RevSpork

I take offense

Last week I found myself coaching a group of eighth-graders, all boys, in creative writing.  I enjoy this volunteer work a lot; I love helping kids learn they have something valuable to say to the world around them.  When I sensed some were holding themselves back, I explained to them my definition of self-expression.

"Let's talk fingerprints," I began, holding up my hand, "Fingerprints are totally unique: nobody has the same fingerprint.  Self-expression is also unique.  It's the fingerprint of the soul.  How you express yourself, whether it's in painting, in song, in prose, in poetry, in rap - nobody can duplicate that.  When you express yourself to your friends, in your school, your church, your community - you are saying to the world, 'This is me.  This is my soul.'  Nobody can take that away from you."

Profound?  I guess.  It's what I've always believed, and moreover, something I've always wanted to tell kids.  They must understand their uniqueness, that their contributions to the world around them can be just as important as those of the president.  Without self-expression, self-awareness would be useless; we might as well climb back into the trees and throw excrement at each other. 

So why do I stifle my own self-expression?  More importantly, why am I pressured to stifle my self-expression?

My wife recently sent me a New York Times article about the change in job searches.  Among other things, recruiters are using the big mainstream job search engines like Monster and Careerbuilder less and relying more on social networking sites like Facebook.  But writer Alina Tugend warns the job hunter, "...get anything that looks bad off your page. That photo of you drunk at a Halloween party, those musings about how much you hate your boss — not a good impression." 

Now I can understand removing diatribes against your boss - if you're going to use a social networking site to promote your résumé, writing about your asshole of a boss is not a smart idea.  But deleting photos of you having a good time at a Halloween party?  Why? 

The Chinese curse may be "May you live in interesting times," but there's nothing in that saying about interesting people.  You may say, "Those party photos may reflect your lack of professionalism."  Well, sure, if it's an office party and you've slapped your supervisor's ass with your own lanyard.  But why would recruiters want people who are just as "professional" outside the office as in?  I take offense. 

The older I get, the more often I'm quietly warned by society to tone my personality down.  And the older I get, the quieter I see friends and acquaintances, making me stick out more and more like a sore thumb.  Given, I have toned down in the last decade or so.  My mental filter is more effective, I'm less hyper, and if you've heard anything about my sex life in the last few years, consider yourself a very special friend.  But it never seems to be enough.  I feel more and more pressure to watch what I say, that even the blandest of my statements can offend, and that my self-expression is detrimental to my professional life, even though my personality is far more subdued in the work environment than anywhere else. 

It all comes down to "maturity," some say.  "Maturity" is one of those words that, the more you try to define it, the less likely you'll succeed.  What is maturity?  The American Heritage Dictionary defines "maturity" as "the state or quality of being fully grown or developed."  Such a definition is easy if you're studying, say, a sheep, or an apple, but what of a human being? 

Ah, but this is humanity we're talking about.  There's more to maturity than simply being full grown.  I am pushing 38 years of age, so it's safe to say that I'm physically mature.  But mentally mature?  Am I mentally fully developed?  Hell, no.  My mind is in a constant state of development, and the day I reach my full potential mentally is the day I go to the morgue. 

Emotionally mature?  Ah, that's the ticket.  That's what society demands: emotional maturity, and that's where society's desire for emotional maturity and the need for self-expression frequently clash.  Our capacity for self-expression begins before we learn to walk and talk; indeed, through a combination of our environment and the growth of our brains, the vast majority of that capacity occurs in childhood.  That self-expression, like our bodies, grows and matures, but just we don't suddenly become adults at the age of eighteen, or twenty-one, or even thirty.  Our adult bodies are larger versions of our childhood bodies - we're not frogs - and how we look today is basically a continuation of how we looked as children.  It's the same deal with self-expression.  Who we are as emotional and creative beings is rooted in our immature selves; we cannot deny that.  My immature self lives in me all my life; why should I gag it because society looks down on it? 

What does all this rigmorole mean?  I feel pressured to cloak that immature part of me, that critical chunk of self-expression that makes me me, as the price of admission into the real world.  If I want to succeed in the real world, I must black out what I consider the most interesting parts of my consciousness. 

I could drone on, of course.  I could discuss how cruelly ironic it is that society demands maturity in the real world, yet popular culture is nothing but immature; how celebrities display their immature selves to the love of that same society.  However, my time is up.  I need to iron my suit jacket, redo my résumé, knot my tie, and go forth into the job market disguised as someone else.

Anxieties about Barack Obama

I hear it from my wife. I hear it from friends and coworkers. Because for fans and supporters of Barack Obama's presidential campaign, the idea of a liberal, articulate politician seeming to point the way to a positive, hopeful future has stepped beyond mere romantic fantasy. Even setting aside the Bush Junior years, which certainly rank as some of the darkest, most cynical years of American history, it's hard to summon up genuine enthusiasm for any president during my lifetime.

It feels too good to be true, doesn't it? We'll wake up one day and find the whole feeling a cruel illusion. Some Sirhan Sirhan-like creature will gun him down, or he'll peel off the mask and reveal a more cynical, corrupt - in other words, business as usual - face.

It's the curse of mortality - hope is never permanent. Eventually either the hope or the hoper evaporates into the air. The fear is ugly as fresh dog shit, and even as our hopes and aspirations for our nation reaches ever higher heights, that ill-smelling whiff - or just the idea of it - gathers its forces in our brain cells, just waiting for the opportunity to take over the brain with a sardonic "Ha! I told you it was all a crock!"

