My friend and I interviewed each other. We’re students and have never done anything special. We like to talk, though.
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Dan Wang: Are you happier now than when you were twelve?
Anthony Aceti: No. That’s impossible.
Aside from some puberty-related things and the fact I’ve done a lot more activities since then, nothing about me has changed. I’d say this is a universal principle, but saying that doesn’t sit well with people who like to think progress over time is anything but a slope of zero.
I’ll add: I was a pretty happy twelve-year-old, even if I didn’t know it.
Wang: How do you feel about being the age that you are?
Aceti: Mostly upset. The best parts of being [my age] aren’t clear to me yet. And possibly might only be clear in retrospect. As you get older, time slows down and you begin to have a sense of the terrain of your own life. But right now, things rush by like out of a car’s window.
Wang: I always think I’ll become happier if I learn to be less attached to what other people think. Like, if I can bring myself to walk back up to the guy who shortchanged me on my newspaper, I would be an overall happier kind of guy. But then I think that if everyone did this the world might not look the way it does, which is a way I rather like: this kind of give-and-take dance between people, over-compensations and beautiful hurt feelings.
Aceti: Is leaving behind extra dimes going to make the newspaper man happier? No. Is losing extra dimes to the newspaper man making you unhappy? Probably not. Is being willing to share and be open and communicate true things directly to a practical stranger going to make both of you happier? Way more than yes: yes times two.
[Now we switch places.]
Aceti: Children in kindergarten very regularly hold hands, hug, and say cute things like “I love you verwy much”—why and when do you think this habit ends?
Wang: Do you think those children really know what love is? Their notion of love is defined by Barney and giant hovering adult faces, which is, to say the least, an incomplete view. Also who says that’s cute? I find it kind of creepy (partly because it makes me think of babies having babies, eww).
That’s a bit of a cynical answer, so let me try again: I think children do it because adults tell them to; once you start to develop emotional range you realize that there are other options, like hating that bitch who stole your dino. Which, you might say, makes real love far more significant than that picture of twelve different-colored humans holding hands in a circle around a tiny globe – because it’s a choice and not just a happy default.
Aceti: Choose an aspect of our lives, common in the West, and describe how that aspect would terribly upset and appall our genetic predecessors circa, say, 1400. Obvious responses (which shouldn’t be included) are iPods, machine guns, and severe skepticism.
Wang: Can I say, this feeling we all have of ourselves as God? At least the God of our own lives. Which is normally presented in a much more appealing way, like, “Be all that you can be” or whatever. But it really means that you ought to have control over every aspect of your life, and if something isn’t perfect you should do something about that. I don’t think people used to think this way. I think people were more willing to accept the hand of fate. Now every life has to be this unique product of intense frustration and prolonged thinking and experimentation and epiphany, which is exciting but also tiring. What if you just want to be a milkmaid? These are things that don’t exist anymore.
