Blind Man's Bluff

There's a parable I remember hearing as a kid about the blind man who wasn't really blind. People would ask him how it was he'd lost his sight and he never gave the same answer twice.

Finally, a man who'd listened to his explanations finally approached him and said he knew the blind man could see because his explanations often contradicted themselves, which is the mark of a liar.

"Tell me the truth, sir," the Master said. "Why won't you open your eyes?"

To his surprise, the blind man began to cry. After a few moments, he collected himself enough to say, "Because I was once an evil man, and if I look at you, then you'll look at me and you'll see all the things I've done."

The Master put a hand on the blind man's shoulder and said, "My friend, if you're not the man you were, then see the world as it is now and let it see you for who you are."

My grandmother told me that at a time when I felt so excluded because I didn't seem "cool" or "popular" in school, as most kids often do, sad to say. I admit that as I got older it was harder not to do and nowadays, it's almost commonplace for me to not look at people at all if I can help it.

As someone with eyes as expressive as mine, I do spend a lot of time trying to keep people from knowing what they have to say. For if they are indeed, "the windows to the soul" as the adage implies, then I often shudder to think what you all see when mine open up.

The truth is I feel like they give away too much most of the time. They say things I can't bring myself to vocalize, or maybe put into the proper words. It's why I have a habit of looking away from someone when they make me smile and I close them when I have to say something emotional.

Because if I look at you, there's a chance I'll say too much or say the wrong thing. It's a mistake I've made before.

Too many times.

Hopeless Romantic

I've always liked to think I'm capable of many things.

After all I can, to name a few, write, draw, design, paint, photograph, speak in accents, show the occasional fast-wit, punch through a wall, fence, read handwriting upside down, cite lines from movies with near perfect accuracy, operate a manual transmission, and as recently history will show...cook a pretty darn good turkey, among other things.

And despite my opinions to the contrary, I suppose it can be said that I am a hopeless romantic...

...with hopeless being the operative word in play.

If there was one thing I can concede from the failure of my marriage it is that when it came to trying to be romantic, for lack of a better term, I sucked at it. It's not anyone's fault but mine, really, and I do feel bad because my ex-wife wanted a husband who could provide that for her. But I was never really a guy who saw the point, to be honest.

It's not that I didn't want to try to be. I just wasn't good at it because my perspective on things for a very long time has been cynical, somber and realistic, and you can't really be a romantic if your outlook is so stiff and jaded. A romantic is an idealist at heart. They don't worry about what might happen because the mystery of the journey is the fun. It's a very Taoist outlook, actually, wherein the goal is understood, but if it is not attained then the process itself has still been worthwhile because it's allowed room for discovery, new understanding, and hopefully growth.

The first time I ever went on what could truly be classified as a "date" was my sophomore year of high school when I took my friend Stacy to Prom. Now being high school, awkward doesn't begin to describe what asking a girl you like can be first time out, and at first I didn't plan on it. But my brother Patrick and friend of ours, Nicole Morgan, decided they were going to give me a hand.

So we go to the library, where Stacy is busy studying. The plan is hatched and Nicole goes in, gets her, and comes back out, where Patrick and I are waiting. They then do this little back and forth routine and the time comes for me to ask. Now I was nervous as hell already, and being in actor at that time, I did good job adding a touch of histrionics to it in the delivery.

But ask I did, and accept she did. And while we never were anything other than good friends for the rest of the time we knew each other, it was the first time I just let myself go in anything resembling a romantic direction and it worked.

Fast-forward 20 years, and I'm sitting in the office of my college newspaper, hanging out with my friend Katie and when she gets up to go grab something from down the hall, I get an idea. Where it came from, to this day, I honestly Do. Not. Know. But I grab my iPod out of my coat, plug it into one of the computers, load up a song and when she comes back in, I summon up whatever chutzpah I have and ask if she wouldn't mind having a dance.

And I don't dance. Not one bit. I make Elaine from Seinfeld look like Fred Astaire.

