Opportunities and Lessons
Last week, I didn’t get as much of a chance to write about Sam-related issues as I would have liked: between practicing for a wedding and three days worth of bluegrass gigs, I only finished about half of what I wanted to write about, my interactions with Sam’s maternal grandparents and how those interactions probably need to be tweaked for his benefit. I really have to make those regularly occurring incidents more neutral.
While I didn’t have much time to write about what opportunities I have to teach Sam, I did get a lot of time to think about the topic. And the answer is “nothing good”.
This is what I have learned in my nearly 37 years of life:
Most people are liars and not worthy of trust.
You’re lucky if you have two or three lifelong friends
You’re lucky if your own family doesn’t fuck you over.
You can’t trust your own government to look out for you.
There is no hope for humanity, which always finds a way to make life unpleasant.
There’s a food shortage coming. There’s an environmental disaster coming. There is a permanent energy crisis coming. We are less free every day.
Most people are stupid.
Life is unpleasant.
When you want something you have to grab it before someone else does.
Do unto others before they do unto you.
Humanity is swine.
Honestly, one of the reasons I never wanted children to begin with is the simple fact that there is no hope and no future for humanity, unless you consider the Hobbesian dystopia we face as hopeful, and I certainly don’t. I never wanted to have children, and believe (as I have for as long as I can remember) that bringing kids into this world is cruel. We are all going to die, probably en masse, and who wants to put a human being through that? What kind of responsible person brings MORE people into this dying world? Not this guy: at least that’s what my plan was for the past 20 years, and what it continues to be recent developments notwithstanding. “Hope”. The very idea of “hope for the future” is a bad joke at humanity’s expense. There is no hope. Nothing. For that matter, there’s no meaning to life either, no revelation outside of existence itself. Vonnegut comes close when he says “we’re put here on this earth to fart around.” Jack Kevorkian isn’t some kid of demon: he should be a national hero for teaching us that it’s OK to check out of this rotten life when the pain becomes too much to bear. And while I’m too much of a coward to commit suicide (life is unpleasant and difficult enough without a suicide going wrong and having to go through the remainder of my time with half my face missing because the shotgun misfired, or with a colostomy bag dangling off my hip because the Liquid Plum-r ate through my colon but didn’t kill me; besides, I have a three-year old I’m responsible for), I wholeheartedly endorse the option for others.
So I sat there in the air-conditioned office explaining this to my professional friend, who looked troubled and then asked me, “What makes you happy?”
I almost said “nothing”, but that wasn’t productive or even true. “Playing music,” I replied. “Walking in the woods. Helping people. Writing… well, that’s more compulsion: I think a lot of writers will tell you it’s not so much that they like writing, but that not writing makes them crazy. Riding my bike. Singing. Money: I like having money.”
“Well, what’s wrong with that stuff?” she asked. “What’s wrong with teaching him about all that stuff?”
“Nothing’s wrong with teaching him about that stuff. On the other hand, everything is going to have a caveat on it: “Playing music is great, but don’t try to make money at it, as it’ll ruin your life. Walking in the woods, fishing, appreciating nature is fun, but don’t expect any of that to be here much longer: I’m sure you saw yesterday’s report on all those birds disappearing, or the way that housing development is taking over more and more wild land. It’s your responsibility to help others, but don’t be surprised when your only thanks is a stab in the back. So yeah, there are lessons, but each of them has a ‘but’ attached to it.”
“It’s interesting that you have no hope for humanity, yet you like helping people. I wonder if we can talk about that,” my professional friend asked.
“Well, yeah,” I answered. “Just because humanity’s doomed to an ignominious end doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t help out people less fortunate than you during your stay here. That’s what I like about my job, and it’s probably one of the reasons I’m such an angry guy. I don’t like seeing people pushed around, and you have to help someone when they’re down and out. My mom was always big on that: she took my sister’s friends in when they were kicked out of their own homes, and gave some of my less-employable friends work to do at our house landscaping and painting.”
