Spielberg's Obama

So much for the afterglow.

So this, I assume, is the part where they say to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and carry on.

This is the part where someone gives me the "plenty of fish in the sea," and all that. Spend a few days or weeks watching sad movies, listening to sad songs, binging on terrible food, and lock yourself away and grieve. This is there part where I'm supposed to call up some friends who can surround me and tell me how victimized I was and assure me of how bad of a person - and therefore a fit - she is. Where we go back and relive it all and pile on all the bad stuff and trivialize all the good. This is where I Google inspirational quotes and pictures and memes and sew them onto my heart as a temporary personal slogan to live by - at least until the sutures heal. 

And this, eventually, is where I'm supposed to start tempering the sting of loneliness by thinking outside the box and focus on learning and extracting wisdom for the future instead of simmering in doubts, regret, and painful imaginations. 

But I don't feel that. 

I don't feel sad. I mean, I know I am sad. But it's... more than that. 

Something broke this time.

I'm supposed to take solace in trying hard, subscribing to the theory that, "If you gave it your best shot and left it all out on the field, you have nothing to be ashamed of." Which I can see how it could be an alluring philosophy. Except that it also proves one agonizing fact: 

Your best wasn't good enough. 

100% of everything you have didn't meet the requirements. You were doomed from the start. Every ounce of patience, logic, and salt in your body was a lost cause. Every time you tried "just one more time," and gave her "just one more chance," and every moment you laughed in bed, on the carpet, with her in your lap, sitting by the sidewalk eating lunch, eating breakfast by the pool, cuddling in the car, walking hand-in-hand around the city... every wonderful moment will end up meaning nothing. Because I wasn't enough. Or I came around at the wrong time. Or she was just in a weird place. Or any other reason. 

That's a fairly awful sensation. Not a fan.

But these days and moments will fade into a haze of memories... first the little ones will go... the winks and smirks and middle of the night cuddles... 
  Then the inside jokes will be forgotten... the clever ones, the perfectly timed jabs, the endless puns, the ones that will never make any sense to anyone else but us...
  Then the words and voices will dissolve and we'll forget what the other sounds like over the years... but strangely, not the laugh...
And then the dates and moments and lunches and evenings spent making love, watching movies, going to the park at night, driving around, the showers, the kisses, the mornings next to each other in the bathroom mirror, the trips to the market, the wine, the sex... the sex...
Until finally, one day, all we will be to each other is a chapter in each other's story. Something that gets encapsulated into an quick anecdote that starts with an, "There was this guy," and ends with, "I wonder..."

But I didn't want her to just end up being a story. I didn't want her to be a lesson. I didn't want her to be relegated to a simple cautionary tale that I share with some friends years from now or end up being a sit-down conversation with the girl I'm explaining my past to.

I just wanted her. 

Very simple. Very pure. Very true.

No one's perfect. She wasn't. She isn't. I'm not. Nor did I ever expect her to be. I love who she is. Everyone has a past and baggage full of mistakes and wishful mulligans. But with her, for the first time in my life with anyone, I acknowledged my past with her in full disclosure - and it allowed me to not only accept the things I cannot change but also to accept what we were and gave me the desire to move forward; It was refreshingly liberating. By opening up and letting go of the burden of my past, the weight was suddenly gone, and I wanted to take her hand and fly. 

Forward.

But she couldn't stop looking back. She couldn't stop going over things ended before with her ex. Even going so far as to not even really end it, but to keep in contact with him, go to dinner with him, call and text him, argue with him, and... 

And I fear it has ultimately sank us both.

There's an engine in both of us that draws us to each other, like magnets. It's wonderful and frustrating and - given the proper circumstance - is something absolutely amazing. But it requires confidence

'Cause she would love this for all the wrong reasons

The Conundrum: Love and Logic :: Death and Life?

"We know these don't go together, so why do we kill ourselves trying to pair our love lives with the logic of the rest of our life?

"Why do we make conscious decisions to take actions that we know will later hurt us? Does the logic of our heart secretly want to hurt us, or to test our rational decision-making skills? Is this then proof that we are really the idiots we make fun of everyone else for being?

"Meet a guy at a party, and you'll have a fun, light-hearted relationship that tears at your heart strings.

Meet a guy at a bar and you'll have sex. Chances are 50/50 that it'll be decent, on a good day.

Meet a guy on the street and a romantic comedy unfolds in your head.

Meet a guy in your apartment building and you'll have to move.

Meet a guy at school and you'll fail the class. Unless he's the studious type, and then you'll never go on a real date.

Meet a guy at work and it will be amazing for a week, a month, a few months, and then it's awkward. And then you might get fired.

Meet a guy at the grocery store and you'll be miserable for half of your twenties.

Never Give All The Heart

Never give all the heart,
For love will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem certain.

And they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
For everything that's lovely is
But a brief, dreamy, kind delight.

O never give the heart outright,
For they, for all smooth lips can say,
Have given their hearts up to the play.
And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?

He that made this knows all the cost,
For he gave all his heart and lost.

- W.B Yeats

Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.

"She's not.. a bad person."

"I don't understand how you can sit here and look at everything she did and tell me she's a good person."

"I didn't say she's a good person, per se. Just that she's just not a bad one."

"She's selfish."

"Sure. Probably. Very. And impulsive. Careless."

"You need to get angry at her! Stop being sad and just be mad. I'm tired of seeing you not eating or sleeping or anything and just nothing all the time. We all want our Neil back. She deserves to just be yelled at and told off."

"I'm not going to do what ev -- Look. Here's what I'm not going to do. And I hope any of my ex's give me the same courtesy: I'm not going to hate her just to make it easier to move on."

