Scat Mask Replica VII

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We operate in patterns, and we’re all about routines. Those who doubt that should add a dog to their life. A dog spends so much of its life studying our patterns that when they peg them, they can tell us what we’re about to do soon after we decide to do it. Some suggest that our rituals are such that they know before we do.

On that note, my primary takeaway from the movie My Dinner with Andre was to do everything possible to break the routines of life. In that movie, one of characters talked about opening the door with his left hand for a day or two just to break that routine in a way that might lead to other breaks. The gist of this is that we have so many patterns and routines that some of the times we sleep walk through life.

In an attempt to break one of my routines, I mowed in a different pattern. I was hoping to break the tedium of that otherwise tedious task. I spent so much time wondering if I was saving time mowing in a different pattern that I focused too much energy on trying to save time. In my typical routine, mowing the lawn seems to take minutes. This experiment seemed to take hours. The difference between the two is that I normally sleep walk through routine mowing, in much the same manner I sleep walk through all of the routines I’ve developed over time. We develop so many routines, as we age, that life has a way of slipping by quicker. How many times do we say, “it’s July? What happened to June?”

We wake, we eat two eggs, toast. We add a glass of OJ, and we top it off with a delicious banana. “Is this banana as delicious as yesterday’s banana could’ve been?” I asked myself one Tuesday morning. On Monday, I purchased a bunch of sparkling yellow bananas shortly before breakfast, and I couldn’t wait to sink my teeth into its brand-new solidity. While eating Tuesday’s banana, I realized I completely forgot to appreciate Monday’s banana for what it was. I looked forward to that first bite, while in the store. I thought about it a couple times on the short drive home, but by the time Tuesday rolled around, I realized that I accidentally slipped Monday’s banana in the routine of eating breakfast that day. When I bit into Tuesday’s banana, it was delicious, and I appreciated it, but I couldn’t help but think about how much more fresh and delicious Monday’s banana might’ve been if I remembered to appreciate it.

One of the best ways I’ve found to avoid falling too deep into routine is a grueling workout. I’m not talking about a simple workout, because some of us workout so often that working out becomes nothing more than a part of our routine. I’m talking about a grueling workout that leaves the buns and thighs burning, and when the buns are burning, the brain cells are burning just as bright. This idea led me to believe that working out might be a cure all.

When our Mondays melt into our Tuesdays, the best way to break the routine is to push our body beyond our otherwise lazy boundaries. If we’re feeling excessive fatigue, we can burn our brain and body bright with a long and grueling workout. I’ve expressed variations of this cure so often that those closest to me say it before I do, mocking me for routinely advising that this is the ideal way to fight routine. The footnote I now add, based on personal experience, is make sure you’re happy first. Before we start going to the gym three times a week, with at least one grueling workout mixed in, we need to make sure we’ve tended to life’s matters and we have someone who loves us at home. We also need to enjoy the job we have, because after a couple of long, grueling workouts we will become acutely aware of our life choices, and we will probably arrive at some painful critiques.

Some call it hyper-vigilance or hyper-awareness. Hyper-vigilance is the ability to notice things most don’t. Those who have it, call it a gift and a curse. Yet, even the most hyper-aware person can have their senses dulled by routine. I’ve snapped at people on a Tuesday for something that didn’t bother me on Monday, and the only difference was I had a grueling workout in between. My various computer chairs were comfortable for years before I disciplined myself to rock hard buns. I loved the life I led before those rigorous workouts led me to recognize how unrewarding my job was. I knew the basic functions of my job were equivalent to data entry, but it never dawned on me how unrewarding the job was until I snapped out of the routine.

When people would ask, I would tell them the title my company gave me, and the tasks they assigned. After a few rigorous workouts, I realized that the company might have seduced me into believing the position was prestigious, in a manner I suspect a garbage collection company seduces a prospective garbage man applicant into the job of sanitation engineer. Do garbage collection employees tell their people they’re in engineering? When my brains and buns were all soggy, I found the basic elements of my job unrewarding, but I managed to convince myself that receiving bi-weekly paychecks and living the independent life were admirable no matter what the other circumstances were.