But she accepted, I hit play, and for the next three minutes and change, that's precisely what we do in the middle of the office. It was silly, we laughed a bit and I'd like to think we both had a measure of fun, and when it was done, we went right back to what we'd been doing before.

I know there is a bit of a romantic in me somewhere, crammed into a corner of the house in my head dominated by more practical and taciturn emotions. It's there, nonetheless, and if anything it's just incredibly out-of-shape. Like "chop off the side of the house and airlift it out" out-of-shape.

I have to believe it exists for the same reason I cling to the idea that there enough love out there in the world for everyone. Even someone who's been so incredibly and seemingly.irreparably backwards as I have been for so long.

Because if it doesn't exist, then really, what is the point of wanting to be a better person in the first place?

Hearts and Chips

So I found myself in the midst of a social network bru-ha-ha today over what was written as a "joke" but taken by me as something else entirely.

I won't go into too much detail about it, but the crux was that I took the observation as another general indictment that men, as a species, are jerks because of how the domestic and professional distinctions between us and women exist and will likely continue to exist on some level long after I am dead and gone.

*Editorial Note - I'm not happy about that, mind you, which leads into the meat of this entry.

So I took exception with it and pointed out that, no, the observation is incorrect and a generalization which does not smack of any sort of humor that I am aware of. This led to the argument getting more heated, at which time, the following was recommended to me.

"Well, maybe it's time to knock that chip off your shoulder," my opponent said.

And that pissed me right off.

The funny thing about that term is I never really had a lock about the meaning of it. I thought it had more to do with internal self-image than having an external object to focus on. Turned out I was wrong, because as I understand it now, the term implies, "Holding a grudge or grievance which readily provokes disputation."

Same applies to the term, "Wearing your heart on your sleeve." This time, I was bit more on the mark in my belief that someone who fits the description readily shows their emotions and that can lead to volatility when provoked.

And if you look at my life and what it's been, it's not incredibly hard to see how both terms could apply to me. You don't go through episodes like mine and not develop some points where if someone says something that jabs at you, passive-aggressively or otherwise, it's going to get a rise out of you in some fashion.

In this case, a statement was made that called into question something I've heard my whole life and whether that person feels entirely justified in saying so or not, which they perfectly in their right to do, It didn't sit well with me because it was antithetical to everything I've tried to do as a man who despises the blanket definitions we put on each other every day.

I didn't see it as a joke. I saw it as an insult, and that is my problem, because it means I need to be willing to change my perspective once in a while and not be so narrow-minded. That said, I am also not wrong for being willing and able to express my disagreement with something a person says, should I find it to be both incorrect and insulting. Most of the time, I can roll with a punch if I know the person well enough and have a pretty good gauge on their temperament and demeanor.

But as someone who has been legitimately persecuted and degraded most of his life, (and not in a "War on Christmas" sort of way), as well as being extremely passive as a kid in terms of offering resistance to those who bullied or abused me, I learned over the years to turn the anger and aggressive need to defend myself into a reflex that I call on whenever I felt it was necessary.

So do I wear I heart on my sleeve?

You're damn right I do.

It's six inches below the whacking great chip on my shoulder.

Holidays: Stage I

Well, I made it through the first obstacle of the holidays.

I officially survived my first one-man Thanksgiving.

I decided a couple weeks ago that I would try it for two reasons. First, seeing as how I'd never attempted to cook an actual Thanksgiving meal for anyone before, it would be an interesting exercise to see if I could indeed pull it off.

And Second, after being invited to a couple of friends houses over the last two years, I wanted to get through the day with just me and see how it would feel.

Considering I haven't fallen ill to the effects of salmonella or dysentery yet, I believe that the cooking went quite well and I now have leftovers for the better part of the next month.

I got started on the prep work about midday and as I'm sure the custom of most cooks, things took less time than it seemed when I got started. Still, for a first crack, I think I did better than okay.

