Autonoms and individuals

Sometimes I wander whether autonomy is an illusion.

How much are we really responsible for our own actions - or more: how much are we really the original source of our actions - the originator? Isn't everything just subject to the laws of action and reaction, cause and effect? And isn't thus everything we do linked to one or a million events that preceded our action and thus the individual action can never be original and autonomous, because it is always influenced by things we've done before, others have done to us or by values and supposed behavioural patterns that we've learned or been tought.
Of course there's always a choice. Always. (Well, I believe there always is - and if the only OTHER choice is death)
So one can choose to act in a way that is more or less influenced by other things than by the moment and the feeling at the moment, but either way, when looking back onto the action there'll always be ways of explaining it by things that preceded it, no?

Whichever is the case, the thought that we're not autonomous in our actions is a scary one, somehow. But why? Maybe it's just scary to me and others are completely happy with the realisation of our non-autonomy or dependence, if you wish. Or maybe others are happy to be ignorant of it...?
Either way, I think we have a remarkable ability to feel autonomous and in control of what we're doing, just as we have the ability to feel like an individual, like an exception, in complete ignorance of the fact that there's 6 billion other people out there - a number, the magnitude fo which we cannot even grasp - thousands of which are more than likely to have been or to be in exactly the same situation as we are and to feel exactly the same way that we feel in a particular situation.
The first time when that became very obvious to me, was a few years ago, when I was looking down from a plane as I was flying over some parts of urban America, on the eastcoast somewhere, and there was hundreds of houses, all looking the same, in dozens of rows, artificially curved, so as not to look so artificial, with pools located alternatingly once on the left side of the backyard, once on the right, to maintain individuality...
I thought: there's thousands of people living in these houses, who - together - have a million stories, a bagillion issues and a megabajillion problems, but drive the same car, have the same house, all face the same direction when they sit on their toilet or have sex, all have the TV in the same spot in the living room, all watch the same shows at night, all eat the same food from the same supermarket, wear the same clothes from GAP, Levi's, ZARA or H&M and say "I love you" exactly the same way to their 'honeys' every day and are all happy or sad, good or bad, honest or dishonest in exactly the same way that a million other people are.
Yet they are all convinced, as am I, that their problems are unique, that their situations are unparalleled, that their car is special and their having a pool differentiates them from others.


Maybe I'm wrong, though.

Maybe they don't.
Maybe they don't think they're exceptional at all, maybe they're completely aware of their similarities with a million other people, of their non-uniqueness and it's just me, who, having been brought up to think that he's so exceptional, is so scared of the realisation that he's not. -- Hmm. Comments?

"We're small town girls."

Rockin Rodeo – the place to be in Fredericton, the small provincial capital of New Brunswick, Canada, on a Thursday night. Definitely. As the snow flakes are slowly falling through the night sky outside, hell is let loose inside the club. I’ve never been to a place like that – there’s actually people who wear cowboy hats when they go out and dance to Country music! And to a ‘civilised’ European this might sound like Rockin Rodeo’s customers are middle-aged hillbillies… but no: my age! It was great --- I mean, if you were flexible enough. I’m quite flexible, I think, so it only took me a few songs to get the groove of rocky Country music.
Iman (my dear Iranian friend, who I came here to visit) is probably famous in that club, considering he goes there every other week or so to dance from open to close, like a ‘dancing-machine’, as he calls himself. And if he doesn’t already look different enough in between all the blond Canadian girls and boys (“unfortunately I’m not Caucasian” he‘d say) – when he’s on the dance floor, he’s almost a tourist attraction. We’d hardly walked in to the club – I was checking out the clientele, ready to get a drink and sit down for a bit – when he was already on the dance floor.

Fredericton must be quite a conservative town, at least the rules on dancing seemed old-fashioned: I stepped outside at one point later in the evening, just in my t-shirt, to cool down and smoke a strange Canadian version of my beloved clove cigarettes (this one actually had NO tobacco in it!) in the calmly falling snow, when a shivering young man expressed his feelings about the temperature. I tried to cheer him up: “You’ve gotta dance in there, then you won’t be cold out here!” Shrugging his shoulders, he replied. “You gotta find a nice girl to dance with first.”

And if you were shy to dance on your own, that was certainly true: the dance floor was full of small clusters of girls - enjoying the security of the group and occasionally throwing flirtatious glances at the groups of boys standing around the dance floor - and the occasional couple. Now neither Iman nor I were in any way opposed to the idea of dancing on our own. In fact, I often prefer to dance on my own, just because of freedom of movement. [I don’t mind dancing with other people, whether friend or stranger, but I feel uncomfortable dancing with girls who give me the feeling that they expect me to make some sort of phoney move on them while dancing. I usually dance for dancing’s sake, nothing else.]
So we did. Dance on our own, that is - and what an experience it was. We were like dancers in a place that had never seen dancers before... well, that sounds arrogant - people WERE dancing, but only within the boundaries of the commonly accepted ways to dance - a concept we neither knew nor cared much about.