With my brain firing on all cylinders, I realized that the core tenet of the job was to make the boss happy. If she was happy, then I should happy. This description probably defines 99% of all jobs, but I have to guess that most employees find their jobs personally unrewarding. If we hit the peak productivity numbers for our department, it makes our boss happy, but how does it affect our life? Was I being productive in a sense larger than the relative barometer my department laid out, or was the work I did a colossal waste of time? Did the company truly value what I do? Do I clock out with a sense that I accomplished something that day? Those in my department knew that no one, outside our department, read the reports we wrote. If we wanted a raise, we knew the company didn’t devote much of the budget to the work we did, as most of the work we did could fall very comfortably under the title “busy work”. If one of the employees on our team wanted an in-house transfer to another department, we learned that the various recruiters therein don’t value the work we do, or the title we have. They knew the inner machinations of the job better than those outside the company might, and they knew the work didn’t provide a potential applicant to their department valuable experience. I knew all this, to a certain degree, when my buns and brain cells were all soggy, but when I was firing on all cylinders, it became painfully clear to me that I was wasting my life in that position.

Working out so often made my buns rock hard, and while the health benefits of that level of exercise superseded everything else, it also made my once uncomfortable computer chair intolerable. I could smell the flowers better than ever before, and peanut M&M’s were so delicious that I considered eating them by the pound, but I also realized how fraudulent my bosses were, how lonely I was, and how I had no home life to look forward to when my excruciatingly slow work day ended. I noticed all the little things life had to offer, and some of them made me happier, but others made me so angry and depressed that I realized one of the reasons I drank so much and smoked so often was to dull my brain to the point where I wouldn’t question the choices I made in life.

We’ve all heard the phrase, “if at first you don’t succeed try, try, and try again.” An addendum to this quote, that some attribute to W.C. Fields, suggests, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try and try again—and then quit! No use being a fool about it.” A quote by the Canadian humorist Stephen Leacock published in 1917, suggests that, “If you can’t do a thing, more or less, the first time you try, you will never do it. Try something else while there is yet time.” My addition to this quote is, “If one thing doesn’t work try another.” It seems so simple, yet how many people try to jam a square in a round hole and make fools out of themselves by screaming at the manufacturer of the tools in question. We scream, “It ain’t me. Don’t look at me. The instructions say this should fix it.” We then throw a fiery temper tantrum that suggests we’re better than this. We just fixed something just last week with wonderful aplomb. There’s nothing different about us with this particular project. It’s the manufacturer. “That’s fine, but have you tried a way other than just jamming it home? Try another way.” We then paraphrase Albert Einstein, “The definition of insanity is trying one thing one way, over and over, and expecting different results.”

When running down the street be mindful of your feet. Studies show that the chances of tripping increase exponentially when we run. Been there, done that. Experience has also led me to offer another quick warning to my loved ones: Watch out for the ground, it hurts.

Yesterday I Learned … IV

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Yesterday, I learned that taste is so relative that it must be impossible to make any money trying to appeal to it. “If you want to write a best seller,” experts say, “read through some books already on the list. If you want to make a living at this game, you need to know the trends.” The word flavor should have a capitalized ‘f’ attached to it in this article, for it focuses on the wide spectrum of taste. Food and drink have a flavor of course, but so do music, literature, and all of the arts in the sense that some of it creates the same but different tingles in the brain.

Yesterday, I thought I had a universal sense of humor. Today, I realized that most appreciation for humor is conditional and polite. If our audience is predisposed to find us disagreeable, they will not laugh at anything we say. Humor and laughter also involves a certain quid pro quo agreement that calls for us to laugh at their attempts at humor. If we fail to live up to our end of the agreement, they will not even laugh politely at our attempts to be humorous. Toddlers and other kids are not a part of this agreement. Kids are the very definition of honesty, and they have no agendas, especially the ones we’ve never met. If we’re behind one in our local Wal-Mart, we might try out our best “baby laugh” material to see what kind of reaction we receive. They will turn away at some point, but if nothing else distracts them, we’ll get a second glance followed by a reaction. If we don’t get a second look, or a subsequent reaction, we can go ahead and assume that we’re probably are not as funny, or as charismatic as the polite and conditional reactions led us to believe.