The cleanup actually took less time than I thought too, which was a pleasant surprise, compared to the odysseys of post-Turkey feast cleanups I underwent with my in-laws. Overall, my apartment looks cleaner than it has in some time, which is nice because it means less work and more time to relax with a cup of hot tea and a movie before the rather unwelcome return to work tomorrow morning.

Throughout the day, while I had I my music on to keep me company, I was watching other people I knew celebrating their Thanksgivings either with family or friends, and a few like me were on their own.

I won't lie and say that if I could've teleported them all here and been a host, I wouldn't have minded it at all.

Over the years, the longer I've been alone, I'd tell people that you get used to it after a while. That you reach a point where you just accept that it's how things are and how they're going to be.

In some ways, you do get used to it...and others you don't. No matter how many years go by.

So now that I've done it, I guess I can look forward to the next year...

...and the hope that I never spend a Thanksgiving by myself again.

Fairness

"You thought we could be decent men, in an indecent time! But you were wrong. The world is cruel, and the only morality in a cruel world is chance. Unbiased...Unprejudiced...

...Fair."

-Harvey Dent, The Dark Knight

Whether I want to admit it or not, life just is not fair, and that bothers me.

A lot.

It bothers me because it flies in the face of the conventional wisdom I learned growing up.

"All good things come to those who wait."
"Hard work pays off."
"The truth will set you free."

I could keep going, but the point is made. We hear these adages and axioms from our parents, grandparents, teachers and mentors our whole lives, and yet they are commonly disproved time and time again by one basic fundamental truth.

Sometimes, life just is. not. fair.

I have had more than my share of times where the reality of that truth has hit me broadside like a truck, and like anyone else, my first instinct is to get mad, then quickly try to figure out why the world seems so hell-bent on not just giving me what I want and screwing over some other poor schlep instead.

"Why do you have to keep reminding me of what I already know and for once, just this once, can I have the great cosmic coin flip come down my way?!" I ask. "I've earned it. I put in the work, made the effort, took responsibility, owned up to my faults, said my apologies and taken my lumps, so what the hell more do you want?"

Only I haven't earned it, which is why I feel so slighted and abused by the world. We all have our own distinct views of what is fair or unfair, and yet when we feel like we were cheated out of something we should rightly have, it is an actual physiological process in the middle of our brain that kicks in, and we get mad as a result.

I got reminded once again this week that no, life is not always fair. And it hit close to home because the perceived injustice caught me right in the heart. And yes, for a little while, I got downright good and mad about it.

But unlike how I'd deal with it in the past, which is to continue to be pissed off and grow more jaded about it, I had a moment today where something finally clicked.

I have no control in this scenario and trying to overexert a level of control will not give me what it is I ultimately want.

One of the things I've learned in Buddhism is that there are two ways to deal with the unfairness of the world. You can either A.) resist and not grow from it, or B.) use it as a means by which to set a direction so when and if the same opportunity comes up again, because you've evolved and not become so rigid in thought and behavior, the chances that maybe that great cosmic coin flip will come down in your favor actually changes.

The same is true in Taoism, which sees the struggle for control pitted against the ability to accept what is. The struggle between the two is what makes life interesting, and even though you don't win that particular game, on that particular day against that particular "opponent", you don't stop playing either.

So does this mean I'm going to give up? No. It means I need to keep going and see what comes at the end of the path ahead, for I don't know what's waiting over the next hill or what the next obstacle will be.

I just know what it is I want, and when and if I've reached the point where I've truly earned it, then I'll know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I will have rightly and fairly won the flip.

"Real" Man

So a friend posted an article he found at some point during his day on Facebook, and like most curious people, I was inclined to check it out.

*Editorial Note - Given the amount of muckraking gobbledy-gook I overindulgently sling at my own wall in the hopes people will peruse it, I guess it's only fair that I respond in kind.

The article is called, "Why Men Aren't Really Men Anymore," and was written by someone named Paul, which establishes with reasonable assumption that he is, at least, a male.

