The Spear

III.
The Second, feeling of the tusk,
    Cried:"Ho!—what have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
    To me 't is mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
    Is very like a spear!"

It's strange the way we all vary in how much we feel and/or need to have control of our lives. I think I read somewhere that when we are very young children, we take comfort in knowing that our parents have complete control over us. But a big part of maturing is moving out of that mindset and having the authority figures in your life give you more autonomy. There is a balance in there that's healthy, but I suspect few people manage to find that balance.

I'm sure that I have an imbalanced sense of control over my life, and it's tough to admit it, but once again, I don't think I'm alone in this. Having to work two jobs and still not having enough money to be able to do the things I want to do really stinks, but I can't bring myself to up and quit. I guess I'm a fatalist, and just accept that life will be what it will be, and there's not much I can do about it. I don't know where this attitude comes from in me, but I think I see it in some of the students, and for them, it may be related to their disabilities.

Emi, Miki, and Molly can't choose to have their lost limbs back; they have to accept that their lives will be lived with a physical part of them less than a "normal" person would have, just like Lilly has to live without sight or Shizune without hearing. There are a lot of ways to deal with that reality, but not all of them are healthy. I think some would find themselves in the situation of having lost a part of themselves, whether it be a body part, one of the senses, or just general health, and think that their life was over and pointless. That's probably the worst, but I don't think there are any students with that sort of attitude, or why would they even be in school? No, I think for most of these students, they develop a drive to excel in life to defy the very concept of "disabled", and I think there's something good about that.

Still, it would seem that everything has its flip side, and there are students whom I suspect might have taken their struggle to control their life to an extreme, imagining that they have the potential to control everything. It could also be part of that drive to deny the limitations their disability might give them, or it could be a matter of maturing in an unusual way out from under the shadow of an over-dominant parent. Whatever the cause, there is yet still another separation created between that student and the people around them.

One way a person might show it is to create a sort of fantasy world in which they are alone, and in withdrawing from others into this solitary fantasy, they have a form of power over their world because there is nobody else to take that power from them. This is obviously a very lonely prospect, but it's surprising how it both resembles and contrasts with the alternative route.

There are those who make a decision to push back almost violently against helplessness, and put on an attitude that the entire world must bend to the will of the most dominant person in it, and that person is going to be them. Ambition is a funny thing that way. I think everyone would benefit from having a measure of it in their personality. I'm sure I don't have nearly enough! But then there is an invisible line that can be crossed where you go from being a person of purpose to being a person whose purpose is pushed upon all people.

When a person has that kind of attitude, it tends to make them a leader, which is good because the responsibility of leadership gives them an outlet for all that extra ambition. At the same time, it can be bad, because while being in a position of leadership can make you popular, it's much more likely to isolate you. I have an older friend who recently was promoted to a Junior Executive in her firm. At first it was exciting; she got a better office, higher pay, and a staff of people to delegate the more tedious aspects of her work to. It wasn't long before she realized that her old co-workers invited her out in the evenings less and less often, until they finally stopped altogether. Even those last few times they had, there was something she couldn't understand going on; all her friends seemed to find the situation awkward. She had discovered an uncomfortable truth about work, authority, status, and social interaction: No matter what they do, bosses can never really be friends with their employees or inferiors.

Of course in the business world, one can always look for new friends that share one's status, but once one reaches the top, they will be by necessity alone. As a student rising to the top rung of status at their school, that journey can be a very quick one, and once there, there's no place left to go.

While I have a lot of respect for how accomplished Shizune is, (and despite not just being deaf, but one of the few deaf students in the school as a whole) I also feel sorry for her. She's been student council president for three years, and during that time, the student council has through slow but steady attrition melted away to just two students. If anyone might be counted among her friends, it might be former student council members, but I've heard from some who are in the know that her sense of the importance of student council has made her enemies with many students who left. I wouldn't be surprised if her only friend in the whole school is Misha, and yet she treats Misha less like a friend than a servant it seems at times. That's got to be incredibly lonely. For both of them.