"I understand that, but what she did - everything - was seriously fucked up. Remember how we stood outside here last year and you told me how stupid I was being for putting up with my man and constantly making excuses for him? That's what you're doing with her. Right now."

"No. I'm not making excuses for her. I'm defining reasons. Excuses are something you use to get out of shit. I don't condone a lot of what she did. I'm just saying... it wasn't all from a bad, horrible, mean place. I just understand her. You guys aren't privy to the side of her that I saw. She's not a bad person. A stupid girl sometimes, yeah. But not bad. She has a good heart. She just tries so hard to be mean sometimes. I think because she feels she has to be."

"How is that different from what I was saying about my husband?"

"Because you were going back to him."

"...and you wouldn't get back with her?"

"Off the top of my head? ...my body would love to. Of course. But I know I probably can't. I know myself. I have an impossible time trusting, and... You can lie to me, hit me, yell and scream and hide things, insult me, argue, whatever. I can talk it out, connect dots, negotiate, compromise and rationalize with calm and logic forever. But the cardinal sin is cheating. In her words: That's a bell you can't un-ring. I don't think I could go back to that. Put all my eggs in the basket with that one. It's all gone now."

"Because she's an awful person inside! You're defending her, and I can't stand it."

"I'm telling you, everything she did wrong, she feels bad for. Somewhere. I know I do. She'll never say it to me... or admit it... or even show it. But she feels awful about it. When she cried to me apologizing for everything, asking me for another chance and everything... there was make up everywhere and we both sounded awful. She made mistakes. I did, too. But when it comes to feeling regret and wishing we didn't fuck up, we're both genuine. She fucked up, true, but I just... I'm telling you. She's not bad."

"And what if you saw her again?"

"...honestly?"

"Of course."

"I'd probably be paralyzed."

"Like, scared of her?"

"No... no, more like... I dunno. Paralyzed. Unable to speak. Think. Move."

"What do you think she's doing now? This second?"

"Now? Well... if I know her at all... probably doing the whole boot strap thing."

"I don't - I don't know what that means, hun."

"Boot straps. Pull yourself up by them. That whole thing. Probably went back to her parents and ex and just confessed and dropped all the bombs on them and everything - her version, where I'm some bad guy - and hoped for the best. Her parents would never abandon her. They'll help her out, emotionally, whatever. Scold her for a bit. But she's too smart and pretty enough that the world can't refuse her for too long. So she's probably doing some reset button action where she looks back at me like some big mistake. Compartmentalizing the whole thing to trivialize it. Probably doing the whole eating-right-and-working-out-again cliche. And I'd wager she's going to do the, 'I'm single now so let's take advantage of it, I'm a woman hear me roar' thing where she goes out and... does what pretty girls do. ...I really don't want to think about it."

"She doesn't seem like a very humble person."

"Ah, no, she hasn't quite learned that element yet."

"I'm sorry, hun."

"But... for now, the memory of us is probably going into a box in the attic of her mind where she can ignore it for a while."

"I don't see how she could do that. Not after everything. Not after what you two went th--"

"No, she can. She has a very strong will to suppress things she doesn't want to deal with. She's fantastic at ignoring stuff during the day. But at night... when she's alone in her bed... or, god forbid, not alone... if her and I are anything alike... I'll pop up in her mind. I know that... It'll always make me sad."

"You're still inside your little box, hun. A little bubble. You can't see it all. She was awful. I really think you can't see what we all see."

"I can. In fact, the fact that I'm not going to just make it black-and-white and say, 'Fuck that whore!' and move on, should show you that I'm analyzing it pretty well. There are a lot of shades of gray and subtleties that I can't explain. 99% of the time it was amazing. She was amazing. We were amazing. It's that 1% that killed it; That you're all aware of."

"That still makes her a bad person, hun. If she did what she did, I don't care if it was once or twice or a hundred times, she did it. She made her choice. She's not a good person."

"I just... don't think she's a bad person. A bad person would be happy or proud of what she did. I guarantee you, wherever she is, somewhere out there, she isn't. A bad person would do it all over again exactly the same. But I bet my life that if you were to rewind time, show her this current reality as only a possible ending, she would avoid it. I don't know how far back she would rewind, but she wouldn't hurt me like this again."

"I think you're probably giving her too much credit."

"I don't think you're giving me enough."

You're guiltless and free; I hope you take a piece of me with you.

“I was trying to feel some kind of a good-by. I mean I’ve left schools and places I didn’t even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don’t care if it’s a sad good-by or a bad good-by, but when I leave a place I like to know I’m leaving it. If you don’t, you feel even worse.” 

 -H.C.

"We're stuck."

Screaming Infidelities

While men have always had a worse reputation for being unfaithful, recent studies show that women are catching up fast - but we are a lot more likely to lie about it, and a lot less likely to get caught.

Simply put, it seems that women are better at having affairs than men.

The news that Farrah Fawcett had a secret affair for 11 years without telling a soul is a classic example of the way a woman cheats: discreetly, in secret, and while carrying on with the rest of her life as normal.

It has been met with hot denials by Ryan O'Neal, but - and I'm sorry to break it to you this way, Ryan - you'd be the last to know.

According to Dr David Holmes, a psychologist at Manchester Metropolitan University, women are having more affairs than ever - recent studies say the figure is around 20 per cent for men and a bit over 15 per cent for women - but they behave very differently from men when they cheat.

'The biggest difference is that women are much better at keeping their affairs secret,' he says. 'If you look at the studies into paternity, even conservative figures show that between eight and 15 per cent of children haven't been fathered by the man who thinks he's the biological parent.'

That's a lot of women keeping a lot of secrets. One woman I know - let's call her Juliet - has been married to Adrian for ten years, and having an affair with Mark for the past two.