“Let’s talk about that for a minute,” she said. “How long have you been angry, and where are the roots of that?”
“I’ve been angry for a long time,” I answered. “A lot of the anger has its roots in my mother’s alcoholism, which really kicked into high gear when I was about 11 or 12. My mother was either out-of-her mind drunk, and terrifying, or passed out and hungover in bed for the entire summer that year. I spent the whole fuckin’ time in the house acting as a parent to my eight-year-old sister and my three-year-old brother. Meanwhile, my father, who has never been too comfortable with his own emotions, was kind of absent. He had to work during the day, but he began working night shifts too, coming home only to make dinner for us. And who can blame him? Who wants to be home for that kind of crap?
“The end result of this was that when I went back to school for sixth grade, everyone else had grown up over the summer, and I was left behind. Seemingly overnight, I went from being a relatively popular kid to being a dork. That had ramifications for my behavior and how I was treated by my classmates. And of course between that and my mom’s drinking, I began acting out. so there’s that.
“As a result of my not fitting in, I gravitated toward the other misfits and began getting in trouble: poor academic performance, etc. I flunked seventh grade (”If only Brendan would apply himself”) and transferred to a rival private school, where things only got worse.
“That’s about when I began getting into hardcore and punk rock music, which at the time was highly political. Bands like MDC would include photographs of what the US was doing in Nicaragua and El Salvador in their liner notes, pictures of those nuns that were murdered by US funded death squads. And whatever problems I had with my parents, we were on the same page politically. I remember on a number of occasions my parents took away various privileges and possessions, but they always let me keep my records, because as much as they hated the music, the lyrics were ’socially conscious’. You could almost say they cultivated that particular anger in me, outrage at the lying and manipulating.
“And y’know, the anger at my mother is pretty much done now. I’m an adult, it doesn’t affect me anymore. But the other anger, that kind of anger informed my politics and the life choices I’ve made: it explains why I like my job and why I like helping people. There’s absolutely no hope for humanity, but that doesn’t mean you get to ignore people in need here and now, in the present.”
And so upon reflection, I do have some positive things to teach my son: the importance of taking your turn (but not letting anyone take your turn away from you); the importance of looking out for the other person; the importance of helping people weaker or more helpless than yourself; the importance of critical thinking, of not taking anything at face value; the importance of being flexible, and being willing to do what needs to get done no matter how menial or humiliating the task; the importance of teamwork and honesty; the importance of introspection and argument; the importance of standing up for yourself and for those who can’t stand up for themselves.
I don’t know how well those line up with the life lessons I detailed above: how do you teach someone about the importance of teamwork when you personally don’t trust much of anyone? How do you teach someone to do unto others as you’d have them do unto you, when your own experience has taught you that in real life, you do unto others BEFORE they do unto you? Furthermore, I don’t know how well any of this is going to serve him when the oil runs out, the lights go dim, the food supply goes kerplonk, and our carbon emissions begin to choke and incinerate us. How do you prepare a kid for the future when you don’t even believe there’s gong to BE a future?
I never asked for this role. I never wanted this responsibility. I’m not the well-placed to carry it out: I’m a fucking nihilist for Pete’s sake. I have no faith or hope in humanity: all I’ve ever wanted was to live a life that is as simple and uncomplicated as possible, with no responsibilities to anyone other than my parents as they get older and to myself. I’m too much of a coward to commit suicide, but I’ve always wanted to keep the option open: that escape hatch is now slammed shut. I’ve never wanted to leave a legacy or a mark on this world: I don’t even want a gravestone! I’ll be dead, and if there is an immortal soul, it certainly won’t be hanging around my rotting meat wondering why no one visits.
So now the nihilist has to pretend there’s hope for the sake of his kid, the one he promised himself he would never, EVER, bring into this world.
Unfortunately, I’ve never been a good liar either. I don’t know what to do.
June 20th, 2007 at 11:42 pm
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