ESSAY // SALOME SIBONEX ON FIGHTING THE FATES
Notes on fear, self-censorship, and artistic integrity
By Salomé Sibonex // Art by Josh Dorman
Volume 4 // Issue 4 // Spring 2023 // Fate
Most people ignore it, but if you try to find it, you’ll notice the thread that’s always pulling you in a particular direction. It’s an unwelcome reminder that something outside of our control is ever-present and ever-willing to intervene in our lives.
The ancient Greeks lived in a world far less under their command than ours, yet wrestled with the certainty of fate in myths to which we still turn. The Greeks believed three goddesses of Fate oversaw our lives from birth to death and were the weavers of that thread representing our lifeline. Clotho was the goddess who started the thread of your life, Lachesis determined its length, and Atropos acted only on the day your thread ceased to pull. The Fates didn’t control every aspect of our lives, but were bookends for them. Fate, like a color-by-numbers picture, lets us choose the colors for a portrait that is predetermined.
You’ll feel that tense but tiny thread within you most when you move against it by making a hard choice, like voicing the only dissenting opinion. Every person is tasked with finding their own way through this life, and for young writers like myself, the journey hinges on finding an inimitable voice. Our highly charged and hyper-critical culture presented me with a choice: Resist the self-censorship that would appease my peers or be pulled into a life of suppression. My story is one that many people today will find kinship with; a story of choosing integrity when it would be easier to let ourselves be pulled into silence.
Clotho—on where I started
I wasn’t born with a strong sense of what I wanted in life. I wasn’t taught to say exactly what I thought or to pursue discomfort if it brought me growth. I was built like most humans are—to avoid pain and pursue pleasure.
Sometimes, I still feel hints of envy that the people-pleasing part of my brain is intact, unlike more battle-ready artists. Perhaps some parts of our lives are predetermined, and my lot in life is to overthink every word and anticipate every response. While I can try making the second-guessing side of my personality recede till my last days, the roots will always remain. Just as the Fates symbolized, there are elements of our lives we can’t change. Upbringing, genetics, and birthplace influence us, but can’t be influenced in return. Why deny what’s out of our hands? The hard edges of our lives make the choices in between all the more powerful.
I knew I was an artist—someone whose contribution to the world is their capacity for honest expression—and yet, my life’s work was coming second to the aim fate had sent me chasing long ago: acceptance. Before I started writing professionally, I embraced an ideology that made honest expression a career risk. I twisted myself into knots to defend ideologies like communism and concealed my insecurity behind armchair activism. I was honing my writerly voice at the very time some people were having theirs stifled by online mobs over unapproved opinions or old tweets—what we now call “cancel culture.”
At the time, the only option I could see was hiding. My writing career was still a fledgling—blind and flightless—when I was publishing essays dressed up to please the identity-obsessed art industry I was trying to enter. One essay was an ode to my grandma that emphasized our Cuban heritage, something as consciously considered by her as water is by a fish. I led with my identity because it’s what I knew publishers wanted; I remember sprinkling in Spanish words purely for the intersectional gold stars. If you aren’t certain about where you’re going in life, it’s easy to be pulled toward pursuing acceptance from the people around you.
Seeing clearly what the art industry wanted from me, I penned creative, impassioned sentences with no authenticity within them. I leaned further into the ideology that gained me acceptance, which also protected me from the harsh criticism of those unlucky souls I watched get publicly maligned in the early days of cancel culture. I dismissed individual opinions because they could be linked to a privileged group; I blamed men for just about everything; I accepted slander as fact if it suited my narrative, like believing Jordan Peterson was a racist and fascist despite having no prior knowledge of him. Integrity is hard to develop a taste for when most of your peers and the larger culture are inviting you into a conveniently comfortable cage. It’s still a much rewarded path. The rhetoric of antiracism and intersectionality were only simmering when I espoused them—today, high salaries and speaking events await some of their proponents.
We’ve reached the part of this essay where you might feel inclined to judge my cowardice. But who I was then is a window into who many people are today: An insecure, confused 20-something isn’t well equipped to combat the spread of a destructive ideology that recasts words as violence and divides people with ideas such as privilege. I watched the scaffolding get built when I had no means to understand that diversity, equity, and inclusion could be used to justify discrimination, abuse, and exclusion. It’s disturbing to watch a sickness take hold of your culture when you have no name for it or defense against it—sometimes all you can do is hide.
Though I didn’t realize it at the time, ideas like privilege scared me; I saw the venom that dripped from the words levied against the people deemed privileged. With no way to debunk these ideas and no desire to be their next target, I became their inconspicuous supporter. The old saying, “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” is wiser than its casual phrasing implies.
