by Don Hall

No one wants to be around the perpetually cynical.

On that weird road to crawling out of a hole when things didn't quite work out the way you wanted them to unfold I find myself bitching a lot about things I have zero control over.

I'm sliding, like a guy on a gravel incline dropping in bursts down to the bottom of the ravine into becoming a full-blown cynic. I've seen this before in others but I've almost always been the half-full glass guy. There's an absence of a certain generosity of spirit that I had before that my place and circumstance isn't accessing.

I'm transforming into a real cunt.

In the classic feel-good film It's a Wonderful Life, George Bailey finds himself at the end of his rope. He is stuck in the town he swore he'd escape, his finances a shambles, he is suicidal, his view of his own existence tainted with the same disregard for others around him that forces Clarence to show him the world as if he never existed in the first place.

But before all that George Bailey bitched a lot about how unfair it was he was stuck in his particular one-horse town and how he somehow deserved to leave behind. He is a cynic long before he decides to jump into a frozen river and end it all. Certainly from one angle George is the hero of the story but I'd argue that he is just another version of Ebenezer Scrooge, a tainted, stunted man unhappy in his surroundings and pathologically ungenerous to those around him. Instead of three ghosts, Bailey gets one angel, but the story is the same—spend a night reflecting on what an unrepentant dickhead he has been and hopefully that awareness will pull his self-involved noggin from the anal cavity from which it is lodged.

George Bailey discovered somewhere along the line but before Clarence showed up that he was living an average life. Another great but more disparaging word for average is mediocre. He was a mediocre man living a mediocre life in a mediocre town running a mediocre business. He felt he was meant for something more but without the opportunity to fly, he became permanently grounded. No wonder he was frustrated. No wonder he bitched incessantly. When all of things that could go wrong—his enemy won because his drunk uncle fucked up the cash and his house felt like it was in perpetual disrepair and I imagine after three kids the sex had pretty much dried up or become rote exercise—he decided to off himself because one more day of mediocrity was one day too many.

I like quotes like Kirsten Dunst's character in Eternal Sunshine in the Spotless Mind but not as substitute for actually reading larger works. I like them to serve as reminders. Lately, in an effort to curb my own bitching, I've been looking at what others have said about the comforts of mediocrity, of settling into a simpler rhythm, of embracing less in the face of both age and sick experience.

“Know who you are. Know what you want. Know what you deserve. And don’t settle for less.” — Tony Gaskins

“Never settle for anything less than what you deserve. It’s not pride, it’s self-respect.” — Chanakya

“Know your worth and never settle for less than you deserve.” — LaWhimsy

I don't know who Tony Gaskins, Chanakya, or LaWhimsy are but my issue with these quotes is the concept of deserve. There is a sense of entitlement, of how unfair life can be, that taints the concept. So many like old Georgey feel like they deserve better than they have but misunderstand the living world—there is no deserving of anything better than what you work to achieve. No one on the planet deserves, due to their specific desires and longing, jack shit. Sure, you didn’t ask to born but no one asked for you to be born, either. Everyone feels they deserve more—more money, more respect, more recognition, more justice. Everyone. No, I don't care for the the idea that I deserve anything as it becomes a dead end street from which I sit and impotently look for a thoroughfare.

I prefer to replace the word deserve with earned.

“Know who you are. Know what you want. Know what you've earned. And don’t settle for less.” — Tony Gaskins

That's better, I think.

The quotes that jar me are more focused.

“Never settle for average.” ― Steve Jobs

“It is never too late to be what you might have been.” — George Eliot

"There is no passion to be found in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living." — Nelson Mandela

I know who Steve Jobs, George Eliot, and Nelson Mandela are and I dig their thoughts on it no less because these are people who did extraordinary things. I also find more inspiration from these thoughts.

Simplicity: action begets motivation which creates results which inspire action and so on.

I don't need an angel to come down and show how wonderful my life has been. It has been wonderful in its own way and I'm terribly grateful for the people in my life, both temporary and permanent, for allowing me to do extraordinary things. Terribly grateful because that gratitude can never be enough. There is guilt imbued within it because while I am grateful, I need to keep moving and choosing and whether I end up as a mediocre being on the rock in space at least I kept trying for the amazing.

What stopped George from leaving Bedford Falls? He had a bushel of excuses but I'd suggest it was the fear that if he did decide to split and travel the world, he'd discover he wasn't that special at all. If he packed up his family and moved the whole crew to London or Paris or even Chicago, he'd find that he had been a big fish in a tiny pond and that that was the best he'd ever be.

The last decade or so has put some real dents in my self assurance that I can always strive for better. Not more stuff or money because those things have never meant that much to me but more life. More experiences. More opportunities.

My mom wants me to write more fiction rather than "that opinion stuff" and I realize that fiction is inspired by living in a greater community of the world. Inspiration for me comes in the form of the overstimulation of a city—hell, look at where I went as soon as I graduated college. Chicago and the Las Vegas. I'm obviously not looking to settle for calm and quiet and I'm not planning on retiring.

"This is the Day" by The The

Well you didn't wake up this morning
'Cause you didn't go to bed
You were watching the whites of your eyes turn red
The calendar on your wall
Is ticking the days off
You've been reading some old letters
You smile and think how much you've changed
All the money in the world
Couldn't buy back those days

You pull back the curtains
And the sun burns into your eyes
You watch a plane flying
Across the clear blue sky
This is the day
Your life will surely change
This is the day
When things fall into place

You could've done anything
If you'd wanted
And all your friends and family
Think that you're lucky
But the side of you they'll never see
Is when you're left alone with the memories
That hold your life together like
Glue