Heresy
Asking yourself what you believe in (that others don't)
I wrote here recently about a long walk I took earlier this month in Japan, on the Kiso-ji. How I was invited to join eight people and do 100+ kilometers over the course of a week, on an old road (of sorts) that connected Kyoto and Edo/Tokyo before highways were built. And how the organizers had a rule for us at dinner: that once we sat down, once drinks were ordered, the group’s conversation would focus on a single question for two hours, no side chats allowed.
Sometimes we went one by one, answering the prompt. Sometimes the conversation overlapped. Sometimes it went in new directions, and the organizers took note and shepherded things along. The questions themselves had been suggested by us, one per walker—and now, weeks later, on the verge of January, with my home city of Los Angeles under a deluge of rain, I’m drinking coffee and noticing a couple questions lingering, particularly this one:
What are some of your personal heresies?
I.e., What’s something you believe that you think people you respect would disagree with you about?
It’s an interesting question, somewhat beautiful and naive. To answer invites risk. Awkwardness. I suggested the first two things that came to mind that night at the table, silly but plausibly true, and I still find them a little discomfiting to put down here, but what the hell:
The National Security Agency invented the Signal app for secure messaging—and if it didn’t, that’s even worse.
Most adults, especially Americans, become uncomfortable talking about sex for longer than a minute, and that discomfort can be one of the most telling things about them.
Of course, is this heresy, true dissension against orthodox thought? When the Japan group talked them through, my first answer prompted one of the hikers to mention he knew Signal’s founder and he felt confident saying the NSA wasn’t involved; and my second point seemed to make everyone uncomfortable in less than two minutes, which, well, cool.
Other people’s heresies were more interesting, at least to me—e.g., one man’s answer that the internet only should be available weekdays, 9am-5pm, and all social media should be erased every two weeks. Or, I was more captivated by other questions we talked about that week, that weren’t about heresy: what are some forces moving the world towards good? How much space do you need in your heart to bring in someone else?
(Or when will restaurants stop putting scented hand soaps in their bathrooms, because it fucks with your sense of taste? I’ve been dying on that hill for more than a decade.)
Something the concept of heresy makes me think about is that there’s a difference between contemplating an ocean and contemplating waves. And that of all my beliefs, very few are very old. Of all the dinner questions that week, mine came up on our first night: Who are some of the people you used to be, that you’ve lost touch with?
It was based on a Joan Didion line, from Slouching Towards Bethlehem—“I have already lost touch with a couple of people I used to be”—though it also shows up in a recent article I enjoyed by Leslie Jamison about the psychology of fashion:
We are always becoming and reshaping ourselves, and what we wear expresses this state of perpetual flux. Selfhood is a shifting thing, as much outfit as skin, that is constantly performed, exchanged, and re-created. We might not even realize what we want to be until we find ourselves putting on a skin that feels nothing like our own.
All of this is on my mind, amid the rains, maybe because going into the new year, I’m thinking about shapes and systems, shifting and being in flux. What do I want this year? What will I receive? How open can I be to the new, the unplanned—and where in my life am I white-knuckling, that I don’t realize I’m white-knuckling?
These are some of the questions percolating around my private dinners, my private coffees, what are yours? Heresy or not?
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“Meditations in an Emergency” is a weekly essay from author Rosecrans Baldwin about something beautiful. Paying subscribers receive a Sunday supplement with three-plus things to love, plus a monthly travel-lust ballyhoo.
Rosecrans is a correspondent for GQ, a contributor at Travel + Leisure, and the bestselling author of Everything Now, winner of the California Book Award. Other books include The Last Kid Left and Paris, I Love You but You’re Bringing Me Down. His debut novel, You Lost Me There, was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice.
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