Yesterday, I thought people people were so unusual. “I’m just a people person,” they might say when we ask them why they enter a business enterprise just to chat with some of the employees. “I don’t know why, I just like being around a lot of people.” Today, I found the term people person an unusual, accepted description healthy men, and women, use to describe themselves. We all enjoy speaking with other people, we do it all day, but some people go out of their way for some quality conversation. 

When I was much younger, I hung around my friend’s liquor store, and I worked in restaurants, and hotels. I saw a wide array of people people who walk into an establishment and just start talking to whomever would speak with them. These people “stick around” for a chat that can last hours. They even endure long lulls, hoping that some provocative conversation will weave its way through it all. They just stand there silently, trying to think up something interesting to say. My first thought was that these conversations sprang up in a more organic manner, until my friend said:

“Nope! He stops in here, every other day, and talks my ear off about the most inane stuff.”

Some men would walk into the restaurant where I worked, alone, and ask for a table in their favorite waitress’ station. Most of them didn’t have a newspaper or anything to busy themselves while they waited for her to chat with them. They usually entered after the breakfast rush and before the lunch crowd, so the waitress would have a couple of minutes to chat.

“Why do you stop and chat with these guys who seem to be a little creepy,” I asked one of the waitresses.

“You can tell he doesn’t have anyone,” she said, “and he’s harmless … trust me. Plus, he adds a couple bucks to the tip when I take the time to chat with him.”

I thought they were wrong. I thought they underestimated these guys. I didn’t want anything to happen to them. They were my friends. I was wrong. I over-estimated these guys. They were, in fact, harmless, insofar as nothing ever happened in my time there. These men weren’t just alone in life, they were lonely, and they had holes in their soul. Some of them were old, but most of them were men in their prime who would get dressed up, perhaps sprinkle on a little cologne, and get regular, fashionable haircuts for the purpose of fostering the belief that they might have a chance to spend some quality time, between the breakfast crowd and the lunch crowd, to speak to young, attractive girls.

If the traveling businessmen who frequented our hotel were lucky enough to time their entrance into our hotel, so that one of the cute, young women on staff checked them in, they would remain at the front desk long after their check in was complete. They just wanted to chat with some young women, and hopefully make them laugh a couple times. I intervened in these conversations multiple times, but they made it clear they had no interest in speaking to me. They weren’t rude, but I was obviously not the purpose of their chats.

“So how you doing?” they would ask these women with all of the urgency removed from their voice. They, too, were harmless individuals who just wanted someone to speak with young women. Most of them didn’t want to date these girls, or see them in varying stages of undress. They just wanted to chat. They wanted these girls to think they were people people. They were so alone that they just wanted a couple of minutes of that girl’s time to break up the quiet, tedious monotony of their lives, and have just one attractive, young female on God’s green earth say:

“Hank Schwertley, how are you doing? How’s that God forsaken Cutlass Supreme holding up for you?”

Business needs often ended these conversations abruptly, and when they interrupted the conversations, I could see the beaming smiles on the customers’ faces collapse. Their face went back into the more customary expression of fatigue, sadness, and loneliness that the muscles in their face were used to supporting.

The customers at the hotels and restaurants appeared to be normal men, with normal and pleasant dispositions, and it seemed impossible to me that they couldn’t get some woman to pay consistent enough attention to fill that gap they needed filling.

“You want to be a traveling salesman?” one of these men, a traveling salesman who stayed at our hotel so often I knew his whole life story said when I expressed some polite, conversational interest in his profession. “The first thing you’ll need to do is forget about ever having a family,” he said. When I asked why, he added that, “It would be unfair to any woman, much less the children you produce, to be on the road about 200 hundred days a year.” My shock was obvious in his expression, as he sought to lessen the blow, but he could not redefine the impact of his statement. Prior to his cautionary description, I considered this man a successful, self-defined man. After it, I saw how lonely he was. From that point forward, I realized he was a second fiddle. I finally saw him as the Stan Laurel, Bud Abbot character he was, who bounced off the more charismatic centerpiece of the conversation. Even in the polite, time-filling conversations we had with him at the front desk of the hotel, this man was always a second fiddle.

