Cary Tennis is talking to me. Again.
In response to a letter-writer who complains that he’s losing it in public in response to relatively minor, everyday annoyances, Cary writes the following:
I do not see how anyone with a critical intelligence could go through one day on this planet without being appalled and outraged at the world’s failures to live up to our expectations — and to its own potential! But the world ignores our memos pointing out its manifest sluggishness to correct deficiencies, its shortsightedness in planning freeway exits, its seeming indifference to quality control and continuous improvement, and the lack of proper signage in public transit stations. The world stares back at us like a sullen teen, reveling in its own incompetence.
and after some other commentary that I found annoying because it’s true about how we have to suck it up and deal with incompetence and inconvenience without losing our shit because that’s what grownups do, and fit-throwing belongs purely in the realm of the childish and mentally unstable, he continues:
Such is life. You encounter resistance and setbacks and howlingly insane incompetence and covert resentment from service personnel and all manner of cultural revenge and subterfuge and psychological sabotage and you have to take the hits and pick yourself up and keep moving toward that hill. You have to recover and keep going, with a smile. It’s never going to stop. It’s not going to get any easier. We have to surrender, shake it off, remember what we’re here for, and get the job done.
via I’m losing it in public, a Since You Asked column by Cary Tennis | Salon Life.
And my whole question is: What job that we have to get done is worth all this noise and bullshit? What of any import could any of us possibly have to do which could make up for all this crap? I don’t think there’s anything worth it. I am all for smiling and putting on a brave face when there’s a monumental task to be accomplished, and sucking it up and soldiering on in service to some great cause. But what about when it’s not in service of anything? What about when it’s just plain old regular boring life? And the only reward to “soldiering on” is getting to go the grocery store to buy food we don’t want to prepare or eat?
What if the only reward for our patient navigation of the highways and the car-repair place and the gas company’s shenanigans and our neighbor’s insanity is… getting to take a hot shower and then go to work? What then? What happens when the “reward” is in no way worth the effort? What happens when you realize the return on the investment you’re making in your life is just about the same as the net value of your home now that the housing market has tanked?
There’s sucking it up and soldiering on for a cause – which I understand. But what if there’s no cause? Then what do you do?
I remember talking to my therapist once about something my boyfriend at the time was torturing me with. Something he expected of me that I didn’t feel like doing. Going out to some work dinner, or something involving being around people, if I recall correctly. I was angry, and overwhelmed and I didn’t want to do it and I didn’t want him to guilt me into having to do it.
I said something to the effect of “…and I just can’t do it, not on top of everything else!” to which she replied “On top of what else?”
That took me by surprise. I mean obviously there’s a giant “everything else” involved in my negotiations with the world that she should have understood about. So I thought about what “everything else” meant. And then I told her “On top of being awake and alive.”
It was one of those crystallizing moments that make therapy so worthwhile, when some truth you didn’t know was so self-evident steps blinking into the clear, clean light of day. For some of us, the strain of being awake and alive and navigating the world is already so overwhelming that any additional unexpected event is just too much. Some of us wake up at the end of our ropes.
So yeah, maybe losing your shit in public is childish and unhelpful and damaging to children and a bad way to be. And maybe we should all just shut up and soldier on and remember the mission or whatever the fuck. But for some of us, there’s no mission. And for some of us, leaving the house this morning was already sucking it up and soldiering on. So I while I endeavor to lose my shit as infrequently as possible, and usually confine my shit-losing to private forums, I am just not going to be that hard on myself when I do lose it. My grasp on it was already fucking tenuous.
Filed under: anti-socialism, introversion | Comments (5)5 Responses to “Cary Tennis is talking to me. Again.”
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…then woke up this morning completely pissed off with the world. I’ve had one of those days at work where I really don’t see the point in bothering. then, halfway through the day I discover that apparently I’m expected to attend a parents evening tomorrow night that should only be for heads of faculty, but since my new boss is so useless then I have to go there to do the real work. At that point I spent 20 minutes considering whether to just go and hand in my notice and worry about it later.
I really think sometimes that I would actually be happier if I didn’t have a job and lived on benefits in a council house. I wouldn’t have anything, but I also wouldn’t have to worry about losing anything.
On top of that, the absolute crap that some people invent just to make work for everyone else.
One thing I do know though – usually after a day like today I wake up tomorrow feeling much better. Hoep the same goes for you.
Actually… never mind. You can throw lots of public temper tantrums and still pull that off. Carry on!
I know exactly what you mean about “everything else” although it never occurred to me like that. I spent much of last year feeling completely overwhelmed. Granted, a lot did in fact go down, but when people asked what I was so very busy with the list always sounded pathetically shorter than it felt.
But, aside from violent fits of depression and understanding that there’s no point in all this, that we’re only sad little jumped-up monkeys, running around in our sad little jumped-up monkey suits, I will also say that the more I read about this “smile and soldier on” business, the stupider it sounds. Within the right parameters, people need to agitate. Smiling and accepting it’s never going to get better is only the way to ensure it never gets better. It’s the way we’ve gotten where we are, with no standards, and no accountability. Shut up and take it is hardly ever good advice, and I refuse to abide by it, even for the sake of my own blood pressure.
Don’t count on my being any less of a curmudgeon, or doing away with my standards any time soon.