This blog, this...book...is largely a collection of stories, the ways in which my life - and all our lives - intersect at a million different points with everyone else's existence, the bricks that comprise the nameless tower that will stretch toward the sun ad infinitum but will never be finished. This should be obvious by now. However, you were warned in beginning that this may contain some philosophies, some misguided ideologies, some elements of poetic grandstanding. I realize that some of you did not come for didacticisms, but simply for a five minute respite from your daily routines, hoping to find some humor or perspective by comparing our mistakes and missteps (like sharing scars); for those of you who feel this way, kindly skip over the following section. It will not hold any truth for you. But for those among you who wake up each day and feel the slightest tinge of hopelessness; for those who always feel one day behind happiness; for those who feel that they can never quite catch their breath - I want you to know that you are not alone.
___________________________________________________________
We have fallen victim to deceit. The deceivers - our parents, our "responsible" friends, our concerned older siblings - mean the best for us, want us to be happy (they do, I promise); they cannot understand why we struggle and fight and refuse to go quietly. They bought into a system that worked for them, and thus feel it should work for everyone, that it should have mass appeal and stunning infomercial-like results. You're not doing it right. No...damnit...you have to do it like this. But for me [and here I will stress that my experience may be entirely singular and I may, in fact, be completely alone], their system is a broken thing. It falls to pieces right out of the box. It is not a compass or a guide; it is a poorly packed parachute, a magician at a birthday party, the feeling of getting lost in the grocery store when you were 4 years-old.
I know you are trying to help. But please...
Just like any good philosophy, the belief system of our worried loved-ones (with their tired eyes and furrowed brows) rests on a number of premises that are taken to be true - that may actually be truths - but which I perceive as non-truths. I have deduced that these pillars of wisdom lack structural integrity, at least in my own life, and should therefore be torn down and replaced with something terrifyingly new and different. But first, let us consider these and my arguments against them:
1. There Is A Timeline (And You Need To Be On It)
Our lives are dictated by schedules. We must wake up before 3 p.m. or we are considered "unmotivated" and compared to a slug by our roommates. We must get to work on time or (our boss had assured us that) "getting to work on time" will cease to be an issue for us. We must return Season 3 of "How I Met Your Mother" to Netflix or they are never going to send us Season 4, damnit. There are certain things we want to accomplish in our lives, and to fit them all in we must line them up neatly on a timetable so that "this" comes before "that" and everything goes according to plan. Here is an example of a timetable:
There are holes in the system. How, for example, are we to assure that we meet our future spouses and are coupled by 28? Are we to just marry whomever we happen to be with at this time (so as to stay on pace)?; are we to force ourselves to fall in love at the appropriate moment, like an actor taking a cue from offstage? And what of this "career" we should be starting at the age of 24? What if we are not ready, at 24, to begin working tirelessly for 40 hours a week (for the next 40 years) in the same office on the same street in the same town? What if we are not ready at 30? What if we are never ready? (A *gasp* from the crowd. A woman faints).
"But Jommy," the females in the room say, flustered, "what if I want to have children? Of course I want to be married and financially secure by then and I'm kindof 'on the clock', you know?...there are risks, and I don't really want to have a baby with Down Syndrome or something...I mean, if I did I would still love it...of course I would love it...it's just, life is hard enough as it is, ya know?" Yes, I understand. There are risks. But in response to your concerns I pose three points:
...and a beautiful segue from my "race" metaphor into...
2. There Is A Finish Line
From a very young age, we are taught that, if we persevere, we will eventually finish whatever race we have been running. "Keep practicing and maybe you'll play pro ball someday [read: cross the finish line]," say the chorus of a million fathers to the hopeful ears of a million naive sons every spring; OR "Keep up the hard work, someday you'll be running this place [read: crossing the finish line]," says the grey-haired CEO insincerely to the unnamed intern; OR "Get a career, stick with it...you'll be retiring in no time [read: crossing the finish line]," says everyone, to me, since I turned 22.
But these, as I perceive them, are non-truths. Perhaps they can be considered goals, mile-markers, points of interest - but they are not endings. There is only one true ending, and that is death. It is the only period in a 1000-page novel that has but a single, exhaustingly-long run-on sentence. (The English major in me shudders at the thought). The idea that we can ever finish the race is a fallacy.
Take retirement, the biggest lie ever sold to the American Working Man (or Woman) in the history of time. Nevermind that we, as twenty-somethings, will never reap the benefits of Social Security, and therefore (for those of us who have no idea what an IRA or 401K is) will work until pieces of us start falling off. Even those baby-boomers now, who DO get Social Security and have decided to retire at 65; they do not stay retired! They all go out and get other jobs! The continue working! They have finished the race, yet they keep running long after the ribbon has been broken and the spectators have left their seats and gone home for the evening. WHY?!?! Because retirement is not a finish line, but simply a water break, a chance to catch one's breath for a moment before continuing on...
