The Selfish Model

                                                                                                     

Today, Ayn Rand told me (actually, a 15-year-old girl told me, via her speech about Ms. Rand) that being selfish is preferable, even necessary.  She said that altruism is dangerous for individuals, because when a person thinks of others before him- or herself, that person can’t reach full potential. 

At first, the idea seems ridiculous.  People (Americans, at least) are told all the time that they should be others-centered, because altruism makes the world a better place.  But the more I thought about what she was saying, the more I realized what I have done to myself over the course of many years.  Primarily, I have chosen my children’s needs over my own.  I have always thought that giving myself to them was a natural, necessary consequence of bringing other people into the world.  We set aside our own needs for the benefit of others. 

To a certain extent, I stand by that decision.  When children are young, they need undivided attention and nurturing.  But at some point, our children look to us for guidance; and what lesson am I teaching them when I have no life of my own anymore?  I have no friends to speak of, and I have no compelling hobbies to share with them.  Because, after all, they have become my “hobby”.  They are the thing to which I devote my time and energy.  I am not teaching them to pursue their passions, because I have set mine aside. 

Besides being a parent, my other passion is teaching.  While I often look out into a sea of apathy in my classroom, I do think I have made a difference in some lives along the way.  (I say that even though just yesterday, seven months into a semester together, one of my students said, “yeah, I just don’t see that I’ve learned anything in this class.”)  But if I am a teacher of writing, should I be a writer?  If I encourage my students to get out of their home state and attend college elsewhere, shouldn’t I, too, move on?  If I teach students the value and relevance of reading, shouldn’t I create something of value and import for others to read?  Can’t I be a teacher outside of the classroom?!

The only way for me to “advance” in my job is to get a degree in administration, and (I’ll be honest here) I’d rather stick a fork in my eye than be an administrator. 

Fostering personal interests is the only way for me to express my deeply-seeded belief that happiness is key.  I can’t tell my son to break up with the girlfriend he barely tolerates, when I can’t manage to shed a husband that I can’t tolerate at all.  What my children and my students see me do is the biggest lesson of all, and at that, I seem to failing.  Ayn would be appalled at my total lack of personal growth. 

I don’t write, because I can’t publish.  I stay at my job, because it’s comfortable (and because I’m poor and can’t afford to just quit).  I baby my children, because I love them unconditionally and I want them to be happy … BUT … they don’t need to be coddled – they need to be shown how to live without apology.  If my passion in life is to teach other people, then I need to start leading by example.  I can’t tell other people to jump out of their comfort zones if I’m not willing to. 

Too bad I’m going to work tomorrow, and I’m probably going to do my kids’ laundry and make them dinner and stay at home in case they need anything.  Not everyone can just uproot their lives and continent-jump from Russia to Hollywood, but I have to do something.  I don’t want to die in a Kafka-esque stupor.  (And I seem to be headed that direction…) 

A Sink is a Metaphor for My Life

                                                                                             

Sometimes, things happen in my life which seem to be a microcosm of the bigger picture.  Today, it’s my kitchen sink.  A sink is a basic house fixture.  Water, dishes, whatnot.  My sink is a big, fat, piece of shit composed of the same, rusted, caked parts from when the home was built in 1960-something.  It fucking reeks.  Seriously.  It smells like rancid food, even when I dump half a gallon of bleach down the drain. 

A few months ago, the garbage disposal started leaking.  Drip, drip, drip.  Not a torrent of water, which would need require emergency plumbing, but a small, annoying, stinky drip.  I found it when I when looking for a screwdriver in the toolbox which is stored under the sink.  All of the tools were literally floating in a primordial, stanky soup of partially disposed food and run-off water from the sink.  Sitting and festering under the sink, behind the cupboard.  No one would notice it, unless they actually opened the cupboard for cleaning supplies and poked around – something literally no one else in my house would EVER do. 

Finding that fucking mess REALLY pissed me off.  I tried to fix the problem, but it requires a plumber.  Some things are better done by a person who does that thing for a living.  I learned how to change out an electrical outlet recently (from an electrician, by the way), but I don’t delude myself into thinking I can rewire a home.  And one home skill does not mean I can fix fundamental problems.  (Nor do I want to, if I’m being honest.)  Who is delusional?  My roommate/still-husband.  He invites his brother over to do the job (two months later). 

