I hate choosing. This is probably the most significant thing I can admit about myself. And I don’t say this lightly — believe me, choosing to hate choosing was complicated.
I can argue why choosing is great (universal suffrage), or awful (the US using the atomic bomb on Japan), or why it deserves a dozen other qualifiers — which makes agreeing with a stable definition a stupidly strenuous process. I’m afraid that, in declaring an opinion now, I’m actually betraying my future self’s capacity to think otherwise. And I’m sure I won’t appreciate choices I make now. Where it gets nifty is, what if, by not choosing, I am in fact choosing a less good outcome?
I’ll stop philosophizing about my own handicaps now and leave you with a simple piece of advice: be better than me. Refuse the rabbit hole, it’s really not that cozy.
Now, here’s to the fun parts: in hating choosing, I love changing. I love the freedom to support a view today and argue the opposite tomorrow. I want to contradict myself over and over (I realize I sound bipolar); I genuinely believe duality is humanity’s most beautiful strength. This perception can be distorted in a number of ways which are politically incorrect; so, I have to leave it to your gullibility to hear the message I want you to hear.
I’ve always struggled with identity. There are a number of external factors I can blame — I’ll save the name dropping for a future biography — the one I think many people, particularly on this hill, may relate to is being bicultural. No matter the number of passports you possess, or the amount of time you’ve spent in one place, you’re always a foreigner. I went from being an American in Paris (not one Woody Allan would write), to being a Parisian in America.
So, which is it? By not deciding, I leave it to others’ interpretations, and that, is out of the question.
I grew up in Paris, in the second arrondissement, one parallel away from Rue Montorgueil, which literally translates to “mountain of ego street,” very fitting considering I’ve claimed to be above choice. I was raised by two Americans who had migrated to France; my father was undetectable as a foreigner, or almost.
The only cracks in his beautifully polished, porcelain French were ones my sister and I heard — namely, confusing the genders of certain words that never sound natural unless you’ve been cradled by them.
The true double agents were us two. We were, in the wise, wise words of Katy Perry, “hot n’ cold.” We made the most invincible team when our interests aligned (such as mutually agreeing another hour of playing Pet Hotel was necessary) and the most polarized enemies for the rest of the time. The world would have been disintegrated during the Cold War had I been Khrushchev and her Truman. One thing we’ve always agreed on is the noticeable change in behavior of the people around us once they would find out we were “foreign.”
“Ah oui! Je croyais avoir entendu un accent.” (Ah yes! I thought I picked up on an accent). It didn’t matter how much time we would spend talking to them beforehand, they would always claim some omniscience when we gave them the fact. They would have lost a million dollars though, if they had been asked where we came from on Who Wants to be A Millionaire. It’s as if we offended them by deceiving them, pretending to be French. The issue is, I am French. You won’t find ‘Frencher,’ it doesn’t exist.
I’ll disagree with myself now. Maybe I’m American. Maybe, I am the most American American you can meet. Yet here I get unilateral credit for being French.
This is very strange. Is it that no country wants me? Too bad, they both get to have me. By choosing both, am I choosing neither? It’s unclear to me. But these delicacies are what I want to write about — paradoxes and malleable divisions. I think it might be possible we feel the need to choose always, when being human means we are (secretly) impervious to choice. The world moves around us, or we move around the world. The only choice we have is our perception. So, just as you choose which classes you will take next semester, the world will compel me to take Bowling.
On a final note, I’ll probably change my mind about that one too, I broke a nail last time I went bowling.
Welcome to my column, I’ll do my best to confuse you — in the best way possible.
Elise Clifford '29 is an Opinion Columnist and a Philosophy and Russian student in the College of Arts & Sciences. Her fortnightly column, State of Confusion, approaches the liberties and anxieties honed by disagreement, and the responsibility that comes with forming identity. She involves aspects of symbolism and skepticism that accompany the weight of glorification. She can be reached at eclifford@cornellsun.com.
