TL;DR
Life follows three phases—reception, exploration, and settlement—mirroring the shape of a ping-pong bat. In the reception phase, we accept banal truths handed to us without question. In the exploration phase, we challenge or expand on these truths to assert individuality. Finally, in the settlement phase, we either return to the original truths with newfound conviction or create new ones. While banal truths seem simplistic, they are essential for passing wisdom to future generations. Happiness comes from completing these phases at the right time, either embracing established truths or creating new ones to share.
Banal truths are pervasive in our culture – from the songs that fill our hearts with warmth, the movies that leave us in tears, all the way to the unsolicited counsel of strangers, everyone is trying to convince us that “love is all we need”, “chase your dreams”, and “family is gold”. As a direct consequence of the banality of these truths, we tend to associate their truthfulness with our assessment of the character of those who recite them. The way we see it, a rich person can’t possibly lecture us on the deficiencies of wealth from the comfort of their mansion. Neither can one who has achieved so much by being extremely greedy be allowed to extol the virtues of kindness.
We tend to experience these banal truths in three phases: a reception phase, an exploration phase, and a settlement phase. First, we receive them on the authority of those who hand them down to us early in our lives, and then we suspend judgement as we undergo our own exploration, and finally we come to our own version of the truth.
Because most of our lives is a lived experience of banal truths, one cannot be very wrong in observing that our lives, on the whole, will follow a similar three-phased pattern. If we think of life as an attempt to traverse the periphery of ping-pong bat, then we have a good metaphor for life in terms of how we attempt to assert ourselves in the knolwedge and creation of banal truths. In which case; the reception phase corresponds to a straight traversal of the first edge of the bat’s handle; the exploration phase corresponds to the circular traversal of the bat’s head; the settlement phase corresponds to the straight traversal of the second and last edge of the bat’s handle.
In our early ages, we are more inclined to be receivers than givers. Among many other things, we receive the banal truths as are handed down to us by our care givers and communities. Owing to a combination of our limited ability to exercise meaningful judgement and the authority that the givers of these truths have in our lives, we hardly set out to inquire for ourselves the value of what it is that we receive; we take whatever we are given with gratitude and resignation.
This reception phase shares the characteristics of a straight line - steady, stable, organized, and in sync with our immediate environments. In some cases, one’s environment forces them to grow independent very quickly, and reaps them of the luxury to keep receiving for long. In some other situations, some of us stay in this phase too long to make a happy embrace of the next phase challenging.
Because such resignation as is characteristic of the reception phase can only last for so long; we eventually grow in our ability to exercise judgement and as we start to notice the imperfections of our heroes, we question (or totally reject) whatever wisdom they handed down to us. And in a bid to assert our individuality, we trust ourselves to fill the void that follows the rejection of things in which our lives previously subsisted. Some people neither reject nor question what they received, but rather become exposed to more things and have to exercise their judgement in deciding the merit of the new things they encounter. In this sense, the rejection phase can also be thought of as an exploration phase.
The exploration phase is curvilinear, and can look very different based on the personalities that emerged from the reception phase. On the one extreme, the iconoclastic, hyper-independent and unmalleable ones deviate very sharply from the straight line; they embark on a wild ride to discover (sometimes repeal) truths. The assimilated, meek, and settled ones, on the other hand, deviate only slightly; while they may do some exploration, they stay close to the straight line that they have erstwhile trod.
At this rejection/exploration phase, individual paths start to look very unique. While we are all tracing the circular head of the ping-pong bat, a slight difference in the radius of our trajectories can make the initial shapes of our journeys very different; a path with a small radius will start our looking like a mere dot, and a path with a huge radius may even seem perpendicular to the straight line from the previous phase. The individual nature of this phase makes it a rocky phase; one is most likely exploring a path that more often than they would like diverges from those of their contemporaries, there is a higher chance that they don’t see any one directly ahead of them from whom to draw lessons and inspiration, and more often than not, one can’t even be sure of the firmness of the ground on which they must rest the next footstep.
And yet, because it is circular, at some point the exploration phase starts facing the direction from which we came. At this point, we have been there, done that, seen it all, and we are starting to consolidate our own experiences to share with those who are at the reception phase. For most of people, exploration culminates in an unexpected return to the places from which their exploration began (the prodigal son); for a considerable few, to places not so far off (the son who stays away, but maintains ties and occasionally visits); and for an even smaller minority, to completely new places (the son who went for good). The settlement phase is the remaining straight edge of the ping-pong bat.
As we come into settlement, depending on our experiences in exploration, we become more convinced of the banal truths that we had temporarily doubted: family does indeed become everything, and we strive to build lives that are beyond just the pursuit of materialism. For some of us, we discovered new truths that we set out to make banal.
Contrary to what may seem apparent on first judgement, there are two reasons why the banality of truth is not necessarily bad. First, because the banality that makes us remember truths is also the banality that makes us dismiss them as cliche. The more we repeat even things that are true, the more their lack of originality starts inspiring suspicion, the less time we have for introspection, and the more questionable people we find who also claim to believe these truths. Secondly, it would be impossible to communicate wisdom without banal truths. If it took a lifetime (or civilization) to learn that family is everything, it has to take less time to communicate that to the next people to ensure that instead of spending their lives re-learning this important lesson, they can focus on living it, and hopefully discovering new truths. An easy, and unavoidable way to do that is to communicate complex things in a very concise and frequent manner; to create banalities.
We can infer from this metaphor that the quality of our lives depends on our ability to make it through these phases in time. First, our lives are happier if we make it through all the phases; in the same way that one would not be happy to be a child forever, there is little joy in striving forever, and it is the combination of experiences from our reception and rejection phases that make our rediscovery phase meaningful. Secondly, our lives are happier if we get to the various phases at the right time; if one sets out on their own exploration without receiving sufficient banal truths to guide their judgement in the exploration phase, exploration becomes potentially suicidal; if one doesn’t explore sufficiently and comes too quickly to the rediscovery phase, they have very little to appreciate and to add to the lives of others.
If we could live a happy life simply by settling into banal truths soon enough, is there any value in rejection?
Absolutely, yes! Although, it is the sort of value that tends to benefit the collective more than the individual. Every time someone goes off on a sharper tangent, they may or may not make it back to the settlement phase. That is one possibility. The second possibility is that they do make it to the settlement phase. If they do, they must have created a path that is way more useful in terms of information value as compared to the other paths that are too similar to already existing paths, and they increase our banal truth set by being able to teach us things that are true, and yet unconventional once they enter their settlement phase. It is those who reject and rebel that help the most to move us forward.
Life is just a giant ping-pong bat, and while you have to complete a full traversal of this bat to have a happy life, a proper understanding of yourself, and your environment can go a long way in ensuring that you can complete it with fulfillment. If the thought of dealing in commonplace banalities excites you, you can have a happier life by limiting your exploration assimilating banal truths as quickly as possible, and then spending much time dolling them to others. If on the other hand, the thought of dealing in commonplace banalities turns you red, and creating new banalities is all you want to do, then go off and explore! Whatever you do, strive to ensure that once you are done tracing your ping-pong bat, you have become so convinced of old banalities that they feel your life with warmth, or you have discovered new banalities that make you a happy pioneer; it must be one of either, it cannot be neither.