When we have such conversations with the people who orbit our lives, they remind us how fortunate we are to have people who enjoy being around us. I’ve felt lonely before, but I’ve never felt so alone that I went into an establishment just to speak to someone for five minutes.

Who are these people, and what do they do in life to gain some separation from the lives they selected. They want moments in life to help them make it to Thursday, and they want to find someone to notice them long enough to achieve some level of companionship, even if it’s only for five minutes. My experience in the service industry also taught me that they are a lot more common than most people think.

Yesterday, I Learned … III

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Yesterday I learned that I’m an old fogey. I don’t use hip, chic, or en vogue terms when I’m excited. My vocabulary consists of phrases I’ve said my whole life, and I’m so old now that some of my terms are outdated. Today, I tried using what others consider modern terminology, and I decided I don’t mind being an old fogey.    

Yesterday I learned that conventional wisdom plus uniformity equals conformity.

Yesterday I learned that the basis for our confusion with most people is a result of assigning our thoughts and thought patterns to them. It’s a little easier to spot when we do it to animals and kids, but some of the times, we accidentally do it to other adults. Our world is all about our viewpoints and patterns, whether we care to admit it or not. Everyone we know thinks the same way we do, and they act the way we act. When we encounter one who follows the first two steps of our process, we’re confused when they take a different third step. Today, I realized that to understand other people we need to remove ourselves from the equation. By doing so, we might minimize our confusion by learning how, and why, others think the way they do. It’s not as simple as it sounds, but it’s not that complicated either.

Yesterday, I learned to judge not lest ye be judged, and that we should be careful not to judge others until we put ourselves in their shoes. In other words, try to think as others might in a given situation. The problem with ridding our lives of all judgment is that we’re defining and redefining our own sense of morality on a perpetual basis. If we were in the same situation as the subject of the story, would we act in the same immoral way? Nobody wants to have another accuse them of being a hypocrite, but we have to learn from our errors and the errors of others. If we absolve others of immoral acts, is it our goal to receive the same absolution from them? Lady luck plays a role for some of us, as we’ve been able to avoid humiliation and tragedy. Perhaps we should amend the line and say, “We should use the lessons others learn to enhance our own life, but we should not judge them too harshly when they choose a different path, or end up on a different one due to circumstances they either can’t control or have trouble doing so.”

Yesterday, I learned that a huge corporation paid very little in taxes. Today, I learned that we should all be upset about this. Why do we care what anyone else, corporation or otherwise, pays in taxes? Why do we care what another person pays at a restaurant, in a drug store, or at a casino? It’s none of our business. If this corporation did something illegal, the IRS and the market will punish them, but if that doesn’t occur, the matter should be between the taxpayer and the IRS. Most of the critics qualify their disgust with, “I’m not suggesting that they [the corporation] did anything illegal, but c’mon.” Unless we’re shareholders, or prospective shareholders, we shouldn’t care how much the corporation is worth, what kind of profits they make, or how much they pay in taxes. Nobody is saying that corporations shouldn’t report their tax returns, or that the media shouldn’t publish those records, but the general sense of outrage that follows seems misguided. Rather than focus our outrage on the percentage of taxes a corporation pays, we should redirect the focus of our outrage on the percentage of those taxes that the federal government wastes, in fraud and abuse.

The inference critics make is that either the corporation cheated in some way, or the IRS turns a blind eye when it has the taxes of Big Corporations before them. Anyone who knows anything about the public sector versus private sector mentality knows that public sector lawyers and accountants pine for the day when they can beat a team of private sector tax lawyers and accountants at the game. The corporation’s accountants and lawyers also know that any attempt they make to cheat or defraud the government will form the lede of every news outlet and do great damage to the reputation of the corporation. Until someone can show us how anyone paying more in taxes benefits us, or the country, we should ignore these stories, because they’re none of our business. These stories are largely between the corporation and the IRS.