We’re members of the whiteout generation, and that’s a mentality that no amount of correction fluid can fix. Accustomed to the convenience of redoing, erasing, and deleting, we forget that our actions have gravity, that pressing backspace ultimately solves nothing. Choice becomes meaningless when we have the power to rewrite it, the ability to bury our errors beneath flawless strips of white. The crime is committed in secret, all proof of transgression neatly covered up. No evidence. No witnesses. Therefore it never happened.
Perhaps the word processor is to blame, or perhaps it’s just an inexplicable cultural phenomenon, but the thought and care that once went into the decision-making process has vaporized. Thirty years ago, if you took your SAT on crack, consequently earning a combined score of 400, that was certainly unfortunate, but there was nothing you could really do about it. You screwed up, so you had to deal with the consequences. Today, you can sit down with a SAT booklet and a #2 pencil as many times as you want, confident that if you blow this test, it won’t really count. You always have a second chance...and a third chance...and an eighth chance…and however many chances it takes to achieve those coveted digits (at least, as long as CollegeBoard continues to offers score choice).
Our problem is that we can’t deal with finality. We need the reassurance of an escape hatch, a perpetual opportunity for editing and revision; we can’t handle the prospect of a permanent, unchangeable action that we might later come to regret.
Reality isn’t as forgiving as the backspace key, though. If it were, we’d simply open up Life.doc, scroll through it, and carefully erase those parts of our past we’re ashamed of: the promises we’ve broken, the lies we’ve told—all the memories we’d dearly like to wipe from our mental hard drives. It would take three simple steps—Click, Select All, Delete—to fling the incriminating text into the realms of cyberspace, never to be seen again.
But even then, those files wouldn’t be completely gone. Oh no. They’d be biding their time in the Recycle Bin, waiting patiently for the autorecovery software (aka painful reminders) to suddenly call their back-up versions to the screen. And maybe then, confronted with the truth, we’d finally have to come to terms with it.
We all have moments and ideas we’d like to Ctrl + X out of existence. I’ve certainly witnessed my share of them; my pages are filled with thousands of cross-outs accumulated over the years. Some were serious matters, but as difficult as they were to face, I’ve learned and grown from them—and now I know better. Others were childhood dreams, vague and ridiculous fantasies now replaced by my current ambitions—not because they were any less valid, but because I chose to stake my claim in other enterprises. I look back on my past mistakes with a mixture of tenderness and regret, but also a great deal of gratitude for the way they’ve shaped me. So I mark them and remember.
When the time comes for us to share the story of our lives, I imagine we’ll end up reading through a large pile of neatly typed, perfectly formatted manuscripts. The most honest and genuine tales of the bunch, though, are the stapled stacks of lined paper at the bottom, covered with cross-outs and scribbles in indelible black pen. Maybe they’re not the most visually appealing or the most well-written. But neither is life itself. It’s flawed and ugly and imperfect, but that’s what makes the end result so worthwhile—and what ultimately gives it meaning.
Perhaps the word processor is to blame, or perhaps it’s just an inexplicable cultural phenomenon, but the thought and care that once went into the decision-making process has vaporized. Thirty years ago, if you took your SAT on crack, consequently earning a combined score of 400, that was certainly unfortunate, but there was nothing you could really do about it. You screwed up, so you had to deal with the consequences. Today, you can sit down with a SAT booklet and a #2 pencil as many times as you want, confident that if you blow this test, it won’t really count. You always have a second chance...and a third chance...and an eighth chance…and however many chances it takes to achieve those coveted digits (at least, as long as CollegeBoard continues to offers score choice).
Our problem is that we can’t deal with finality. We need the reassurance of an escape hatch, a perpetual opportunity for editing and revision; we can’t handle the prospect of a permanent, unchangeable action that we might later come to regret.
Reality isn’t as forgiving as the backspace key, though. If it were, we’d simply open up Life.doc, scroll through it, and carefully erase those parts of our past we’re ashamed of: the promises we’ve broken, the lies we’ve told—all the memories we’d dearly like to wipe from our mental hard drives. It would take three simple steps—Click, Select All, Delete—to fling the incriminating text into the realms of cyberspace, never to be seen again.
But even then, those files wouldn’t be completely gone. Oh no. They’d be biding their time in the Recycle Bin, waiting patiently for the autorecovery software (aka painful reminders) to suddenly call their back-up versions to the screen. And maybe then, confronted with the truth, we’d finally have to come to terms with it.
We all have moments and ideas we’d like to Ctrl + X out of existence. I’ve certainly witnessed my share of them; my pages are filled with thousands of cross-outs accumulated over the years. Some were serious matters, but as difficult as they were to face, I’ve learned and grown from them—and now I know better. Others were childhood dreams, vague and ridiculous fantasies now replaced by my current ambitions—not because they were any less valid, but because I chose to stake my claim in other enterprises. I look back on my past mistakes with a mixture of tenderness and regret, but also a great deal of gratitude for the way they’ve shaped me. So I mark them and remember.
When the time comes for us to share the story of our lives, I imagine we’ll end up reading through a large pile of neatly typed, perfectly formatted manuscripts. The most honest and genuine tales of the bunch, though, are the stapled stacks of lined paper at the bottom, covered with cross-outs and scribbles in indelible black pen. Maybe they’re not the most visually appealing or the most well-written. But neither is life itself. It’s flawed and ugly and imperfect, but that’s what makes the end result so worthwhile—and what ultimately gives it meaning.