Ripples

I'm going to have to start this with a spoiler alert for anyone who's not seen Season Four of Dexter. But this isn't going to be your standard review of a TV show. Granted, Dexter is not exactly Citizen Kane. It's not even The Wire. It's often sort of tongue in cheek even though it deals with some unusual themes; I mean, the hero is a serial killer. And so in some ways you might not expect to get anything but some of the darker side of light entertainment from it.

But I have a soft spot for Dexter. The show and the character. He has this urge to kill. But he's basically a good guy. And he doesn't really know how to fit in with all the 'normal' people, and how to survive. And all he really wants is two mutually exclusive things: a 'normal' life, and to be able to indulge his 'dark passenger'. For four seasons, he more or less muddles through. Because his intentions are good--he only kills killers--and he has a little hero's luck, yeah, lots of bad things happen, but they don't really touch him. And they didn't really touch me.

If you know me well, you'll see maybe a little of why I've always identified with Dexter. I don't kill people, clearly. The dark secrets I do have aren't going to make any front pages. But part of me--my 'dark passenger'--wants to live a life that isn't sustainable, isn't compatible with getting older, with having people you love around you, with making your peace with life. And, up to the last few years, like Dexter, I've managed to muddle through, doing just that without really hurting anyone too much, and so without it really touching me. I always fall in the shit, but it's always the scent of roses in the end.

But at the end of Season Four, Dexter is spinning too many plates. He's relying on too many 'it should be Ok's. And he drops a plate, big time. His preying on killers comes back to bite him when one of his marks murders his wife. You're jaunting along with him for the ride, and the needle screeches across the record, wincingly. And finally, it touches him. And it touched me. It struck a chord with something I've been thinking for a long time, in relation to my life, and the lives of some other people around me who have some of the same tendencies.

It's all caught up in a certain optimism, together with a certain attitude of 'what they don't know can't hurt them', that leads to the idea that you can live falsehoods. You can keep people in the dark about parts of yourself, and live in a way you know they wouldn't be able to swallow, because 'it'll all be Ok in the end'. they won't know about it, because the end will be good enough to justify the means. But there comes a point when the means, I think, become the end. The way you live your life is who you are, not some far-off point you're hoping to get to, some person you'll become when you've got this out of your system.

And the way you live your life creates ripples, ripples you will never be able to control all of. A lot of them will go unnoticed, for a long time, maybe. But getting away with it doesn't mean that, one day, one of those ripples won't become a wave which will rock your boat, with all the people in it that you care about. Dexter's ripples capsized his boat. It was a piece of bad luck that allowed it to happen. It shouldn't have happened. But life is full of those little quirks, and the only way you can be sure to guard against it is to live in a way you can justify not just in the best of all possible outcomes, but in all of them.