Snow fell this morning, like commuters distractedly making their way to work, unconcerned about their destination, knowing that when they get there, all their uniqueness will end and they will merely become water, like everything else. Why hurry? Why go? This slow drift down is much more entertaining.
It’s not always easy for a man to acknowledge his uniformity, his lack of extraordinary. My name is not one that will be recalled through history, my line won’t continue. My day to day? Is practically the definition of mundane. I am replaceable, and no different than the billions of other people who wake up, do their best and sleep.
“You are the all singing, all dancing crap of the world.”
Which, I suppose, is a succinct way of saying: get the fuck over it. And here’s why–again, from Fight Club:
Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.
I don’t mind being a cog. I promise. I acknowledge this simple truth: I am not special. I don’t find my joy in this but I don’t mind it. I’m busy, I’m busy trying to fight a spiritual war. Not a war against spirits but a war OF the spirit. I don’t want the shit I’m told to want: I want the stuff that helps me engage, damnit. I don’t have time, nor the desire, to fuck around with crap that I’m told I ‘need’ vs what my heart tells me I need.
We are here to evolve. We are here to inspire each other to be better, inch by inch, day by terrible day. The monkey that learns to use the tool, that shows another monkey, that shows another, until everyone knows how the tools work: that’s what I’m here for. To learn from the other monkeys, to be the monkey that teaches, to figure out a small piece of a small element of that tool, to link that spirit and give it to someone else. Anyone else.
This is the reason that Fight Club spoke to so many young men (and women) over a decade ago. We knew, whether or not we’d been told, that we were and are being lied to, that our lives were more empty than full, that our cogs were taking over, defining us instead of being something we can shed and drop out of. Why the hell should we buy into a system that is intent on burying us with all the glee of a bully?
It’s taking years. It’s taking bombings and death and protests and the very slow raising of the veil that we are being screwed over AND we are not being allowed to live to our potential. It’s coming, though. I don’t know how to be a part of that, nor how to make a mark on anyone.
I play a cog on TV. I don’t make a huge impact.
But I can learn to use the tools, I can evolve, motherfucker. Watch me get better, be a leaf on the wind, and maybe I can show you how I did it. Then you can show me how you did that and we can move to something better, instead of the bullshit that seems to be insisting on getting its way right now.
And it won’t matter when I melt and become just like everyone, because we’ll have done something together.
Drinking Full Sail’s Existential Alt, to, what I imagine, is nobody’s surprise. It’s a little more watery than I’d like, mostly notable because of a hint of bitterness at the end that makes it unappealing because there’s nothing to balance it out.
A pint for Dionysus 