She has told me and her sister - otherwise, she says, she's '100 per cent certain' that nobody else knows.

'I won't allow Mark to call me on my mobile or email me, ever. Mobiles and email leave a trail. I insist we talk on our office landlines, and when we meet for drinks or dinner, we pay with cash.

'We work in the same field, so meeting for lunch doesn't look suspicious. If we meet in the evening, I tell Adrian I'm with my sister, and meet Mark a few miles away, where we won't bump into anyone.'

Does she feel guilty about the affair? 'Not so long as Adrian doesn't find out. You know the 11th commandment: don't get caught.'

Women have always had affairs, but over the past 20 years that number has risen dramatically.

Jobs outside the home - with the ready-made excuse of working late or business travel - financial independence and changing social attitudes mean that modern women simply have more opportunity to meet other men and start affairs.

Mobile phones, internet chat rooms and email also make it easier to fuel intimate encounters.

But while women's lives and sexual behavior might have changed, their willingness to be honest about it hasn't.

The truth is that we have always lied about our sex lives. British men consistently claim to have had more partners than women - the current average is 13, while women claim to have had only nine.

Plainly, someone is lying here. While men might exaggerate their sexual conquests, the bigger liars are women.

When studies about sexual partners or fidelity use a mixture of face-to-face interviews and anonymous computer questionnaires, men will give the same answers to both, but women will report much higher numbers when the answers are anonymous.

Why do women lie? Because we must, and because we can. In spite of apparent equality and a more sexually open society, we are still more harshly judged for our sex lives than men.

Can you imagine a leading female politician having an affair and her husband standing loyally by her?

Or the reaction to a female CEO having a public affair with her young male assistant?

There is something particularly humiliating for a man about being made a cuckold. So we lie to protect ourselves from the judgments of others, and because sexual 'reputation' still matters more to women, whether we like it or not.

But we also lie naturally and instinctively, as a way to manage and control our relationships, to protect our partners and our families, and to keep our options open.

In fact, we lie so much and for so many reasons that often we don't even think of it as lying at all, but as 'relationship management'.

Women are taught to lie from childhood. Those simple, altruistic lies such as saying we've had a lovely time when we haven't, that someone looks nice when she doesn't, or that we're delighted with a gift we don't really like, are just some of the small ways that lying oils the wheels of our social lives, keeps the peace, and makes other people happy.

Girls will lie to protect someone's feelings or to build a relationship. Honesty, in these circumstances, looks highly overrated, and we quickly learn the value and power of being economical with the truth in relationships.

Many women also develop a habit of secrecy about smaller issues in their relationship as a way of maintaining some kind of control.

It's common, for example, for women to lie to their partners about how much money they have spent - even when they don't need to.

It's not just a question of avoiding the inevitable row over the 'worth it' factor of a pair of killer heels, but of holding something back in order to maintain a sense of emotional independence, and to balance out the power we might feel our partner has in other aspects of the relationship.

A recent survey by a leading building society also found that women are much more likely than men to have a 'secret' account with money their partner knows nothing about.

'My mother always used to say that you should never tell a man everything,' says Clare, 38, 'and I thought it was rubbish. I believed in total honesty.

'But now I agree with her. Why explain yourself over every little thing? Why have a huge row over something he needn't even know about? I never tell him about my girlfriends' secrets, because he'd be judgmental and disapproving.

'I don't have a secret account, but I'm not completely honest about how much money I spend. If he doesn't know, he doesn't miss it.'

Harmless? Maybe. But it's easy to see how a climate of withholding and keeping smaller secrets can easily lead to bigger ones.

'Women are better liars because they're more psychologically sophisticated,' says Dr Holmes. 'You can argue about whether it's nature or nurture, but women are programmed to be much more relationship and people orientated than men.

From a young age, he says, women will start to consider the kind of life they want, what kind of job or house they aspire to, how many children they'd like and what kind of partner.

'Most men don't really develop that facility until they're much older. They live, psychologically, in the moment, while women think around corners and two steps ahead.'

Hillary stood by Bill Clinton when he had an affair, if it had been the other way around, would he have done the same?

We're also better at mental multi-tasking. 'You can keep all the different strands of a lie in your minds, remember them and make them convincing.'

Men lie, too, but they are much more likely to forget something, or make a mistake and get caught out.

When men have affairs, he says, they tend to be bigger risk-takers and naïve about how obvious their cheating is to an emotionally astute partner. They will also be bursting to tell someone about it.

'Men have more "trophy affairs" than women. They will often want to brag about it, or be so taken up by the sexual thrill of the affair that their behavior is a giveaway.'

Women, on the other hand, are much more cool and rational, even when they're in the grip of passion.

'It's a myth that they're more romantic. They may confide in one or two very close women friends, but they compartmentalize their emotional lives and don't let the affair bleed into the rest of their lives.'

Like Farrah Fawcett, a former colleague of mine, Susan, now 50, had a long-term affair with Brian, a salesman she met, ironically enough, when she was buying her husband a car as a surprise 40th birthday present.

'I was clear from the start that I'd never leave my husband and family. Brian kept me sane during some of the tougher years of my marriage, but he was strictly for snatched afternoons off and the odd "working weekend" away,' she says.

Susan adds: 'We made each other laugh and our sex life was wonderful. But Brian was a permanent "man-child" - a great lover, but not the kind of man you'd marry.

'He was always overdrawn, always teetering on the edge of some crisis that he'd just laugh off. I never wanted to live with him.'

The affair ended amicably after eight years, with her husband none the wiser.

Cheating is never pretty, but lying about it doesn't necessarily make it worse. Often, our lies are meant to shield our partners and families from pain. We tell ourselves that if nobody knows, nobody gets hurt.

