This column is about Edward Snowden. And the National Football League. And, I suspect, most of the rest of us.
Although it’s about Snowden, it’s not about the National Security Administration, surveillance or privacy. And although it’s about the N.F.L., it’s not about concussions. Instead, it’s about the unbalanced trajectory of human life.
Snowden’s actions, regardless of whether one supports them or not, have had a prodigious impact on the debate about privacy in the United States and will likely continue to do so. They have had roughly the impact that Snowden wanted them to have. That is, they have altered how many of us think about our relation to the government and to our own technology, and because of this, they infuse this period of his life with a luminescence that will always be with him. He will not forget it, nor will others.
There is an assumption I would like to make here, one that I can’t verify but I think is uncontroversial. It is very unlikely that Edward Snowden will ever do anything nearly as significant again. Nothing he does for the remainder of his life will have the resonance that his recent actions have had. The powers that be will ensure it. And undoubtedly he knows this. His life will go on, and it may not be as tortured as some people think. But in an important sense his life will have peaked at age 29 or 30.
This is not to say that Snowden’s days will not have their pleasures or their meaningfulness. Rather, those pleasures and that meaningfulness will likely always have lurking in the background the momentous period in the spring of 2013.
Players in the N.F.L. have an average career of six years. For many of them, those years — typically along with their college years — are the most exciting of their lives. They represent the cities they play for, enjoy the adulation of fans and receive higher salaries than they are ever likely to again. Many develop deep bonds with their teammates. They get to experience in reality what many male children dream about. And then it is over. If concussions don’t take their toll, they can expect to live another 45 or 50 years while not playing football.
For many people — not just activists like Snowden or professional athletes — life crests early. But it doesn’t end there. It goes on, burdened by a summit that can never be reached again, which one can gaze upon only by turning back. This is not to say that good and worthwhile things will not happen to them, and for a fortunate few there will be other, higher summits. For many, however, those earlier moments will be a quiet haunting, a reminder of what has been and cannot be again.
We might think of these kinds of lives, lives whose trajectories have early peaks and then fall off, as exceptional. In a way they are. But in another way they are not. There is something precisely in the extremity of these lives that brings out a phenomenon that appears more subtly for the rest of us. It appears in different times and different places and under different guises, but it is there for us nevertheless. (...)
Many will balk, reasonably so, at the characterization I have just given. After all, who is to say that a life has crested? How do we know, except perhaps in unique cases like Snowden or many N.F.L. players, that there aren’t higher peaks in our future? Who is able to confidently say they have already lived the best year of their life?
That consideration, I think, only adds to the difficulty. We don’t know. We cannot know whether the future will bring new experience that will light the fire again or will instead be a slowly dying ember. And the puzzle then becomes, how to respond to this ignorance? Do we seek to introduce more peaks, watching in distress if they do not arise? And how would we introduce those peaks? After all, the arc of our lives is determined not simply by us but also our circumstances. Alternatively, do we go on about our days hoping for the best? Or do we instead, as many people do, lead what Thoreau called lives of quiet desperation?
This is not to say that nostalgia is our inescapable fate. The lesson I am trying to draw from reflecting on the examples of Snowden and the N.F.L. is not that the thrill ends early. Rather, in their extremity these examples bring out something else. For most of us, as our lives unfold we simply do not, we cannot, know whether we have peaked in an area of our lives — or in our lives themselves — in ways that are most important to us. The past weighs upon us, not because it must cancel the future, but because it is of uncertain heft.
Although it’s about Snowden, it’s not about the National Security Administration, surveillance or privacy. And although it’s about the N.F.L., it’s not about concussions. Instead, it’s about the unbalanced trajectory of human life.
Snowden’s actions, regardless of whether one supports them or not, have had a prodigious impact on the debate about privacy in the United States and will likely continue to do so. They have had roughly the impact that Snowden wanted them to have. That is, they have altered how many of us think about our relation to the government and to our own technology, and because of this, they infuse this period of his life with a luminescence that will always be with him. He will not forget it, nor will others.
There is an assumption I would like to make here, one that I can’t verify but I think is uncontroversial. It is very unlikely that Edward Snowden will ever do anything nearly as significant again. Nothing he does for the remainder of his life will have the resonance that his recent actions have had. The powers that be will ensure it. And undoubtedly he knows this. His life will go on, and it may not be as tortured as some people think. But in an important sense his life will have peaked at age 29 or 30.
This is not to say that Snowden’s days will not have their pleasures or their meaningfulness. Rather, those pleasures and that meaningfulness will likely always have lurking in the background the momentous period in the spring of 2013.
Players in the N.F.L. have an average career of six years. For many of them, those years — typically along with their college years — are the most exciting of their lives. They represent the cities they play for, enjoy the adulation of fans and receive higher salaries than they are ever likely to again. Many develop deep bonds with their teammates. They get to experience in reality what many male children dream about. And then it is over. If concussions don’t take their toll, they can expect to live another 45 or 50 years while not playing football.
For many people — not just activists like Snowden or professional athletes — life crests early. But it doesn’t end there. It goes on, burdened by a summit that can never be reached again, which one can gaze upon only by turning back. This is not to say that good and worthwhile things will not happen to them, and for a fortunate few there will be other, higher summits. For many, however, those earlier moments will be a quiet haunting, a reminder of what has been and cannot be again.
We might think of these kinds of lives, lives whose trajectories have early peaks and then fall off, as exceptional. In a way they are. But in another way they are not. There is something precisely in the extremity of these lives that brings out a phenomenon that appears more subtly for the rest of us. It appears in different times and different places and under different guises, but it is there for us nevertheless. (...)
Many will balk, reasonably so, at the characterization I have just given. After all, who is to say that a life has crested? How do we know, except perhaps in unique cases like Snowden or many N.F.L. players, that there aren’t higher peaks in our future? Who is able to confidently say they have already lived the best year of their life?
That consideration, I think, only adds to the difficulty. We don’t know. We cannot know whether the future will bring new experience that will light the fire again or will instead be a slowly dying ember. And the puzzle then becomes, how to respond to this ignorance? Do we seek to introduce more peaks, watching in distress if they do not arise? And how would we introduce those peaks? After all, the arc of our lives is determined not simply by us but also our circumstances. Alternatively, do we go on about our days hoping for the best? Or do we instead, as many people do, lead what Thoreau called lives of quiet desperation?
This is not to say that nostalgia is our inescapable fate. The lesson I am trying to draw from reflecting on the examples of Snowden and the N.F.L. is not that the thrill ends early. Rather, in their extremity these examples bring out something else. For most of us, as our lives unfold we simply do not, we cannot, know whether we have peaked in an area of our lives — or in our lives themselves — in ways that are most important to us. The past weighs upon us, not because it must cancel the future, but because it is of uncertain heft.
by Todd May, NY Times | Read more:
