Watermelon Manifesto
So I have inside of me what I could describe as a terrible seed. It is a secret I go to great lengths to hide, lest my secret shame be revealed. I don’t actually have any fear of it germinating, buried as it is beneath layers of fear, neuroses, doubt, small-mindedness, and self-pity. It dwells in salted ground, always just at the edge of perception. It’s like when I was young, and the older kids would try and convince me that if I swallowed a watermelon seed it would take root and grow in my stomach. I knew it was silly, but from then on I was always conscious of every small, black seed as it slid down my throat, fearing despite reason that my abdomen would one day swell and burst, ripe with fresh watermelon.
And despite reason I fear this terrible seed inside me. Echoing through the tiny chambers of this insignificant, buried speck is a voice, and I guess it’s the voice that worries me the most. It sounds too much like my own voice. It speaks with confidence and conviction, like a megalomaniac with a good speechwriter. Its words exist outside of what I can identify as truth or falsehood. When I hear it I get anxious, excited, afraid, aroused. I get tired of it because it starts to sound like a manifesto, and the world is rotten with manifestos.
But the reason I call it terrible is not its volume or its furor, not the manifestos or the confidence. It’s terrible when it whispers, when it drops its voice and speaks seriously in urgent tones –
“You have to do something,” it hisses. “You are vital. You have a part to play.”
I’m fortunate as a human being to have such an outstanding array of mental defense mechanisms against internal strife like this. Denial, apathy, logic, resentment, and self-loathing all rise up to confront any challenge to the status quo. The voice frequently changes tactics, its tone becoming seductive and encouraging.
“You are unique,” it coos, “boundless by your very nature. You can create things that are significant. You can enact change.”
In the interior darkness reinforcements arrive – disgust, modesty, selfishness, depression, helplessness. The voice tries its best but is vastly outnumbered. It whispers the same plea as it disappears every time –
“You can make a difference!”
And swiftly reason arrives, sovereign of my defense mechanisms, backed by its lieutenants cliché and cynicism. They sow fresh salt over the topsoil. They are thorough and unflinching. Crisis averted, my mind can once again rest at ease.
Honestly, how can any reasonable person accept the idea that one man among billions can make a noticeable difference? It’s laughable! Statistically impossible, even. It’s so clichéd that it’s become an almost worthless sentiment, banished to the realm of self-help tapes and after-school TV specials. No one believes nonsense like that anymore, and why should we?
One tiny voice among billions, one frail life against an awful machine – it’s compelling, the basis of myths and fairy tales but not reality. Mythology never solved anything. Zeus never cured cancer; Poseidon won’t save the whales. God may have given rock and roll to you, but he also gave you loneliness, tragedy, and diabetes. Why shut down my perfectly good human defense mechanisms to be fooled by another old story? Cynicism, which never promised me anything nor failed to deliver, says no. The world is too big, its problems too huge, my life too short, my voice to weak, my vision too short, my spirit too flawed. Too many decisions have contributed to too many mistakes by too few men with too much power, and my place is just to watch as the scene plays out.
But like those watermelon seeds there’s a part of me that won’t ignore the legend. What if it’s true? I grew out of believing my intestines could nurture healthy produce, taught by experience and summer watermelons that Nature operates differently. It was an important step in my development, a triumph of reason over silly children’s tales. Now I know better! You know what happens when you eat a watermelon seed? The same thing that happens to everything you eat:
Eventually you shit it out!
Since it’s a seed it usually survives the journey through your intestines and ends up stuck in your feces, and your feces goes wherever you decide to put it. Ironically, it’s Nature’s way of guaranteeing more watermelons next summer – hide the seeds in something delicious so hungry animals can spread them far and wide without even realizing it. Watermelons, it seems, grow because we swallow them! They are born in our waste, grow and are harvested, consumed, defecated, and are born again.
Cynicism, I guess, has nothing on Nature.
But what about my terrible seed? Could it be like a watermelon? I mean, just because nature has a funny way of spreading its fruit doesn’t validate the nonsense voice inside my head. It does not alleviate my fear of weakness, of hubris, of failure or ridicule. Yet what outrageous pride convinced me to silence this voice in the first place? It took me an entire childhood to understand something so simple as a watermelon. I have no credentials with which to pass judgment on the secret depths of the human spirit.
Maybe my terrible seed is another one of Nature’s tricks, forcing me to survive despite myself. If I refuse apathy, reject self-pity, ignore doubt and deny reason then maybe my tiny, terrible seed will grow. Maybe it will burst from my chest cavity like a rainbow, hope incarnate, destroying my body but in the process saving all of mankind. Maybe nothing at all will happen, and I can retreat into darkness secure in the knowledge that cynicism carries the day.
Or maybe the seed will pass from me and blossom in the remains of my victory or defeat, bear fruit, be consumed, and terrify or excite or otherwise stimulate another, and another, until the truth is evident that Nature plants these terrible seeds to guarantee our survival, and despite our excellent defense mechanisms we would do well to listen.