No one wants to spend the last twenty years idle, decomposing in an armchair surrounded by a million completed crossword puzzles. [16 down: "having no clear termination point, as in ____ story." (hyphenated word)].
I actually met a guy in Taiwan who claimed that he wrote "Retired" on forms when they asked for his occupation. "Why would you do that," I question. "Because," he said, "I AM retired! Everyone does it all backwards. Why retire when you are old and feeble, unable to explore and hike and sleep on the ground and take a shit in the woods and eat dairy products?!" He smiled like he knew a secret no one else knew. "I will be retired NOW, when I am young and can fully experience my life! I know that it means I will have to work until I die...I'm okay with that. I will pass away in my cubicle, no problem. What the fuck else am I gonna do when I'm 80?" "What about money? Aren't you poor with no job?" I asked, looking for fractures in his logic. "Of course I'm poor!" he exclaimed, "but retirement isn't about having money; it's about having freedom! And besides, most of the retired people I know are poor anyway. MIght as well be poor now when I can make the best of it."
Can you imagine, working your entire life, saving diligently, making every responsible decision so that, one day, you can retire comfortably, and then as you are coming home from your last day of work you are struck by a truck who runs a red light and are instantly killed?
But all of this may be missing the point entirely: It is not about the finish line (even if there was one); It is only about the race itself. We are not here to finish anything. We are here to run, run in the sunshine and in the rain, run to those we love, run until our lungs are bursting and tears are streaming down our cheeks and we think - we know - we will collapse but we don't because we will never stop. We will run forever.
...and that brings us to...
3. The Best Lived Life is One Lived With No Regrets
If we do everything to the best of our ability, if we try our hardest and leave everything on the table, if we take every opportunity to engage life, to experience life...then we will have no regrets at the end, when it is all said and done. We will be able to read through our stories with absolute satisfaction, knowing that we have written them in the best possible way.
This is Lie #3: There is no such thing as a life without regret.
Regret is inherent to the human condition. It is part of our makeup, intrinsic to us, interwoven into the fabric of our beings. This is not to say that we, as people, are regretful. Or that we constantly harp upon the past and wonder "what could have been" or "I wish I would've have done this or that differently." (Though I tend to find myself doing this more than I would like to admit). No, I would never advocate regret in this form of second-guessing and backtracking, for then its persistence in our lives would mean that happiness was altogether impossible.
We live with regret because life, as we experience it, is made up of choices, an infinite number of choices that begins accosting us when we are 2 years old and does not let up into we go to sleep for the last time. We must choose everything. We must choose our appearances, our schools, our lovers, our jobs, our attitudes, our beliefs, and our identities. We must make choices about what to eat that day, which way to turn at an intersection, whether to give money to a homeless man or not. We must choose one thing, one direction, one path. But because we choose, something always gets lost. Something is always not chosen.
Two paths diverged in a yellow wood...
Regret, by definition, denotes loss; a missing of something. For each choice we make, we miss out on something. Most of the time we make the decision that is obvious, the right decision, the decision that will yield us happiness or keep us safe or prevent us from getting food poisoning [a little mold never hurt anybody, right?]. But sometimes, we make the wrong decision. And sometimes, there is no right decision; sometimes, all options look equally valid. What then?
I realize, to most normal people, looking at life this way would be maddening. "You cannot possibly scrutinize every decision and try to play out how you think your life would go if you had chosen the other path, Jommy," you rationalize, because you are a rational person, "you will drive yourself insane." And I do. But the truth is, we all have questions about our lives, we all wonder where we would be if we would have chosen Door #2 instead of taking the money and calling it quits. I firmly believe that even the happiest people in the world still hear that faint whisper when the house is quiet and the moon is casting shadows in the dark blue midnight: what if...
It is not about living a life without regret, therefore, but learning to live with the regrets we have. We will have to make choices. We will not have time to do everything, to see everything, to experience everything this life has to offer us. We will choose to have children instead of travel the world; we will choose to have promising careers instead of starting rock bands in basements; we will choose to live in Phoenix or Baltimore. We cannot do it all, some things must be differed indefinitely.
Happiness is possible when we realize that regret is unavoidable, but that our regrets shape us as much as our choices. We are a product of all the things we have chosen to do and not to do. We must embrace our losses, and then learn to let them go (because loss is part of living and confirms that "yes, you are alive. Now, right now...this is life!").
We are all just trying to do the best that we can with what we have been given.