All I can say is...don't fret. This isn't 1968. If anything, this is the antidote to 1968...and 2000...and 2004. We are witnessing the end of the Decade of the Asshole. Hasn't this decade felt that way? Assholes who fly planes into buildings, assholes who run our country into the ground, assholes who loot their corporations and wipe out their employees and stockholders, assholes who always win reality TV shows, assholes who bilk the poor out of their money and houses and pensions, assholes who prevent gays from getting married while snorkling some twink on the side...we've jumped the shark on that bullshit. The national nightmare will end.

Could I be wrong? Sure. I have my doubts like everyone else. But worrying about it won't make it happen or not happen. Let it go. All shall be well, dammit.

Simple me

I've often been described as an eccentric, along with all the positive and negative synonyms one can find in a standard thesaurus. I've always been divided about that: for one, I revel in my eccentricities, mostly because to not do so would no doubt facilititate my descent into insanity. However, I am a faithful follower of Yossarian, Catch-22's great prophet, who firmly believed that he was the only sane person alive, and that everyone else was crazy. I first read that book when I was sixteen, and nothing in the past twenty years has tempted me to turn from that axiom.

I have found that the harder folks strive towards social norms, the more dirty little idiosyncracies they're hiding. (I now call this the "BTK Rule.") Obviously there are certain back roads that are best not explored or lit up, but these are because of humanitarian considerations, not social ones. If you want to run naked down Michigan Avenue screaming "Eureka!", for instance, fine with me; if you run down Michigan Avenue ripping strangers' clothes off and forcing them to run naked, then I do have objections to that. (There are those who might object to someone running naked in public, believing that such exposure to, say, children, is harmful. These people are lunatics.) I find it healthy, both for the individual and for society, for eccentricities be both expressed and flaunted for the public eye. When society stifles eccentricity, it invites confusion, self doubt, and the blossoming of neuroses far darker and more corrosive than the original deviation. It is no surprise that the U.S. is easily the most neurotic nation on Earth.

Is there a danger? Of course. If everyone expressed their eccentricities, then they would become common and thus "normal." Take homosexuals: until relatively recently, the sight of two men or two women holding hands as they walked down a crowded sidewalk, even in Chicago, would invite stares and/or glares in their direction. Nowadays, this has become so commonplace in many areas of the country, nobody even blinks if they're wrapped around each other, snatching a kiss. (Some gays and lesbians lament this, feeling the social "normalization" of homosexuality has somehow taken something away from them. Of course it has: one-dimensional, boring folks can't use homosexuality alone to generate attention anymore. Live with it.)

Sure, public recognition and display of eccentricities would make these more "normal" in society and its owners less "special." This is how it should be. My eccentricities do not make me "special" or "unique" - they simply define me as an individual human being. Stifling my eccentricities subtract from that definition and thus make me less "me." So much emotional pain is inflicted on our own souls through trying to make entire chunks of them invisible. Furthermore, stifling eccentricities makes them invisible to others, including those who may share them, leading to the Big Lies that they are "alone in the universe" and "nobody can understand me." Those Big Lies have led to more psychotic episodes than any imbalance in the biochemical soup inside our heads.

Yes, I have some idiosyncracies. Yes, I am public about them. I have garnered sufficient wisdom in my thirty-six years to understand them, and to take neither pride nor shame in them. They simply are, and they help define simple me.

Games people play

I don't like it. I don't feel comfortable with it. And so many of my friends feel like I do, seemingly trapped in jobs that add more stress to the soul with very little to offer in return besides a paycheck.

Happy New Year & all that

Here's a New Year message from me:

On New Years Eve, the Girlfriend and I took in some educational programming: namely, TV Land's Top 100 Television Moments of All Time.  Or something like that.  Most of them were pretty goofy (Who really gives a shit about Richard Hatch?), but it was the top two that resulted in serious discussion between the Girlfriend and I.  #2 was the moon landing; #1 was 9/11.  At the very end of the show, Walter Cronkite is asked about the comparisons between the two events in terms of historical value.  Cronkite, whose love and support of science is well-known, stated he believed the moon landing was far more important in the long run, for it marked an important step in the evolution of humanity, while who will remember 9/11 200, 300 years from now?  Sure, I told the Girlfriend.  Cronkite, a true liberal, an optimistic, and a firm believer in the infinite potential of humanity, simply stated the logical. 

But 9/11 could very well overtake the moon landing as the major historical event.  The moon landing was a positive event in human history.  It was more than a symbol of the infinite potential of humanity; it was proof of it.  The 9/11 terrorists attacks were the flip side of that infinite potential: to wipe humanity from the face of the earth.

In my opinion, we have two paths, each launched by these two events.  The moon landing can lead us to further exploration, not only of the worlds around us, but of the world within us.  It has always been my deepest belief that humanity should live like we are God's children, learning and growing and maturing until we can touch God's face, to become like God.  The moon landing was a baby step in that direction. 

The terrorist attacks of 9/11, on the other hand, was a step in the opposite direction, the triumph of hatred over love, insanity over reason, ignorance over knowledge.  It was truly an act of evil.  To kill in God's name is to profane it.  The terrorist attacks could very well mark the beginning of the end not only of our democracy, but of all civilization.  In this scenario, 9/11 would be the historical marker, but in the end, there would be nobody left to commemorate or regret it.

It is our ultimate task, as human beings, to work to ensure we tread on the correct path.  Do it any way you can.  Spread love, knowledge, reason, kindness.  It's easier than you think.

Okay, I'm done for the night.  Happy New Year.  Peace be with you.