Tongue in Cheek

I try to have faith and hope, but mostly I’m tongue-in-cheek at my core.

Which is a polite way of saying that a half century in; I’m a skinny, bald, reformed people-pleaser who has almost entirely lost the plot, operating like captain jack sparrow in a sterile world that strictly requires an itinerary.

By most standard societal metrics, I should have a curated life by now. I should have an ergonomic chair, a sensible mutual fund, a lawn I feel strongly about, maybe even an opinion on kitchen backsplashes. Instead, I have an empty passenger seat, a hairline that surrendered unconditionally somewhere around George W Bush’s administration and an unfortunate, ticking-clock sense of mortality that whispers, “Hey man, you’re in the back nine, and you didn't even bring golf clubs.”

The modern world is obsessed with optimization. Everyone is healing their inner child, enforcing clear boundaries, drinking green sludge, and speaking in HR-approved emotional dialect. 

Meanwhile, I find myself taking grim comfort in Ecclesiastes, where the Teacher basically looked at humanity's frantic hustle and sighed, “The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong... but time and chance happen to them all.” That’s three-thousand-year-old scripture for: You can optimize your routine until you’re blue in the face, pal, but the rogue wave doesn't read your spreadsheet. 

They have five-year plans. They have vision boards. I have a compass that doesn't point north and a dinghy that is taking on water at a steady, manageable gallon an hour. 

My great tragic flaw—aside from my scalp reflecting overhead fluorescent lighting with absolute clarity—is that I was built with a people-pleasing engine. For decades, I tried to keep the civilized folks happy. I nodded at the right times, smoothed down the edges and attempted to contort myself into neat, square spaces designed entirely for people who color inside the lines.

The problem with being a compulsive peacekeeper who secretly has a crooked grin; is that eventually, the mask slips. You realize you spent freaking fortyish solar orbits trying not to offend anyone, only to land ass up, solitary and staring down the cosmic void with nothing in your pockets but dry sarcasm and a couple of random safety pins.

Mortality is funny like that. Once you really look it in the grill, the desperate urge to appease everyone else evaporates. You stop caring about the grand narrative arc. The big redemptive life lessons feel like cheap plastic kiddie toys. I’m not going to tell you I’ve found clary through the crackup. I haven't. Some days the silence is just a woman called Becky. Some days looking in the mirror feels like an unprovoked attack from the passage of time.

I reload the faith. I really do. I glance toward the horizon looking to some noble, transcendent signal that this whole absurd journey has an architect with a great sense of poetry. But my default setting is to watch the mast snap in half, take a sip of cheap coffee, and mutter, “Well, that’s certainly a design choice.”

So the plot is gone. Let it go. The script was written for a guy who was never going to survive the first act anyway.

Right, what’s left is the raw mechanics of the afternoon. Said boat is splintered, the harbor authorities a might bit concerned and it’s absolutely no idea what the third act could be. But me ‘fat ass’ shoes are still dry, the sun is up and like ole Scuba Steve quipped, “if the whole thing has to sink, it might as well sink with a little style.”