___________________________________________________________
We have fallen victim to deceit. The deceivers - our parents, our "responsible" friends, our concerned older siblings - mean the best for us, want us to be happy (they do, I promise); they cannot understand why we struggle and fight and refuse to go quietly. They bought into a system that worked for them, and thus feel it should work for everyone, that it should have mass appeal and stunning infomercial-like results. You're not doing it right. No...damnit...you have to do it like this. But for me [and here I will stress that my experience may be entirely singular and I may, in fact, be completely alone], their system is a broken thing. It falls to pieces right out of the box. It is not a compass or a guide; it is a poorly packed parachute, a magician at a birthday party, the feeling of getting lost in the grocery store when you were 4 years-old.
I know you are trying to help. But please...
Just like any good philosophy, the belief system of our worried loved-ones (with their tired eyes and furrowed brows) rests on a number of premises that are taken to be true - that may actually be truths - but which I perceive as non-truths. I have deduced that these pillars of wisdom lack structural integrity, at least in my own life, and should therefore be torn down and replaced with something terrifyingly new and different. But first, let us consider these and my arguments against them:
The Three Lies
Our lives are dictated by schedules. We must wake up before 3 p.m. or we are considered "unmotivated" and compared to a slug by our roommates. We must get to work on time or (our boss had assured us that) "getting to work on time" will cease to be an issue for us. We must return Season 3 of "How I Met Your Mother" to Netflix or they are never going to send us Season 4, damnit. There are certain things we want to accomplish in our lives, and to fit them all in we must line them up neatly on a timetable so that "this" comes before "that" and everything goes according to plan. Here is an example of a timetable:
- 22: Graduate College
- 22-24: Travel, Kill Some Time, Sleep Around, Be Irresponsible
- 24: Begin My Career
- 25-27: Meet The Man/Woman of My Dreams & Fall in Love
- BEFORE 28!!!: Get Married
- BEFORE 30!!!: Have First Child
- BEFORE 35!!!: Stop Having Childs
- 65: Retire
There are holes in the system. How, for example, are we to assure that we meet our future spouses and are coupled by 28? Are we to just marry whomever we happen to be with at this time (so as to stay on pace)?; are we to force ourselves to fall in love at the appropriate moment, like an actor taking a cue from offstage? And what of this "career" we should be starting at the age of 24? What if we are not ready, at 24, to begin working tirelessly for 40 hours a week (for the next 40 years) in the same office on the same street in the same town? What if we are not ready at 30? What if we are never ready? (A *gasp* from the crowd. A woman faints).
"But Jommy," the females in the room say, flustered, "what if I want to have children? Of course I want to be married and financially secure by then and I'm kindof 'on the clock', you know?...there are risks, and I don't really want to have a baby with Down Syndrome or something...I mean, if I did I would still love it...of course I would love it...it's just, life is hard enough as it is, ya know?" Yes, I understand. There are risks. But in response to your concerns I pose three points:
- You will, in all liklihood, not be ready for your child when you have one. You will not be financially secure. It will come at the worst possible time for your career. You may not even be married. You forgot to give your baby a copy of your Timeline in advance. Ooops. I'm sorry. You will love me anyway.
- So, let's say you "run out of time." 35 comes and goes, and your maternal clock has counted down to zero detonating a blitzkrieg-style maternal bombing raid on your maternal psyche. If you still desire a child so bad, why not adopt? Will you love an adopted child any less than you would a natural one? (If you say "yes" then you are a bad person). "But there is just something about having a piece of me, something I made, in the world..." you say. Grow up, narcissist. Paint a goddam picture if you are so obsessed with leaving your mark on this planet...
- Perhaps we are not all meant to have children, and your timeline needs to be amended. Everyone will be forced to make sacrifices in their lives; maybe yours is giving up the dream of having a bunch of screaming, crying, ADD-riddled children sprinting around giving each other pink eye. Look at it this way: You will have SO much more time, money, and measurable success than any of your friends, and your body will look great well into your 40s...
...and a beautiful segue from my "race" metaphor into...
2. There Is A Finish Line
From a very young age, we are taught that, if we persevere, we will eventually finish whatever race we have been running. "Keep practicing and maybe you'll play pro ball someday [read: cross the finish line]," say the chorus of a million fathers to the hopeful ears of a million naive sons every spring; OR "Keep up the hard work, someday you'll be running this place [read: crossing the finish line]," says the grey-haired CEO insincerely to the unnamed intern; OR "Get a career, stick with it...you'll be retiring in no time [read: crossing the finish line]," says everyone, to me, since I turned 22.
But these, as I perceive them, are non-truths. Perhaps they can be considered goals, mile-markers, points of interest - but they are not endings. There is only one true ending, and that is death. It is the only period in a 1000-page novel that has but a single, exhaustingly-long run-on sentence. (The English major in me shudders at the thought). The idea that we can ever finish the race is a fallacy.
