twenty-two seconds to live

Young men clamor for control over their lives and the world around them.  Old men are resigned to do the best they can with what the world presents them.  Middle-aged men are lost, they don’t know whether to keep scrambling for the false sense of control and stability, or to let go and let life happen to them so they can get busy dying.

I generalize, of course, but I think that is what the mid-life crisis is.  The final death throes of a life spent fighting the Earth’s rotation as it gives way to a more gentle resoluteness to just be.  It’s terrifying to imagine.

When an old man does something for his old woman, obviously against his better judgment, he does it with a twinkle in his eye and a smile.  He knows the world expects nothing else from him.  He is given a pass.  An old man can no sooner argue with an old woman than the sea can stop being wet.  There’s a security in that consensual knowledge, that stereotype, that global understanding.  The entire world mugs the camera and says, “Well, what can you do, am I right?”

How does that relationship work when the man still has a self to worry about, and is still grappling for the aforementioned control?  He could point to the old men, draw on the power of that association, and after what would seem a prohibitive explanation, be given the pass.  However, doing so would be at the cost of his other battle – the one for the self, the one for control over his life.  Winning on the eastern front comes at the cost of the western, etc.

The individual no-win scenarios are the micro representations of the macro struggle of life itself.  Children playing Connect Four learn rapidly to recognize the dreaded unfettered three-in-a-row that represents an impending and unavoidable loss.  The rules say nothing about stopping the game there, though, so two more pieces must be played for someone to secure the win.  Those with a logical mind start playing against “Connect Three, Open On Both Sides” to try to avoid it, but ultimately everyone is still playing Connect Four and when you lose, you lose.  The day a young chess player has the epiphany that there is no ‘winning’ or ‘losing’ based on the number of pieces remaining is a watershed for that player.  The realization later that life is chess, the game is much longer than we expected, and our opponent is far more ruthless and cunning can tend to undo that cognitive victory.  Knowing you have a finite number of pieces with which to play the rest of your life will make you go mad trying to keep them all safe.

Sometimes you wish you could just pass, and not move any pieces.

I’ve gotten off-topic.  What does it mean to be a good man?  What is manhood?

Surely having a family counts.  You get bonus points too if that family isn’t a bunch of drug-addled criminals, I suppose.  What does it mean to “have” a family?  Anybody can join an army, but very few of those who do will ever be able to say they “have” an army.  The only things a man truly owns, other than his skin and guts (which is a questionable ownership) are what he makes for himself.  Furniture and families.  So we narrow it down.  Don’t just be in a family, be in a family that you are at the “head” of.  What does it mean to be the head of a family?  Charles Manson was the head of a family.  Is he a good man?  Hemingway was a prick and a womanizer.  Show me a man who says Hemingway wasn’t a good man and I’ll punch him in the face, if Zombie Hemingway doesn’t do it first.  Where do we draw the line?  Is all we have the resignation of old men, to sit on the porch waiting for something interesting to pass, or if not, to convince ourselves that we faced the uninteresting with honor and dignity?

What is the appropriate age for a boy to become concerned with the concept of Legacy?

I once cried to my father that I was terrified by the impermanence of everything.  I told him that even if I could carve my face into the Moon, that too would fade eventually, along with all human memory.  He just smiled, told me that was nothing new or inventive to worry about, and that every man has those thoughts at some point.  I don’t think I’ve ever gotten over it, though.

I told a friend recently that there could never be any more heroes, and that we would eventually destroy all of the heroes of history.  The sharper the lens used to view someone, the rougher they are to view.  The higher resolution and fact-rich nature of information concentration today makes it easy to see that guys like Thomas Edison and Alexander Hamilton weren’t that great, but there is no antithesis to be found for villainy.  A greater collection and analysis of historical information won’t magically reveal that Pol Pot was a pretty good guy, or that Josef Stalin “wasn’t so bad, really.”  In that capacity, it is only evil which makes an indelible mark on our collective psyche.  The heroes who battled evil fade and are even torn down by truth, but the antagonist is rarely, if ever, whitewashed.

Is that a truth, a source of wrongness?  Are we like a black shirt, washed too many times, never to be as black as the day we were made?

If I wanted to do something about it, although I doubt anyone has ever successfully posited a functional “something” that could be done, would that make me a man?  Or, is the manly course to accept it, and do the best I can with what comes?

Like everything I write and think these days, these are questions without answers.  Masturbatory explorations that will never offer solace or respite to any.  I write to write, and sometimes just marshaling all the words and punctuation marks around for awhile gives me a fleeting sense of ownership over them.