The Problem with Prolificacy

The world is full of good people.
If you can’t find one, be one.

~ Anonymous ~

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I could find all sorts of faults with the structure of—or even the content delivered by—that anonymous quotation, but I think the underlying message is fundamentally true and good. The world really is full of good people, although they sometimes are hard to spot among the rest who litter the landscape and fill social and not-so-social media with malignant malice. As much as I frequently want to lash out at those shameless degenerates, the best response is to replace them through behavior—simply by being good, rather than attempting to eradicate them with their own weapons.  I wish I had the willpower, the sheer discipline, to always “turn the other cheek.” I wish I were the kind of man whose strength shines through in his gentleness, as opposed to his righteous rage. As I grow older, my admiration for people who have that sort of fortitude grows, along with my contempt for people who try to demonstrate their strength through confrontation or aggression or animosity or cruelty. But, ideally, my admiration should not grow in parallel with the weakness inherent in contempt. Somehow, appreciation of goodness should grow alone, not paired with antipathy toward its opposite.  I suppose that message is one humankind has attempted to deliver through religion for ages. Obviously, though, delivering the message does not, alone, produce the desired outcome. Perhaps nothing ever will. All we can do is try, one person at a time.

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Too often, the message we hope to deliver is misinterpreted or jumbled in translation. I watch as people attempt to follow Gandhi’s admonition to “be the change you want to see in the world,” only to be slammed for their efforts; others misread their good intentions as something utterly different and unintended. We can’t “be the change” when the world around us reacts with unbridled rage at our audacity. When the message we send is not the message the world receives, we have to examine whether the messenger might be at fault. Or whether it’s the message. Or the audience. If it’s the audience, the message obviously is the wrong one, at least in form if not in fact.

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It’s five in the morning and I’ve been up for an hour and a half. I slept, more or less, for five and a half hours. Maybe that’s enough for me. Or maybe the stress surrounding me is having unexpected consequences. I don’t feel stress; at least not the kind of full-throated stress that one might expect with major life changes. But, still, it’s there. I sense it in the way I respond to little things. Like last night, after going out to dinner with neighbors/friends; instead of accepting their invitation to stop at their house for wine and conversation, I did not want to. I wanted, instead, to return to my cocoon with my IC and watch a television program that drew me into another world and away from mine. Merging households is both exciting and profoundly tiring; television can serve as an anesthetic of sorts.

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Both elbows hurt now, not just the left elbow. Fortunately, I was able to make an appointment to see my primary care doctor next Thursday. I hope he will give me an injection or some other treatment that will eliminate (or at least make tolerable) my pain. That appointment, next Thursday, will be my third medical visit next week. I have another one to check my eyes/vision and another one to follow up on the unsatisfactory treatment of skin “growths” that have twice been frozen. Freezing does not (or, at least, has not yet) accomplish what I wanted: complete disappearance of itchy skin disruptions.

I think, despite a conversation to the contrary within the last day or two, I am elderly. The definition is not necessarily age-related; it is ailment-related. According to my definition, a teenager can be elderly if he has enough ailments. I feel like an elderly teenager. I want to go sky-diving and scuba-diving and racecar-driving, but my ailments make such endeavors unwise.

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The tasks associated with merging two households is clarifying for me—again—that minimalism is the way to go. We have too much “stuff.” Too many clothes, too many shoes, too much furniture, too many kitchen utensils, too many electronic toys, too much paper, too many books, just too damn much crap. I believe we would all be happier if we spent much more of our time focusing on intellectual and emotional possessions and much less on physical things. The fewer the number of physical things we owned, the more intensely valuable those few things would be. Consider children: those with millions of toys place little value on any of them, but they place enormous value on the vague aggregate collection of crap. I’m in favor of giving a kid a little red wagon and a set of blocks and letting him get creative. If we load them down with hundreds of electronic devices meant to occupy their time, they will become enormously dimwitted.

As I contemplate these matters, it occurs to me that the same concepts apply to me. The more I write, the less what I have to say matters. My prolificacy makes me less interesting; more disposable. I produce too much minutia. Too much drivel. Too many words that have no appreciable impact on the lives of the few people who read them. This post, for example, covers too many topics too superficially, but with too many words to justify the writing. That’s why most people tend not to comment, respond, acknowledge that they have read what I’ve written. They skim what I’ve written, if they view it at all, because there’s just too damn much. Fortunately for me, it doesn’t matter. I’m writing for my sanity, not theirs. Whether I’m succeeding is anyone’s guess. Ultimately, it does not matter.

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Okay. It’s 5:30. Time to stop and attempt to catch a few Zs before more coffee.

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