Don’t get me wrong; his brother is a REALLY good guy, but he is not a plumber.  He’s a bartender.  And now, not only does the disposal still leak like a sieve, the sink doesn’t even turn on.  No water at all.  Nothing.  Nada.  I washed my dinner dishes in the bathtub tonight. 

Is that funny?  Sort of.  In the I-want-to-fucking-rip-my-husband’s-face-off sort of way. 

HIRE A MOTHERFUCKING PLUMBER.

His grandmother just died, and she left us some money.  I gave my husband my portion of the money to do some home improvements.   I asked for a new garbage disposal and a new door.  I got the door, but instead of new disposal, I got a new faucet (…inexplicable, except that he is under the impression that surfaces are more important than depth…).  But no water comes out of it.  It’s barren.  It’s new and shiny, but it’s absolutely worthless, because the whole point of a faucet is for water to come out of it. 

I’m not trying to be bitter, but this absurdist version of my life has got to be some cosmic joke. 

College is Overrated

From the New York Times, April 22, 2014:  “For students who borrow on the private market to pay for school, the death of a parent can come with an unexpected, added blow … Even borrowers who have good payment records can face sudden demands for full, early repayment of those loans, and can be forced into default.”

Are you fucking kidding me?!

Why is it that our capitalistic, American society preys on the very people who can ill afford to be targets?  As if my death would not be enough of a burden to my children, they have to immediately make reconciliation with banks?  I understand that the money needs to be repaid, but this policy, along with the absolutely predatory practices of banking institutions has got to stop. 

The American Dream has a new addendum which seems to insist that everyone get a college degree, else they can make nothing of their lives, an idea which is absolutely untrue.  The further we move into the future, the more clear it becomes that college is yet another falsely inflated commodity which not everyone needs.  Of course the banks offer loans to people who can’t pay their household bills, let alone pay for a four-year, $30,000 college tuition bill.  It’s the same concept as proffering shady home mortgages to people who can’t afford a home:  “It’s American.  Just do it.”  Not everyone needs to own a home, just like not everyone needs to pay for a four-year degree.  There are actually a lot of people working jobs in America who make a lot more money every year than I do, and I have three college degrees. 

It’s a farce, and parents need to counsel their kids to make good choices rather than corporately-sponsored choices.  As a parent, a teacher, a citizen, and a human being, I am getting tired of rich people making destructive decisions for the rest of us, while claiming they’re for our own long-term good.   Perhaps if American high schools did a better job of teaching students concrete, applicable skills, they wouldn’t need two years of remedial college just to get those students up to the “college standard”. 

I call bullshit on this whole system.  My kid could get a gig on the Disney Channel doing some brainless acting and make more than I will in a lifetime of trying to educate other people.   Who wins in a system where Americans now owe more than $150 billion in student loans?  The banks, not the citizens.  

Love Lines

                                                                                                                                               

There are so many men in the world.  How is a woman supposed to choose just one?  How does a person sift through all the people they meet and settle on just one with whom to spend their nights and days?  After all, we meet so many faces and smiles and gestures, that it seems logistically improbable that anyone could choose correctly.  Yes, we can choose well in any given moment, but long-term?  Well, that’s another story altogether. 

So many men have floated into and out of my life.  That’s not a sex joke (although, I supposed it could be), but rather an observation about the transient nature of human beings.  We are always in the process of becoming who we are, so when we meet people, we are not yet complete.  I would argue that people never truly stop changing as individuals.  If my belief is valid, how probable is it that two people could continue in the same vein over the course of 10 or 20 or 30 years together?!  People who fall in love and remain in love throughout the various stages of becoming are incredibly lucky (and dedicated). 

Think about all the people who have smiled at you in your life, and you felt that pull.  You know the one I’m talking about.  That “yes” smile.  It’s an invitation.  Sometimes, we follow that smile; we engage and get to know that smile better.  That smile can turn into afternoons and evenings and longing and promises and heartbreak.  But you never know unless you follow that smile. 

I’ve followed it.  We all have.  I’ve been led down alleys of mystical happiness and bleak abandon.  That’s the whole point, isn’t it?  Potential and possibility are what keep people from throwing themselves in front of a bus every day.  No one would get up in the morning if life wasn’t worth living, and smiles lighten up all the dark corners of our lives.  Interpersonal connections are absolutely essential in life – something which I’m sure hasn’t changed since cave dwellers and hunter/gatherers roamed the earth. 

