How People Are Fed a Bunch of Beautiful Promises That Lead Only to Misery

A reflection on ‘Animal Farm’ by George Orwell

I’ve reached a significant point of transition. I’ve come to the sobering realization that there are more days behind than there are ahead. This has been true for a while, but it’s something I’ve only recently been able to acknowledge.

There’s value in submitting to an occasional life audit. Many people avoid this kind of introspection because they’re fearful of what they will find.

Our existence is the intersection point of many potential realities. Like Schrodinger’s cat, all the possibilities are both alive and dead. We’re nourished by dreams that give us the power to survive our weary days. These hopes are as real to us as the past, but the truth of our experience won’t be apparent until it’s over.

At the end of your story, there will be no living record of the beautiful dream that provided a heading during your time of strength. Only the result of your actions will remain, and often those results are downright ugly.

I’ve just finished reading Animal Farm to my daughters. Early on there was a line about parasitic humans that caused them to break out into laughter.

We didn’t laugh much after that.

At the end of the first chapter, my daughter said, “This isn’t going to end well.” I found that comment to be a succinct and accurate prediction of the story’s trajectory.

I hope she has the wisdom to listen to those instincts as she makes her way around the many obstacles of life. Perhaps the best advice we can give is to empower our children to heed their own predictions.

I first read the book when I was in high school in the early nineties. It’s one of those titles that everyone has heard of, but nobody thinks about. The reason is that the concept is a bit of a gimmick. Every word is delivered with a wink and an elbow nudge, and by the end you’re bruised and battered and snapping, “I get it, I get it.”

Animal Farm does not introduce you to characters you come to love and who will always be there to provide comfort in challenging times. In fact, it’s the opposite.

It feels like it was cranked out on a spiteful weekend to take a singular concept out behind the tool shed and beat it to death. Tragically, there’s evidence that the book has failed in this objective. The concept still lives.

In many ways, Animal Farm remains a sobering reflection of what is going on in modern politics. Even when you take talking animals and use them to deliver urgent and oversimplified warnings, the people still don’t seem to get it.

In high school, I recognized that Animal Farm denounced totalitarianism. In the eighties, we assumed all criticisms were directed at the Soviet Union.

It lands differently now.

Today, I read it with the understanding that every one of the lies told by Napoleon routinely turns up in almost any newspaper you might find anywhere in the world.

The part of the book that resonated most when I read it in my teens is still the part I’m drawn to in my fifties. It’s the story of Boxer, the hardworking horse. Of all the animals, Boxer demonstrates the greatest commitment to the ideology of his community. His motto is to work harder and to never question the judgment of his leaders.

He could be called a “true patriot.”

Boxer is always the first to arrive and the last to leave. He’s promised a retirement and pension at age twelve, and so he places that objective like a shining light upon a distant hill and marches forward without question or complaint.

He dreams of the day he can relax in the pasture and reflect with pride upon the significance of his achievements.

It doesn’t end well.

A few months shy of his twelfth birthday, Boxer falls ill and is sent to the glue factory. With him dies the hope of all the wonderful things he was promised.

He’d obeyed all the rules, but in the end Boxer’s opponents were playing a different game.

It’s startling to recognize that though the dream of the pasture accompanied Boxer throughout his life, the reality of it is completely absent from his final audit. The pasture never got a chapter. It was never a tangible thing. It didn’t really exist.

But Boxer always went about his labors with the steadfast faith that not only was the pasture real, he was heading there. He was twice wrong.

It was jarring to read Boxer’s story when my life was but a blank page. I understand it better after having made a lifetime of choices that cannot be undone.

Our lives are a sequence of permanent decisions. Even the ones we make carelessly are recorded in time. It’s a paralyzing responsibility to contemplate how to get the most out of every moment. I think the fear of making a mistake leaves us vulnerable to deceitful influences.

Looking back, I realize I never established the heading of a shining point upon a distant hill. I didn’t put on my blinders and march confidently in a set direction.

I never felt any steadfast certainty. So, I did the opposite. I occupied myself with avoiding the paths I suspected “Would not end well.”

It’s as if I’ve walked through my life facing backwards. It seems like an odd thing to describe, but it has some advantages when you stop and think about it.

There is no set path in the future. The only solid path that you have is in the past. The future contains every possibility, the path you’ve traveled only contains one. If you put on blinders and march in the direction of a predetermined point, you will never get there.

The point in your imagination remains forever a point in the distance. It’s a mirage. It’s not getting any closer because there is no reality to the future. The future is only a zone of potential. The only reality you’ll ever know is in the past.

Don’t make the mistake of disregarding your past in pursuit of a future that does not and will never exist.

An example can be found in the path I took to find my wife. I had other girlfriends before I met her, and they were wonderful people. But something prevented me from making a commitment to them.

In those relationships, I carried with me a dream of how I thought our union would be. Eventually I realized the dream and my reality did not and would never align.

When that disparity becomes clear, you have to make a choice. The choice becomes harder the more time you waste by walking in the wrong direction.

Your trajectory is easier to perceive when you turn back to face the reality of where you are rather than remain fixated on where you want to go.

By facing backwards, I never deluded myself into a false insistence that my heading was unquestionably true. That gave me the freedom to change directions and explore a wider swath of reality. I sacrificed a sense of certainty in my early years. It paid off in middle age.

You get to a point where the seeds you planted in your youth have either taken root and grown, or they’ve withered and died. There also comes a day when you plant seeds with the full awareness that you’ll never see them bloom.

“Poor Boxer,” my girls said as I closed the cover. That, too, seemed an appropriate summary of the book. We should all aspire to avoid his tragic fate. I hope they take that lesson to heart as I did.

You can be mistaken as indecisive when you’re cautious about your choices. But at fifty, I recognize that the decisions I make now will not have the same impact as those I made when I was eighteen.

I’ve avoided crippling fear by not pursuing what is “right” for me. Instead, I’ve made my focus the avoidance of things I knew to be wrong. I’ve meandered and had many experiences while I continually monitored my trajectory. There is no certainty in this existence.

Your progress stops the moment you establish a preset determination of where you will end up. I’ve found that the best things in my life are the miracles I’ve stumbled upon while feeling around in the dark.

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