Dr Holmes says: 'Often, women keep the secret because they're much more conscious of how much there is to lose, and to protect the other people involved. If she has children, she'll be especially careful that they aren't hurt in any way by the knowledge of what she's doing.'

Like my friend Juliet, who has become so good at lying to her husband that she surprises even herself.
'Adrian and I have drifted apart, but he's a nice man, a good father. He doesn't deserve to be hurt, and I have no intention of letting my son grow up without his father.'

Biologically, too, women are programmed to be more careful about revealing an infidelity.

In purely evolutionary terms, men are programmed to sleep with lots of women, and women are programmed to attract and retain a quality mate.

Dr Holmes adds: 'She will be very canny and keep her options open until she decides which of the men she is going to choose.'

Another reason women lie more about their affairs is simply that they can get away with it.
Historically, a man has put a higher value on the fidelity of his woman because he needs to be sure that any children she has are really his.

This seems to produce a strange kind of emotional blindness in many men, once they've selected a partner to settle down with.

'Whenever we question men about fidelity,' says Dr Holmes, 'they will very often admit to their affairs.

'But if you then ask the same men if they think their wives or girlfriends have had affairs, too, they will be shocked at the very thought, or laugh and call it ridiculous.'
In other words, men want to think women don't cheat, and women want men to think they don't cheat. No wonder we're better at secret affairs.

TCitR

"All right. Listen to me a minute now . . . I may not word this as memorably as I'd like to, but I'll write you a letter about it in a day or two. Then you can get it all straight. But listen now, anyway." He started concentrating again. Then he said, "This fall I think you're riding for--it's a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn't permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole arrangement's designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn't supply them with. Or they thought their own environment couldn't supply them with. So they gave up looking. They gave it up before they ever really even got started. You follow me?"

"Yes, sir."

"Sure?"

"Yes."

He got up and poured some more booze in his glass. Then he sat down again. He didn't say anything for a long time.

"I don't want to scare you," he said, "but I can very clearly see you dying nobly, one way or another, for some highly unworthy cause." He gave me a funny look. "If I write something down for you, will you read it carefully? And keep it?"

"Yes. Sure," I said. I did, too. I still have the paper he gave me.

He went over to this desk on the other side of the room, and without sitting down wrote something on a piece of paper. Then he came back and sat down with the paper in his hand. "Oddly enough, this wasn't written by a practicing poet. It was written by a psychoanalyst named Wilhelm Stekel. Here's what he--Are you still with me?"

"Yes, sure I am."

"Here's what he said:"

The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause,  

while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.

He leaned over and handed it to me. I read it right when he gave it to me, and then I thanked him and all and put it in my pocket. It was nice of him to go to all that trouble. It really was. The thing was, though, I didn't feel much like concentrating. Boy, I felt so damn tired all of a sudden.

You could tell he wasn't tired at all, though. He was pretty oiled up, for one thing. "I think that one of these days," he said, "you're going to have to find out where you want to go. And then you've got to start going there.

"But immediately. You can't afford to lose a minute. Not you."

I nodded, because he was looking right at me and all, but I wasn't too sure what he was talking about. I was pretty sure I knew, but I wasn't too positive at the time. I was too damn tired.

"And I hate to tell you," he said, "but I think that once you have a fair idea where you want to go, your first move will be to apply yourself in school. You'll have to. You're a student--whether the idea appeals to you or not. You're in love with knowledge. And I think you'll find, once you get past all the Mr. Vineses and their Oral Comp--"

"Mr. Vinsons," I said. He meant all the Mr. Vinsons, not all the Mr. Vineses. I shouldn't have interrupted him, though.

"All right--the Mr. Vinsons. Once you get past all the Mr. Vinsons, you're going to start getting closer and closer--that is, if you want to, and if you look for it and wait for it--to the kind of information that will be very, very dear to your heart. Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them--if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry."

He stopped and took a big drink out of his highball. Then he started again. Boy, he was really hot. I was glad I didn't try to stop him or anything. "I'm not trying to tell you," he said, "that only educated and scholarly men are able to contribute something valuable to the world. It's not so. But I do say that educated and scholarly men, if they're brilliant and creative to begin with--which, unfortunately, is rarely the case--tend to leave infinitely more valuable records behind them than men do who are merely brilliant and creative. They tend to express themselves more clearly, and they usually have a passion for following their thoughts through to the end. And--most important--nine times out of ten they have more humility than the unscholarly thinker. Do you follow me at all?"

"Yes, sir."

He didn't say anything again for quite a while. I don't know if you've ever done it, but it's sort of hard to sit around waiting for somebody to say something when they're thinking and all. It really is. I kept trying not to yawn. It wasn't that I was bored or anything--I wasn't--but I was so damn sleepy all of a sudden.

"Something else an academic education will do for you. If you go along with it any considerable distance, it'll begin to give you an idea what size mind you have. What it'll fit and, maybe, what it won't. After a while, you'll have an idea what kind of thoughts your particular size mind should be wearing. For one thing, it may save you an extraordinary amount of time trying on ideas that don't suit you, aren't becoming to you. You'll begin to know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly."

Then, all of a sudden, I yawned. What a rude bastard, but I couldn't help it!

Mr. Antolini just laughed, though. "C'mon," he said, and got up. "We'll fix up the couch for you."

Resolutions

2013, motherfuckers. Yeah! LET'S DO THIS.

"Do what?" you ask. I DON'T KNOW. LET'S FIGURE THAT OUT TOGETHER, MOTHERFUCKERS.