His thesis was that the days of men being "real" men are long gone, a product of a bygone era in which men wore three-piece suits, drove nice cars, did not seek instant gratification and were bound to a somewhat higher moral code of ethics and respect which is now seemingly extinct in the modern Information Age.

He goes onto imply that men have become both soft and weak as the century has progressed and that with rare exception, we view the opposite sex as a disposable pleasure rather than a meaningful pursuit.

"If you don't have the twiddle-diddles to approach a woman at a bar and have a proper, intellectual conversation, making the woman feel comfortable, then move over for the 'real' men," says Paul.

Now, I don't know Paul. According to his bio, he lives in Manhattan and touts himself as a "young writer, philosopher, music producer and DJ."

He's also a complete fucking idiot who couldn't pick a "real" man out of a lineup.

I am the first to admit that I likely don't fit the model of a "real" man any more than Paul probably does. After all, I am a hyperempathic, socially awkward, introverted, stubborn, impatient cro-magnon of a man who hasn't been on a date in three years. Lothario or Casanova, I certainly am not.

But what I also possess is an exceedingly strong moral compass that allows me to treat women, especially women I care about, with both dignity and respect. I can be trusted because my goal is not to conquer them or hang them on a wall as some sort of trophy and I learned that by watching supposed "real" men treat the women they professed to love like complete crap right in front of me.

When I was a kid, all I wanted to be was Superman. Why? Because Superman not only can do everything, but because for all his strength and speed, at his heart, he was more decent, moral and honorable than any man I ever knew tried to be. It was his character that made Clark Kent be Superman, not his power.

Clinging to bygone ideas of what "real" men were defined as is stupid, because you cannot cram an entire gender of complex beings into one box and slap a label on it saying "real" or "fake". We all come from different backgrounds, disciplines, geographies and experiences and those things, as well as our own morality and treatment of others, ultimately decides what kind of man we'll be.

We are defined by who we allow ourselves to be and who we ultimately try to be, man or woman. I don't dress in three-piece suits, drive a fancy car, and I sure don't live in a mansion. I am also not Superman, no matter how much I still wish I could be. Hell, I might not even qualify as a "real" man by most social opinions.

But I am a man and I know who I want to be and both how I want to treat the people who matter to me, and the people who's paths I have yet to cross in this life.

With respect, dignity, and honor. That is plenty "real" enough.

Trust

"I've lived long enough to have learned,
the closer you get to the fire the more you can burn.
But that won't happen to us.
Because it's always been a matter of trust."
-Billy Joel, "A Matter of Trust"

There was a time when I was willing to put my full level of trust both in myself and the people in my life.

Those days feel long gone, because if there is one thing I've come to accept in the last few years, it's this.

With very, VERY few exceptions, trust is something I have little of anymore.

That includes trust in myself as well.

The reason why is fairly simple. I invested that trust in too many people who were neither willing nor able to reciprocate on the same level I was, and in the end, I got hurt each and every time.

This is far from a recent development either. Growing up, I had to get used to keeping people at a distance because it was just easier for me to navigate through everything I was dealing with. Eventually I hoped there would come a point where I wouldn't have to keep doing that, and for a little while I didn't.

For about 15 years, I put my trust in people who I cared about more than anything, who I was able to make promises to and keep them. I took those promises seriously, as I also did the promises that were made to me. I expected them to live up to them because I had every intention of living up to mine.

Only they didn't do it. They'll never admit it, but it doesn't change the fact that they didn't. My trust turned out to be completely misplaced and the realization of that hurt like few things I know of, because if I couldn't trust my own family or those I allowed to be part of my family, then who the hell could I dare try to place that trust in?

I don't know. It's been three years and I still have no idea. And it could take another 15 years before I feel safe enough to try, but for right now, all I know is that I can't.

There's an exchange at the end of Casino Royale which cuts to the very core of how I feel about it and what I've taken away from how things have gone.

"You don't trust anyone do you, James?" M asks.
"No." Bond replies.
"...Then you've learned your lesson."