seeing life for what it is, not what it could be or what it has been. Dancing to the tunes of the present, fully, presently and authentically.
What does this even mean? Honestly, cliche as it is. Look at the glistening beads on flowers during winter, melted slightly by the delicate winter sun. The lingering smell of rain after summer rain. Or the simple smell of coffee in the morning. Keep moving forward but don’t forget to dance in the present. Do what you want to do, create your life with your own two hands. And do not run away from the parts of life that are less pleasant either, look at them for what they are.
“Don’t live your life making excuses, you’re the one who decides how to live your life” - Samurai Champloo by Mugen.