Feel free to stop reading this if your career is going great, you're thrilled with your life and you're happy with your relationships. Enjoy the rest of your day, friend, this article is not for you. You're doing a great job, we're all proud of you.

For the rest of you, I want you to try something: Name five impressive things about yourself. Write them down or just shout them out loud to the room. But here's the catch: you're not allowed to list anything you are (i.e., nice, honest, pretty, etc.), but instead can only list things that you do (i.e., I just won a national chess tournament, I make the best chili in Wisconsin, etc.). If you found that difficult, well, this is for you, and you are going to fucking hate hearing it. My only defense is that this is the stuff I wish somebody had said to me around 1995 or so.

The World Only Cares About What It Can Get from You

"What if I put on a lab coat?"

Let's say that the person you love the most has just been shot. He or she is lying in the street, bleeding and screaming. A guy rushes up and says, "Step aside." He looks over your loved one's bullet wound and pulls out a pocket knife; he's going to operate right there in the street.

You ask, "Are you a doctor?"

The guy says, "No."

You say, "But you know what you're doing, right? You're an old Army medic, or ..."

At this point the guy becomes annoyed. He tells you that he is a nice guy, he is honest, he is always on time. He tells you that he is a great son to his mother and has a rich life full of fulfilling hobbies, and he boasts that he never uses foul language.

Confused, you say, "How does any of that fucking matter when my (wife/husband/best friend/parent) is lying here bleeding! I need somebody who knows how to operate on bullet wounds! Can you do that or not?!?" 

Now the man becomes agitated -- why are you being shallow and selfish? Do you not care about any of his other good qualities? Didn't you just hear him say that he always remembers his girlfriend's birthday? In light of all of the good things he does, does it really matter if he knows how to perform surgery?

In that panicked moment, you will take your bloody hands and shake him by the shoulders, screaming, "Yes, I'm saying that none of that other shit matters, because in this specific situation, I just need somebody who can stop the bleeding, you crazy fucking asshole."

So here is my terrible truth about the adult world: You are in that very situation every single day. Only, you are the confused guy with the pocket knife. All of society is the bleeding gunshot victim.

If you want to know why society seems to shun you, or why you seem to get no respect, it's because society is full of people who need things. They need houses built, they need food to eat, they need entertainment, they need fulfilling sexual relationships. You arrived at the scene of that emergency, holding your pocket knife, by virtue of your birth - the moment you came into the world, you became part of a system designed purely to see to people's needs.

Either you will go about the task of seeing to those needs by learning a unique set of skills, or the world will reject you, no matter how kind, giving and polite you are. You will be poor, you will be alone, you will be left out in the cold.

Does that seem mean, or crass, or materialistic? What about love and kindness? Don't those things matter? Of course. As long as they result in you doing things for people that they can't get elsewhere. Because, you see...

The Hippies Were Wrong

Here is the greatest scene in the history of movies:

For those of you who can't watch the video, it's the famous speech Alec Baldwin gives in the cinematic masterpiece Glengarry Glenn Ross. Baldwin's character addresses a room full of dudes and tears them a new asshole, telling them that they're all about to be fired unless they "close" the sales they've been assigned:

"Nice guy? I don't give a shit. Good father? Fuck you! Go home and play with your kids. If you want to work here, close."

It's brutal, rude and borderline sociopathic, and also it is an honest and accurate expression of what the world is going to expect from you. The difference is that, in the real world, people consider it so wrong to talk to you that way that they've decided it's better to simply let you keep failing.

I'd program my alarm clock to play it for me every morning if I knew how. Alec Baldwin was nominated for an Oscar for that movie and that's the only scene he's in. As smarter people have pointed out, the genius of that speech is that half of the people who watch it think that the point of the scene is "Wow, what must it be like to have such an asshole boss?" and the other half think, "Fuck yes, let's go out and sell some goddamned real estate!"

If you were in that room, some of you would understand this as a work, but feed off the energy of the message anyway, welcome the coach's cursing at you, 'this guy is awesome!'; while some of you would take it personally, this guy is a jerk, you have no right to talk to me like that, or - the standard maneuver when narcissism is confronted with a greater power - quietly seethe and fantasize about finding information that will out him as a hypocrite. So satisfying.

That is why some people seem to have so much trouble getting jobs, and the point is that the difference in those two attitudes - bitter vs. motivated - largely determines whether or not you'll succeed in the world. For instance, some people want to respond to that speech with Tyler Durden's line from Fight Club: "You are not your job."

But, well, actually, you totally are. Granted, your "job" and your means of employment might not be the same thing, but in both cases you are nothing more than the sum total of your useful skills. For instance, being a good mother is a job that requires a skill. It's something a person can do that is useful to other members of society. But make no mistake: Your "job" - the useful thing you do for other people - is all you are.

It was the irony that many people missed from that movie.

There is a reason why surgeons get more respect than comedy writers. There is a reason mechanics get more respect than unemployed hipsters. There is a reason your job will become your label if your death makes the news. Tyler said, "You are not your job," but he also founded and ran a successful soap company and became the head of an international social and political movement. He was totally his job.

Or think of it this way: Remember when Chick-fil-A came out against gay marriage? And how despite the protests, the company continues to sell millions of sandwiches every day? It's not because the country agrees with them; it's because they do their job of making delicious sandwiches well. And that's all that matters.

You don't have to like it. I don't like it when it rains on my birthday. It rains anyway. Clouds form and precipitation happens. People have needs and thus assign value to the people who meet them. These are simple mechanisms of the universe and they do not respond to our wishes.

If you protest that you're not a shallow capitalist materialist and that you disagree that money is everything, I can only say: Who said anything about money? You're missing the larger point.

