I was pretty insecure growing up. I didn’t have any confidence in myself, and always looked for others’ approval in order to feel good about what I was doing. Why? Some of that is probably my natural tendency, but some of my insecurity likely came from living in a broken home; with my dad mostly MIA for a large chunk of my childhood and my mom working FT during the day, I didn’t have the kind of encouragement that might build up self-confidence. Good grades, taking care of yourself, working; these were expected. I came to develop an unhealthy focus on garnering praise from those around me, on taking actions that I knew were likely to win me some of that sweet elusive approval, and on using self-deprecating remarks to justify my “bad” tastes.
A prime example of this focus can be found in my early views on music. I’ve always been drawn to heavy metal. From the first time I heard Metallica’s Master of Puppets, I was hooked, and my inaugural concert was Megadeth at the Aragon in Chicago when I was 15. The excitement of the show wasn’t enough to distract me from my desire to be accepted, though; I remember my friend screaming “Dave!” at the top of his lungs during an early song—Dave Mustaine is the band’s frontman, amazingly still to this day—and feeling compelled to do the same, even though I felt stupid doing it. Why would the band leader want to hear someone shout his name, I thought? Whatever. Dan was doing it, so I would too.
My desire for approval regarding my musical tastes became especially strong around my brother. Even though he was only in college at the time, he felt like a musical god to me. He played piano from an early age and focused on music ever since, leading the marching band battalion at my military prep high school and going on to major in the field at college while playing a large array of different instruments. He could hear songs on the radio and often learn to play them on the spot, which was basically the same as magic to me.
Being an accomplished professional musician, my brother’s musical tastes were accordingly sophisticated. During his time in college, this meant that he listened to a lot of complex sounding jazz and a bunch of other shit I couldn’t begin to understand. With my love for metal and my fascination with playing lots of notes in quick succession, I took to the types of music that crossed both of our interests; mainly this meant I listened to jazz fusion. And to be fair, I loved that music, and still do; the Mahavishnu Orchestra freaking rocks.
Alongside these esoteric and sophisticated tastes came loads of judgment, judgments against those bands and those types of music that were unsophisticated, that were crass, or simple. And as a genre that on its surface basically takes blues licks and plays them really fast, heavy metal fit the bill as a genre to be looked down on. I specifically remember the occasion I convinced my brother and his friends to let me put on a Metallica cd at their apartment. The snickering was palatable. I didn’t try it again.
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At the risk of branding myself a certain way, here’s another truth about me: I really like action movies. I’m aware that plot comes secondary, and that they often don’t have deeper meaning. I simply don’t care. Give me a Schwarzenegger or Van Damme any day of the week, and I’ll enjoy the heck out of watching it.
I’ve tried to dig deep to understand why I like them so much. Sure, some of it is the actual action sequences. It is thrilling to watch a helicopter spinning out of control and crash while its occupants pull off a last second daring escape. But more than any specific scenes, I think it’s the ability of these movies to really pull me in, to put me “in the zone” or in a state of “flow.” Athletes experience this in the middle of a match, musicians experience this in the middle of a jam; it’s a state where you’re so focused on one thing that nothing else matters. Your problems don’t exist. You’re floating in some netherrealm where there is no direction or causation or hate or fear or love; there is only the present moment. Action movies do that for me.
That, and tbh, the plots are usually pretty simple and transparent, and that can be a nice break from the complexity of life, and of many other types of movies. I enjoy movies that seem to be taking themselves seriously, but in reality aren’t actually being that serious.
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Despite having such clear, strong feelings about these genres of music and movie, I’ve lived a lifetime of feeling the need to justify my opinions, to explain away my tastes. Many times this has led to me making fun of my own preferences. Sure, I like action movies, but that’s because I’m not an intellectual. Sure, I like heavy metal, but that’s because I can’t appreciate more complex music. Sure, I like action movies, but I also like dramas. Sure, I like heavy metal, but I also like jazz. Jazz is complicated, right? Liking complicated things makes me sophisticated, right? You like sophisticated, right?
I’m sure we’ve all been embarrassed by our tastes at one time or another, but I took it to a whole other level. By constantly feeling the need to defend my tastes to other people, I ended up convincing myself that my tastes were shit. I came to identify with being a person who liked shitty, stupid music, and shitty, stupid movies. I’d come to accept that these tastes were shortcomings, these were deficiencies that I had, a problem in need of correction.
It is just insane how much these tendencies can become commonplace in other views that we hold about ourselves, and before we know it we’re judging all of our opinions to be shit, and ultimately coming to identify with ourselves as shitty humans. I literally would start sentences with “Yeah I like metal, *but*” followed by 5 reasons for why I had that view. Because I was simple and didn’t understand complex music. Because I was an unhappy and angry person. I came to justify my positions as ok only because they were part of a larger package, that they were just one problem I had among many other views that were “correct.” I’ve been apologetic and condescending about myself in order to explain away my preferences, “Yeah I still play video games, I’m a dork, I’ve never grown up because…”
The moment we feel it necessary to justify our tastes is the moment we stop being our own person, ultimately leading to a lifetime of feeling bad about ourselves and believing that we don’t deserve a fair shake because we’re bad. I’ve written about the importance of noticing, of observing our tendencies to think and act in a certain way, and how that is one of the most important things that we can do in our quest to grow as happy, kind, and compassionate humans. But noticing alone is not enough. The second step—and this is absolutely crucial—is coming to truly and fully accept the thoughts and beliefs and opinions that we have. Liking something that society eschews won’t cause us any harm (well, so long as the thing we like isn’t objectively harmful). What causes us harm is when we feel compelled to meet some invisible ever-changing standard to win the approval of others. That makes for a hollow existence, a life full of chasing unattainable ideals. We have enough suffering in our day-to-day lives, and we don’t need to create more of it for no reason.