So, what happens when the face you chased down a week or a month or a year or 10 years ago looks across the table at you, over the meal laid out in front of you both, and the smile is gone?  The person across the vast expanse of table and water glasses and dinner is but a distant shadow of the person who drew you in?  Is it so bloody awful to just say so?  Is it so grossly socially unacceptable to just move on?  To say, “Listen, your eyes are no longer the eyes of someone I want to spend time with”? 

I think we all deserve honesty with our entrée. 

And I think we all deserve to have someone smile at us with genuine love, not heaped social expectations of making relationships work.   People are complex organisms with true feelings, not cutouts whose actions can be dictated through social mores.  Heart Lines, Love Lines, Life Lines are what capture our personalities and make us who we are.  Keeping to one person’s smile for an entire lifetime might be romantic, but it’s also unrealistic. 

I’m not saying that I wrongly chose any certain person, but that every person I did choose says something about my personality.  All of those people make up the sum of my parts.  Each person impacted me differently, for better or worse, and I wouldn’t replace any of them.  But I also think that we know when it’s time to move on, and that societal rules shouldn’t cloud our perception of right and wrong.  We are the sum of our mistakes and our successes, and even though we often don’t want to take ownership of our fate … it’s ours alone. 

Smiling is so much better than not.  Happiness might be elusive sometimes, but that doesn’t mean we should stop pursuing it.  

What's in Your Backyard?

I want to go here:

This place looks tranquil and beautiful and inspiring. 

I am having a hard time being inspired by my backyard these days. 

I have never been the most peaceful of people – like just satisfied in my own skin – but these days my brain simply vibrates with the desire to find something better.  I have no love life, no close friends, my house is falling apart, and I am dead broke.  I look at pictures of all the beautiful places in the world, and I don’t understand why I have trapped myself in this particular place.  I guess I’ve made all the wrong choices.  One or two good ones, interspersed with a string of shit ones. 

I would like to have a dream, one of those where you wake up feeling transformed, but I would like it to be real.    I would like to find something like this in my backyard:

Is that too much to ask?  I mean, someone has this treehouse in their backyard, because I’m looking at a picture of it right now.   I don’t want to become a hunchbacked, bitter old crank, sitting in a chair in my bleak, shitty house, wondering what happened to my life.  I want to tear down the walls; they're suffocating me.  And there's no one here to dream with either, which is maybe the hardest part of all. 

On Being a Teenager

In Plato’s Republic, one of the characters declares that youth and age are an equal burden.  At first glance, that statement seems like a load of shit, but give it a moment of consideration. 

As I am on the cusp on being old, I can say with certainty that it sucks.  I wish I could claim what Plato’s interlocutor did and say that my wealth has softened the blow of getting older, but I have no material wealth to distract me from the everyday, shitty business of  graying hair and thinning skin.  But to consider youth an equal burden?  Now that’s interesting … because it’s true. 

The best, most free years of life are the 20s and 30s.  Generally, a person can do what they what without interference from society.  Making huge life changes is still spontaneous during these decades of life:  new job, new boyfriend/girlfriend, traveling to foreign countries just because, blowing the budget on a whim, whatever.  Those freedoms are not available as a child.  If one’s 20s are a roller coaster of exciting, creative, authentic, potential experiences, then early youth is a seemingly endless series of moments spent waiting. 

Much of youth is spent being told what to do and when (and how) to do it.  People are probably always in the process of becoming, but during youth, our peers are constantly in collusion to make us something we haven’t decided  to be quite yet.  The constant onslaught of other peoples’ expectations is quite suffocating. 

Example:  A girl is being a cunt to you, talking shit and making up lies.  What do you do?  A 20-something knows who he or she is well enough to either call that bitch out or ignore her.   A teenager is more likely to just take it.   Self-doubt is at an apex in people who exist in the vacuum between child- and adulthood.  Even the bitchy, mean, popular girls are littered with self-doubt (even though they would never admit it).  Dealing with all the issues of life is overwhelming and largely experimental in the early stages of life.  In a word, it’s hard. 

So … give young people a break, and maybe take some time to help them find who they are, independent of all the noise around them.