What You Produce Does Not Have to Make Money, But It Does Have to Benefit People

Let's try a non-money example so you don't get hung up on that. The demographic that I write for is heavy on 20-30-something something males. So in my many inboxes I read several dozen stories a year from miserable, lonely guys who insist that women won't come near them despite the fact that they are just the nicest guys in the world. I can explain what is wrong with this mindset, but it would probably be better if I let Alec Baldwin explain it again:

Except in this case, Baldwin is playing the part of the attractive women in your life. They won't put it as bluntly as he does -- society has trained us not to be this honest with people -- but the equation is the same. "Nice guy? Who gives a shit? If you want to work here, close."

So, what do you bring to the table? Because the Zooey Deschanel lookalike in the bookstore that you've been daydreaming about moisturizes her face for an hour every night and feels guilty when she eats anything other than salad for lunch. She's going to be a surgeon in 10 years. What do you do?

"What, so you're saying that I can't get girls like that unless I have a nice job and make lots of money?"

No, your brain jumps to that conclusion so you have an excuse to write off everyone who rejects you by thinking that they're just being shallow and selfish. I'm asking what do you offer? Are you smart? Funny? Interesting? Talented? Ambitious? Creative? OK, now what do you do to demonstrate those attributes to the world? Don't say that you're a nice guy - that's the bare minimum. Pretty girls have guys being nice to them 600 times a day. The patient is bleeding in the street. Do you know how to operate or not?

"Well, I'm not sexist or racist or greedy or shallow or abusive! Not like those other douchebags!"

I'm sorry, I know that this is hard to hear, but if all you can do is list a bunch of faults you don't have, then back the fuck away from the patient. There's a witty, handsome guy with a promising career ready to step in and operate.

Does that break your heart? OK, so now what? Are you going to mope about it, or are you going to learn how to do surgery? It's up to you, but don't complain about how girls fall for jerks; they fall for those jerks because those jerks have other things they can offer. "But I'm a great listener!" Are you? Because you're willing to sit quietly in exchange for the chance to be in the proximity of a pretty girl (and spend every second imagining how soft her skin must be)? Well guess what, there's another guy in her life who also knows how to do that, and he can play the guitar. Saying that you're a nice guy is like a restaurant whose only selling point is that the food doesn't make you sick. You're like a new movie whose title is This Movie Is in English, and its tagline is "The actors are clearly visible."

I think this is why you can be a "nice guy" and still feel terrible about yourself. Specifically ...

You Hate Yourself Because You Don't Do Anything

"So, what, you're saying that I should pick up a book on how to get girls?"

Only if step one in the book is "Start making yourself into the type of person girls want to be around."

Because that's the step that gets skipped. It's always "How can I get a job?" and not, "How can I become the type of person employers want?" It's "How can I get pretty girls to like me?" instead of, "How can I become the type of person that pretty girls like?" See, because that second one could very well require giving up many of your favorite hobbies and paying more attention to your appearance, and God knows what else. You might even have to change your personality.

"But why can't I find someone who just likes me for me?" you ask. The answer is because humans need things. The victim is bleeding, and all you can do is look down and complain that there aren't more gunshot wounds that just fix themselves?

"But I'm not good at anything!" Well, I have good news: throw enough hours of repetition at it and you can get sort of good at anything. Don't like the prospect of pouring all of that time into a skill? Well, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that the sheer act of practicing will help you come out of your shell. I got through years of tedious office work because I knew that I was learning a unique skill on the side. People quit because it takes too long to see results, because they can't figure out that the process is the result.
The bad news is that you have no other choice. "If you want to work here, close."

Step one: Get up.

Because in my non-expert opinion, you don't hate yourself because you have low self-esteem, or because other people were mean to you. You hate yourself because you don't do anything. Not even you can just "love you for you." That's why you're miserable and sending me private Facebook messages asking me what I think you should do with your life.

Do the math: How much of your time is spent consuming things other people made (TV, music, video games, websites) versus making your own? Only one of those adds to your value as a human being.

And if you hate hearing this and are responding with something you heard as a kid that sounds like "It's what's on the inside that matters!" then I can only say ...

What You Are Inside Only Matters Because of What It Makes You Do

Don't get me wrong; who you are inside is everything - the guy who built a house for his family from scratch did it because of who he was inside. Every bad thing you've ever done has started with a bad impulse, some thought ricocheting around inside your skull until you had to act on it. And every good thing you've done is the same - "who you are inside" is the metaphorical dirt from which your fruit grows.

But here's what everyone needs to know, and what many of you can't accept:

"You" are nothing but the fruit.

Nobody cares about your dirt. "Who you are inside" is meaningless aside from what it produces for other people.

Inside, you have great compassion for poor people. Great. Does that result in you doing anything about it? Do you hear about some terrible tragedy in your community and say, "Oh, those poor children. Let them know that they are in my thoughts"? Because fuck you if so. Find out what they need and help provide it. A hundred million people watched that Kony video, virtually all of whom kept those poor African children "in their thoughts." What did the collective power of those good thoughts provide? Jack fucking shit. Children die every day because millions of us tell ourselves that caring is just as good as doing. It's an internal mechanism controlled by the lazy part of your brain to keep you from actually doing work.

How many of you are walking around right now saying, "She/he would love me if she/he only knew what an interesting person I am!" Really? How do all of your interesting thoughts and ideas manifest themselves in the world? What do they cause you to do? If your dream girl or guy had a hidden camera that followed you around for a month, would they be impressed with what they saw? Remember, they can't read your mind - they can only observe. Would they want to be a part of that life?

I just applied 40ccs of prayer.
Let me know how that goes.