We both really enjoy dancing, but in Iran we had never been able to do that, because of... let's call it 'cultural restrictions', so we'd been looking forward to going dancing together for a long time. So while we were enjoying ourselves, every now and then a girl would break loose from one of the groups of girls on the dance floor that were laughing and chatting while looking at us. She'd come over to one of us dance with us - sometimes throwing girly smiles over her shoulder to her friends, who were intently watching. Then, after an arbitrary period of time, she would suddenly turn around and rejoin the group, which then usually burst into laughter or shouted to applaud their comrade's brave venture into dangerous territory. It seemed as if we had become victims of teenage courage tests, purely for entertainment.

So we obviously drew all the gazes on us, which was both odd and exciting, because it resulted in both a feeling of popularity or at least that of being centre-stage and a feeling of being isolated or being distinctly viewed as an alien to the place. Although that mix of feelings in combination with total anonymity gives you some sort of immunity to do and move as you please, it can also makes you feel a bit lonely, because you are distinctly excluded. But I wasn't in a lonely mood, so I enjoyed the immunity and the gazes instead.

One cute girl - probably in her late teens and a little smaller than me - danced up to me and made it impossible for me to ignore her. But I was quite glad, since the dance floor was packed and it felt kind of weird having to face people's backs when dancing. So we were doing a little back-to-back number and nearly fell over. She apologised that her boob almost popped out and then, just before she walked off again, she said something funny: “You smell of Nachos – did you just eat some?” “No”, I said “but is that a compliment?” “Yeah, I LOVE them.”

A confession

The funny thing is I have never travelled with a tangerine, really.
I don't think they're made for travelling with. They get all squished and squeezed, but all stays inside the peel and just goes kind of mushy and proddy. Then, if you accidentally squish it too much, a bit of the peel tears and all the juice comes out, right over your freshly ironed shirts, your homemade sandwich, your fresh towel and if you're unlucky even over your toothbrush. Then you have the taste of foul sqeezed tangerine everytime you brush your teeth for the next week. Hmm.

Canada, New Year 2006

I’ve kind of been to Canada before. On September 2nd 2004 I crossed into Canada’s Yukon Territory from Alaska with my then-girlfriend Rhoda as hitchhikers in a 40-foot long caravan conveniently called “Infinity”.
But this time, which is really my first time to Canada (considering that back then we only really crossed through the northernmost part in order to get to south-west Alaska) I arrived on a small little plane with only 8 other people. Ours was the last plane to land at Fredericton airport in New Brunswick and when we queued up for immigration, Debbie, the airhostess and the two pilots were right behind us in the line. There was no ‘fast-track’ lane for crew or anything.
“Have you got any cigarettes with you?” the good-looking young woman in a dark blue immigration uniform asked me. “I have one pack, I think… oh, no, I forgot to bring it. Damn. So - … no.” I imagined her making a note: ‘forgetful and disorganised’, forever visible to any immigration officer who would scan in my passport.
“Why are you travelling to Canada?”
“To visit a friend. He studies here.”

While the five people in front of me were being asked about their alcohol and tobacco imports, I had seen my bags arrive. The baggage belt had already stopped and the bags had been stacked up next to each other on the ground. I picked mine up and walked through the doors into the Arrivals Hall, expecting to see Iman waiting for me (the plane had half an hour delay).
Iman and I met six years ago in Iran, when I was there with my family on a tourist trip. It was an amazing coincidence. We stayed in touch via email and I returned twice since then to visit him and travel in his beautiful country with him. We discovered so many ideas that we shared, which went far beyond each of our cultural backgrounds. It seemed almost impossible that two people of different race, nationality, parents and upbringing with such different experiences, interests, tastes and fields of study could have so much in common on an intellectual and spiritual level. It felt like the reunion of two brothers that were parted at birth, as if we were made of the same wood or the same blood flowed in our veins.
So I was all the more astonished to find not him waiting in the Arrivals hall, but an elderly lady, accompanied by a middle-aged man and a young girl, greeting me with “Willkommen. Guten Tag.” And telling me that Iman had to meet with his girlfriend and that she took priority over me. “But instead” she said, “we’ve brought a special guest to greet you.” And sure enough, from the other end of the hall I saw Santa Claus slowly walking towards me, with his deep voice humming into his long, white beard. When he finally got closer to me, he said with a thick Iranian accent: “Welcome, my son!”