The other day on Instagram — which I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit I use, it’s barely more reputable than a porn site these days — I’d posted a comment on a film reel about movies that seemingly have no plot, noting that some of my favorite movies were listed and that I’m not a fan of heavy plots.

And some troller responded to my comment with a line “is cause and effect getting you down?” I didn’t respond because I didn’t really want to come into contact with all the potential human beings who could post such a comment. But this Montaigne essay, on how we laugh and weep at the same things, provides my answer.

The truth is, we do not have singular, consistent feelings about much in life. Our feelings tend to be complicated and highly contingent on circumstances. Having achieved something, which in most cases might lead to feeling triumphant, we can also feel great sadness for some part of the experience that is coming to an end.

And this is one of my problems with plotting, that linear cause-and-effect attached to so much storytelling. Life is not a syllogism. It’s not something to be worked out and solved. And people are most definitely not that way either. I find the kind of story that moves along a straight line from event to event horribly false, a tool of a creator, not an evolution of events and shifting perspectives.

Nearly everything we do in life includes some element of mixed feelings. As I mentioned yesterday, I have a new songwriting class today, taking it with a teacher who I’ve taken dozens of classes with in the past, but none in the last four years. I’m both looking forward to this and dreading it. The dread part comes from breaking out of my current comfort zone, having to be responsible for creating something and being judged for it. But it also comes from being in a class with people I do not know and have to get to know over the next eight weeks.

And even the other class I have this week on Wednesday evening — a continuation of the class that ended just two weeks ago — includes some minor dreads, such as the people who I remember by face but not by name. It feels safest in life to have as little interpersonal friction as possible, but such friction is necessary to avoid feeling alone in the world (a subject I’ll take up once more in tomorrow’s essay on solitude.)

So, I like films that tend to drift a bit outside of standard plotting because that is how I (and because the filmmakers tell stories this way, I also know that others), experience life. We naturally anticipate and dread at the same time … feel both safety and vulnerability … look forward to things ending, yet wish they could go on forever.

This is also why I enjoy breaking free of standard beginnings and ends — rediscovering music classes, returning to Montaigne, reconnecting with old friends. As my favorite writer Don DeLillo says “all plots move deathward. This is the nature of plots.” And so, we are under no obligation to follow or model our lives upon them.