Because all I'm asking you to do is apply the same standard to yourself that you apply to everyone else. Don't you have that annoying Christian friend whose only offer to help anyone ever is to "pray for them"? Doesn't it drive you nuts? I'm not even commenting on whether or not prayer works; it doesn't change the fact that they chose the one type of help that doesn't require them to get off the sofa. They abstain from every vice, they think clean thoughts, their internal dirt is as pure as can be, but what fruit grows from it? And they should know this better than anybody -- I stole the fruit metaphor from the Bible. Jesus said something to the effect of "a tree is judged by its fruit" over and over and over. Granted, Jesus never said, "If you want to work here, close." No, he said, "Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire."

The people didn't react well to being told that, just as the salesmen didn't react well to Alec Baldwin telling them that they needed to grow some balls or resign themselves to shining his shoes. Which brings us to the final point ...

Everything Inside You Will Fight Improvement

The human mind is a miracle, and you will never see it spring more beautifully into action than when it is fighting against evidence that it needs to change. Your psyche is equipped with layer after layer of defense mechanisms designed to shoot down anything that might keep things from staying exactly where they are -- ask any addict.

So even now, some of you reading this are feeling your brain bombard you with knee-jerk reasons to reject it. From experience, I can say that these seem to come in the form of:

• Intentionally Interpreting Any Criticism as an Insult "Who is he to call me lazy and worthless! A good person would never talk to me like this! He wrote this whole thing just to feel superior to me and to make me feel bad about my life! I'm going to think up my own insult to even the score!" 

• Focusing on the Messenger to Avoid Hearing the Message "Who is THIS guy to tell ME how to live? Oh, like he's so high and mighty! It's just some dumb writer on the Internet! I'm going to go dig up something on him that reassures me that he's stupid, and that everything he's saying is stupid! This guy is so pretentious, it makes me puke!" 

• Focusing on the Tone to Avoid Hearing the Content "I'm going to dig through here until I find a joke that is offensive when taken out of context, and then talk and think only about that! I've heard that a single offensive word can render an entire book invisible!" 

• Revising Your Own History "Things aren't so bad! I know that I was threatening suicide last month, but I'm feeling better now! It's entirely possible that if I just keep doing exactly what I'm doing, eventually things will work out! I'll get my big break, and if I keep doing favors for that pretty girl, eventually she'll come around!" 

• Pretending That Any Self-Improvement Would Somehow Be Selling Out "Oh, so I guess I'm supposed to get rid of all of my manga and instead go to the gym for six hours a day and get a spray tan like those Jersey Shore douchebags? Because THAT IS THE ONLY OTHER OPTION."

And so on. Remember, misery is comfortable. It's why so many people prefer it. Happiness takes effort.
Also, courage. It's incredibly comforting to know that as long as you don't create anything in your life, then nobody can attack the thing you created.

It's so much easier to just sit back and criticize other people's creations. This movie is stupid. That couple's kids are brats. That other couple's relationship is a mess. That rich guy is shallow. That girl's shirt is terrible. This restaurant sucks. This Internet writer is an asshole. I'd better leave a mean comment. See, I created something.

Oh, wait, did I forget to mention that part? Yeah, whatever you try to build or create - be it a poem, or a new skill, or a new relationship - you will find yourself immediately surrounded by non-creators who trash it. Maybe not to your face, but they'll do it. Your drunk friends do not want you to get sober. Your fat friends do not want you to start a fitness regimen. Your jobless friends do not want to see you embark on a career.

Just remember, they're only expressing their own fear, since trashing other people's work is another excuse to do nothing. "Why should I create anything when the things other people create suck? I would totally have written a novel by now, but I'm going to wait for something good, I don't want to write the next Twilight!" As long as they never produce anything, it will forever be perfect and beyond reproach. Or if they do produce something, they'll make sure they do it with detached irony. They'll make it intentionally bad to make it clear to everyone else that this isn't their real effort. Their real effort would have been amazing. Not like the shit you made.

Don't be that person. If you are that person, don't be that person any more. This is what's making people hate you. This is what's making you hate yourself.

What are you going to do with it?
Hunt witches or kick off your Olympics?

So how about this: one year. The end of 2013, that's our deadline. Or a year from whenever you read this. While other people are telling you "Let's make a New Year's resolution to lose 15 pounds this year!" I'm going to say let's pledge to do fucking anything - add any skill, any improvement to your human tool set, and get good enough at it to impress people. Don't ask me what - hell, pick something at random if you don't know. Take a class in karate, or ballroom dancing, or pottery. Learn to bake. Build a birdhouse. Learn massage. Learn a programming language. Film a porno. Adopt a superhero persona and fight crime. Start a YouTube vlog. Read.

But the key is, I don't want you to focus on something great that you're going to make happen to you ("I'm going to find a girlfriend, I'm going to make lots of money ..."). I want you to purely focus on giving yourself a skill that would make you ever so slightly more interesting and valuable to other people.

"I don't have the money to take a cooking class." Then fucking Google "how to cook." They've even filtered out the porn now, it's easier than ever.

Damn it, you have to kill those excuses.

Or they will kill you.

Newtown's martyred children and the cold hearts of the gun lobby

I choked up repeatedly while watching and reading the stories about the slaughter of the innocents in Newtown, Conn., and, throughout the mournful weekend, I pondered the question raised by everyone from stricken parents to mayors and senators on the news talk shows: What will be done to prevent similar sick-minded gun rampages in the future?

My early conclusion: Nothing.

Narrow political interests and the perplexing nature of the crime make inaction nearly certain. This has proved true after the 15 other multiple-shooting rampages of 2012, and it has been the case with all the other terrible incidents in past years. Yes, this time the tender age of most of the victims makes it especially horrific, but, though many hearts have been broken, the cold hearts at the headquarters of the National Rifle Assn. remain in deep freeze.