I could have easily remained that person. I would’ve been the favorite writer of critics who would now happily see my writing scrubbed from your sight. Many people today are likely standing where I once did: They are lost on their own life’s path, uncomfortable with criticizing the hotly guarded ideologies in progressive circles, and aware that doing so makes them a bright target for a merciless kind of criticism. This is the moment where that tiny thread starts to pull, the moment when some people change their fate and others don’t.
While Fate set me on the path toward safety at the expense of honesty, recognizing the power of my choices helped me to value truth instead of ease. When a fear of biting my tongue bloody and never tasting the artist’s dream of unrestricted self-expression finally outweighed my fear of exclusion and insult, I became the master of my fate.
Living with Lachesis: What is a long life without true character?
Fate and fear are close cousins; tell me your fears and I’ll tell you your fate. When you know public punishment is the price for questioning some ideas, only your character or a fear of something worse can help you face it. As the rot that drove the viciousness of people who said they were acting in the name of “antiracism” became clear, so did the fact that the ideas I once argued for were never truly mine. What was mine was the fear and naivety that caused me to hide behind them.
There’s a version of my story that never changed course. I would’ve gotten better at writing essays that showcase how far words and ideas can be twisted to arrive at predetermined conclusions. That story was struck from the possible stories of my life in the heat of 2020’s George Floyd-inspired riots. I finally merged my public words with my private thoughts, though it meant social death at the time. As I watched people destroy the local businesses of innocent people, and well-meaning protesters and counter-protesters get attacked in the chaos started by a few, I published my simple observation online: Making excuses for other people’s terrible behavior because of their social grievances hurts them and their society. To most people, this statement was uncontroversial; among my peers and the art industry, it was a blasphemous battle cry. I still remember the overwhelming mix of my sweaty hands, the anticipation of insults, and a new feeling that offset all the negativity—a taste of freedom from fear. I still get sweaty hands and anticipate insults when I speak honestly on topics I once would’ve espoused the safe answer to, but once you’ve felt the difference between free-expression and fear-expression, the latter is never again as comforting.
Tasting the sweetness of honesty in the face of controversy was a lesson once summarized by Heraclitus of Ephesus: “Character is fate.” Our character is the only tool we have for taking control of those precious parts of life that can be changed by human hands. But acting from character isn’t something you’re born knowing how to do; it’s a practice you hone. I didn’t know my character was in dire need of development to face the social and political pressure that’s become part of navigating the arts today. When you’re met with the monster of fear, instead of running, character gives you a fighting chance.
We know that some of the tracks we will travel on were laid even before our birth. The conflict most people have with fate isn’t whether it exists, but to what extent it exists, and—more disturbingly—where in our lives has it already written a conclusion without us knowing. Some of our lives mirror the tragedy of Oedipus, tied to unchangeable obstacles. I will never be a person who doesn’t instantly anticipate the reaction to my words, but what could’ve been a restriction has become a strength. Instead of impassioned but empty words, I write the truth with a sharper tongue.
The arts are no less hostile to the critiques of progressive extremes today than they were at the start of my story. You can still lose work and face relentless harassment for countering ideas that become orthodoxy overnight. I still struggle to resist the ease of concealing myself some days. No matter how many times I prove to myself that honesty instead of ease is the answer, that ever-present pull fills me with doubt in the moment. Fighting fate is rarely a grand battle—it’s an unceasing war played out in local struggles, like the one you have getting out of bed early, skipping a second drink, or daring to disagree with ideas that are called unquestionable. It’s me digging into the ugly tangle of my past to lay bare what it takes to pull myself in the direction I choose. The Fates may pull us part of the way, but resistance is how we rival the gods.
Facing Atropos
The most feared of the Fates is Atropos, the Unturnable. The goddess who ends the thread our life follows is stubborn and immovable; that which we have the least influence over is the most frightening. Admitting something is beyond your influence can evoke the helplessness you feel the moment your flight hits turbulence—a terrifying, mortality-highlighting moment. But recognizing “the unturnable” is the process that illuminates what does remain in our hands. In that bleak moment when you imagine what your life would look like if your flight never lands, you don’t lament your birth city or genetics; you think of all the things you could’ve done, but didn’t. You think of all the art you wanted to make but never did, and all the chances you had but never took, and all the words you never said to someone you love.
The pain of staying silent about the issues our culture is facing reached a breaking point when I knew my silence would only cause those issues to grow. I broke my silence and never repaired it when I realized that facing problems I once saw but never named is a heavy burden I didn’t want to carry.
In the final moment when we face Atropos, we will know exactly what was and was not in our hands. I can’t change the past and I know unforeseen obstacles await me in the future, but I can hone my character in preparation for all that would take my choices from me. Fear pulled in one direction for most of my life, but these words are proof you can change the direction fate takes you. My fate wasn’t to write an essay revealing the destructive mindset that once pulled me away from the path I now walk—this was my choice. //
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