CSotD: And can I choose again if I should lose the reason?
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I often find myself weighing one potential CSOTD over another, and, by the time it comes down to the final two, it generally has as much to do with what I’d rather talk about than which one is technically better done or funnier or more insightful.
Today, the question is, from which perspective do I want to attack the topic of futility, resistance, fear and regret?
Because two strips come at it, one potentially and one quite directly. And it’s not unusual for me to discuss a topic raised rather well by one strip, then add one at the end that also addressed it but in a less full-throttle fashion.
This isn’t one of those times and each strip deserves top billing, so, with that impossible, let’s start with Pros & Cons, in the pre-decision stage:
“Do I Stay or Do I Go?” is one of the great questions, not in the “What do you want from me?” Clash version, but in the Jackson Browne iteration:
Now that it’s time
Now that the hour hand has landed at the end
Now that it’s real
Now that the dreams have given all they had to lend
I want to know do I stay or do I go
And maybe try another time
And do I really have a hand in my forgetting ?
Towards the end of my time in a job that, through a change in ownership, had gone from ideal to soul-crushing, I had two favorite quips: “Hey, it’s just me and the dogs, and they think sleeping in the park and eating out of Dumpsters would be a blast!” and, concerning various alternatives, “I’m not looking for a bad job. I’ve already got a bad job.”
Not everybody, however, has whittled their worldly responsibilities down to themselves and a dog or two.
Nor — and this is important — did everyone come of age at a time and in a place where not allowing your soul to be crushed was seen as your primary obligation.
Quite the contrary: Many people, including many in my age group, were raised to feel that you are, in fact, obligated to let your soul be crushed rather than to abandon your more tangible responsibilities.
Nor were they allowed to ask if maintaining an uncrushed soul was part of your responsibility to those around you. It was always expressed, rather, in terms of picket fences and holiday photos.
And, like the fellow in the cartoon, we are all told, repeatedly and dogmatically, that “Running away from your problems is never a solution.”
You could create an entire blog about what arrant bullshit that advice is, what a shallow, callow, arrogant point of view it represents, like rich, pampered young Nately arguing with the old, world-weary procurer at the Roman bordello in Catch-22.
You say you have obligations, and it may be that, for a particular period of time, you need a certain level of income or of health insurance, and so you stay in a dead-end job.
And there may be short-term reasons to stay in a loveless marriage, though most of those eventually turn out to have involved your own misapprehensions, insecurities and fear.
Which you’ll never find out unless you have the great good fortune to get far enough away for perspective.
It all comes down to this: Whatever the decisions we need to either confront, endure or escape, we’re continually stymied by fear of what Christopher Titus, with his customary, charming delicacy, refers to as our “inner retard”:
Or, as it came up with absolute brilliance in today’s Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal:
As we get older, agenbite of inwit should, to some extent, loosen its grip on our souls.
If nothing else, some of those people who did “better” will have crashed and burned, either fiscally, physically or emotionally.
Or our own vision will become more discerning and we can see that they are as trapped as we are.
Even better, if you can arrange it, “as trapped as we were.”
But, of course, as long as we’re even pondering it in passing, we’re still just emotional slaves, living at the mercy of our inner retards.
And I know that’s a lousy, hateful term. But it’s a lousy, hateful phenomenon.
If you run away from nothing else, run away from that.
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