Even as the children of Newtown are laid to rest, the leaders of the NRA will not soften their absolutist stance for unfettered access to all types of firearms and, as a result, neither will the majority of Republicans in Congress who are in their thrall. Chances are slim-to-none that the Republican-controlled House of Representatives will take rational steps toward managing the millions of guns in America, such as banning assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition clips, as well as requiring background checks for all gun sales. Gun policy in the United States will continue to be dictated by extremists whose paranoid fear of black U.N. helicopters and the federal government far exceeds their concern about the shooting deaths of school kids or moviegoers or Christmas shoppers at a mall.

These 2nd Amendment zealots will argue that Connecticut’s comparatively strict firearms laws did nothing to stop the slaughter at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and they will be right, but maybe that means the laws should be more strict. The guns that Adam Lanza took with him to shoot down 6- and 7-year-olds and their teachers were purchased legally by the first of his victims, his mother. Lanza’s primary weapon was his mom’s assault rifle, but I expect pro-gun folks to talk as if he could have done equal damage with a baseball bat. Every proposed limit will be treated as an assault on freedom. Even the experience of Australia, where no mass shootings have occurred since very tough firearms laws were passed in 1996, is already being discounted on gun-rights websites.

Attention will be steered away from guns toward other pertinent issues -- most prominently, the adequacy of mental health treatment in the United States. Cuts to state and federal mental health budgets will be decried. But mass shooters are generally not people who have been enrolled in treatment programs, nor do they come from among the mumbling, delusional street vagrants who wander our city streets. Most often, they simply walk out of dorm rooms or their parents’ basements with guns blazing. What are we to do when evil is so anonymous and unpredictable? Can we lock up every brooding loner in America? Can we demand a 911 call from every parent with a sullen boy holed up in his bedroom?

How about putting well-armed police officers in every school in America? Would that help? And after the schools are secured, what about the shopping malls and movie theaters and college campuses? Should they too be turned into armed fortresses? How much liberty must we all give up to protect the freedom of those who want to amass an arsenal?

A tearful President Obama has said it is time to take “meaningful action,” but that is far easier said than done when there is so little will to make a cure for this plague a national priority. Perhaps the photographs of Newtown’s dead children should be displayed prominently at every congressional hearing, at every community gathering, at every NRA meeting called to deal with this issue. Broken hearts may open closed minds.

- David Horsey, Los Angeles Times

Emotional Handcuffs

I used to be elusive. I used to never let anyone know how I was feeling, what I was thinking, and I never wore my emotions on my sleeve. High school was the last time that applied. I smiled and joked and generally committed myself to a bouncy disposition.

It's been thirteen years, and since then I've gone to three colleges, toured all over the country, visited two others, and returned a lot more jaded, and with less care about who sees what I feel or hears what I think. And so I more or less say what I think and share what I feel, openly.

The only problem is, being an adult means you're supposed to have that filter installed. Now I get looked down upon for letting my emotions known. Telling someone about your bad day is burdensome, writing in Facebook status about a philosophy on love is childish, and not acting like everything is perfect as soon as you walk out your door is weak. My favorite part? This all comes on the feminist heels of how being a man doesn't mean you have to suppress everything and how it's okay to cry.

But don't believe it. Don't you ever, ever believe it. No matter how much a girl or woman may say she doesn't mind it if a guy shows vulnerability, or even if she says she likes it when a guy cries because it shows he can be sensitive, don't listen. Because while she may mean it in that moment, looking back, when she's in a bad mood or the waves in the relationship start getting rough, she'll remember you and how let her into that soft, delicate place inside you, and she'll see you as "whiny" - which strips away the main characteristics a man prides himself on: strength and security. And you won't be able to unring that bell.

So don't cry. Never cry. Never lament. Never let her in. She'll sucker you into a false sense of security then use your lapse in stoicism as a tool against you down the line.

Men: You are never free. That is the sad, unalienable truth. Men are raised to "suck it up and don't bitch" all their lives, and women are taught to see us that way from birth. A few months in a liberal classroom or a idealistic book she reads isn't going to reverse thousands of years of gender roles and expectations. Sure, some women may not like a quiet, enigmatic, silent rock type (though most do), but no woman will ever be with a guy that's as emotionally open and exposed as she is. They don't want to hear about our problems. Sharing our complaints makes them feel like they're suddenly mothering a helpless child. And we all know the double standard of letting them shed tears about their ex-boyfriends, the death of a pet, the loss of a house, being sick, or just simply venting during their "week". The capricious current of sympathy flows in only one direction between man and woman: From us to them.

Never be too proud to comfort, but never become too comfortable to be comforted.

We men get to be the physically stronger and faster sex, so the balance of that is that we don't "get" to sob and bemoan about life the way women do, no matter what persuasive words they may try to convince us with. It's unfortunate but it's true, and always will be.

And the ironic conundrum? While all men will know exactly what I'm talking about, women will see this entry about not being able to complain... as whining.

Thus, further proving the point.

-HKR

Cogent

"Neil, I've been a girl for almost 28 years now. And after everything I've been through, all the ups and downs and dramas and relationships and fights with family and schools and jobs and all the friendships I've had, the only advice on girls I can give you is this:

"Sometimes... we just want to be depressed. 

"And it won't make sense, it won't follow logic, and it won't be planned. You don't even have to do anything wrong. You can do everything right and be the perfect son, the perfect boyfriend, husband or father - but every now and then we will go out of our way to make ourselves temporarily miserable. 

"We know you guys hate it, and we hate it about ourselves even more. But sometimes there's just nothing you can do about a woman but to just let her not make any damn sense for a while."