Take retirement, the biggest lie ever sold to the American Working Man (or Woman) in the history of time. Nevermind that we, as twenty-somethings, will never reap the benefits of Social Security, and therefore (for those of us who have no idea what an IRA or 401K is) will work until pieces of us start falling off. Even those baby-boomers now, who DO get Social Security and have decided to retire at 65; they do not stay retired! They all go out and get other jobs! The continue working! They have finished the race, yet they keep running long after the ribbon has been broken and the spectators have left their seats and gone home for the evening. WHY?!?! Because retirement is not a finish line, but simply a water break, a chance to catch one's breath for a moment before continuing on...
No one wants to spend the last twenty years idle, decomposing in an armchair surrounded by a million completed crossword puzzles. [16 down: "having no clear termination point, as in ____ story." (hyphenated word)].
I actually met a guy in Taiwan who claimed that he wrote "Retired" on forms when they asked for his occupation. "Why would you do that," I question. "Because," he said, "I AM retired! Everyone does it all backwards. Why retire when you are old and feeble, unable to explore and hike and sleep on the ground and take a shit in the woods and eat dairy products?!" He smiled like he knew a secret no one else knew. "I will be retired NOW, when I am young and can fully experience my life! I know that it means I will have to work until I die...I'm okay with that. I will pass away in my cubicle, no problem. What the fuck else am I gonna do when I'm 80?" "What about money? Aren't you poor with no job?" I asked, looking for fractures in his logic. "Of course I'm poor!" he exclaimed, "but retirement isn't about having money; it's about having freedom! And besides, most of the retired people I know are poor anyway. MIght as well be poor now when I can make the best of it."
Can you imagine, working your entire life, saving diligently, making every responsible decision so that, one day, you can retire comfortably, and then as you are coming home from your last day of work you are struck by a truck who runs a red light and are instantly killed?
But all of this may be missing the point entirely: It is not about the finish line (even if there was one); It is only about the race itself. We are not here to finish anything. We are here to run, run in the sunshine and in the rain, run to those we love, run until our lungs are bursting and tears are streaming down our cheeks and we think - we know - we will collapse but we don't because we will never stop. We will run forever.
...and that brings us to...
3. The Best Lived Life is One Lived With No Regrets
If we do everything to the best of our ability, if we try our hardest and leave everything on the table, if we take every opportunity to engage life, to experience life...then we will have no regrets at the end, when it is all said and done. We will be able to read through our stories with absolute satisfaction, knowing that we have written them in the best possible way.
This is Lie #3: There is no such thing as a life without regret.
Regret is inherent to the human condition. It is part of our makeup, intrinsic to us, interwoven into the fabric of our beings. This is not to say that we, as people, are regretful. Or that we constantly harp upon the past and wonder "what could have been" or "I wish I would've have done this or that differently." (Though I tend to find myself doing this more than I would like to admit). No, I would never advocate regret in this form of second-guessing and backtracking, for then its persistence in our lives would mean that happiness was altogether impossible.
We live with regret because life, as we experience it, is made up of choices, an infinite number of choices that begins accosting us when we are 2 years old and does not let up into we go to sleep for the last time. We must choose everything. We must choose our appearances, our schools, our lovers, our jobs, our attitudes, our beliefs, and our identities. We must make choices about what to eat that day, which way to turn at an intersection, whether to give money to a homeless man or not. We must choose one thing, one direction, one path. But because we choose, something always gets lost. Something is always not chosen.
Two paths diverged in a yellow wood...
Regret, by definition, denotes loss; a missing of something. For each choice we make, we miss out on something. Most of the time we make the decision that is obvious, the right decision, the decision that will yield us happiness or keep us safe or prevent us from getting food poisoning [a little mold never hurt anybody, right?]. But sometimes, we make the wrong decision. And sometimes, there is no right decision; sometimes, all options look equally valid. What then?
I realize, to most normal people, looking at life this way would be maddening. "You cannot possibly scrutinize every decision and try to play out how you think your life would go if you had chosen the other path, Jommy," you rationalize, because you are a rational person, "you will drive yourself insane." And I do. But the truth is, we all have questions about our lives, we all wonder where we would be if we would have chosen Door #2 instead of taking the money and calling it quits. I firmly believe that even the happiest people in the world still hear that faint whisper when the house is quiet and the moon is casting shadows in the dark blue midnight: what if...
It is not about living a life without regret, therefore, but learning to live with the regrets we have. We will have to make choices. We will not have time to do everything, to see everything, to experience everything this life has to offer us. We will choose to have children instead of travel the world; we will choose to have promising careers instead of starting rock bands in basements; we will choose to live in Phoenix or Baltimore. We cannot do it all, some things must be differed indefinitely.
Happiness is possible when we realize that regret is unavoidable, but that our regrets shape us as much as our choices. We are a product of all the things we have chosen to do and not to do. We must embrace our losses, and then learn to let them go (because loss is part of living and confirms that "yes, you are alive. Now, right now...this is life!").
We are all just trying to do the best that we can with what we have been given.
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