I sit across the room from a mid to late 40s gentleman who’s called a dozen different casinos about their various poker games and discounts for being a continuous player. The guy in the bed next to him is arguably one of the rudest roommates I’ve encountered if by his every other word “mother fucker” that permeates his phone conversations or his oddly aggressive insistence on slamming the handle to open the door. In our group is a solitary woman who clearly grew up much different than me and sought out sitting next to me during meals to engage in small talk. In these meals I learned her brother is smug and rich and thinks he’s done everything himself, she’s Republican but, “not trying to talk politics so don’t worry” and is studying engineering while having a good job at the adjoining hospital in something to do with grants.
The pleasant southern bell, obnoxiously aggressive East St. Louis-ite, and unapologetic aging gambler pick up a phone and look for a way to make some extra cash…
I understand that we’re products of our environment. I understand that each of us makes choices that we perceive as at least quasi-in line with our understanding of ourselves and place in the world. I find it hard to even simply “like” being around the people I come into contact with in these studies. It’s an extension of my general disregard for the world at large, but here is a special kind of microcosm given the set of health and perspective circumstances it takes to not only have the time but inclination to capitalize for so little effort. But I already feel I’m drifting off track from the feeling.
The title of this blog is “Ordinary World.” Each piece of the study-life puzzle, each player in your night out, and every article or news piece you encounter throughout your day are to some degree “normal” or “ordinary” in the general context of human existence. You’re not going to see the cutest cat video anymore than you’re going to hear secret Holocaust level gas chambers (yet). You can look just about anywhere to justify any kind of behavior and wrap yourself in a feedback loop.
I persistently struggle with trying to invent larger stories about people that makes me feel capable of relating to them. My “best guess” is that the guy across from me mostly gambles and jumps from study to study. He’s single, has a few odd quirks, and is perfectly comfortable scrolling his phone in perpetuity between blood draws and meals. He’s the epitome of a side character in my story. And yet I need to reconcile that with the idea that he’s as full of potential and insight and yada yada manifest destined statement about humanity? I’m to lay at his feet “our collective ignorance” that elected Hitler 2? I’m supposed to maintain an impassioned position about a forward-thinking proactive approach to his money than gambling?
I don’t understand my levels of obligation. Nothing in polite society suggests you should proselytize under the auspice of anything less than blindingly ignorant faith in something. So that’s out. I believe enough in what I’m saying to pursue goals and projects in service to it, but still understand the need for a larger structure in which to plug anyone else in. I feel the growing resolve to turn unbearably selfish and forgo any appreciable justification for anything I do or choose to adopt. It’s happening all at once. I don’t “hate” this guy who’s giggling away at his phone and seeking as earnestly for tables with bet limits as I am advice on leveling a foundation for a sustainable home. I just feel there’s an important and appreciable difference as to why I don’t want to be him than what he may offer as to why he doesn’t want to be me.
It’s the same for “mother-fucker mouth” next to him. I certainly can and do say fuck as appreciably often as the top earners in the swearing department. But I retain a measure of tact and class. Quiet medical establishments don’t need boastful pronouncements of mother-fucker literally every other word. It’s wasted aggression. It’s a lack of awareness. It’s signalling your feeble place in society and makes my mind reel with, “Well of course someone like you found these things.”
I’m always looking for examples of what I’d like to be more like. I want to be the kind of person that you’d never get a racing heart rate for no appreciable reason. I want to surprise myself with the amount of information I learned about something that caught me. I want to be a take on an encyclopedia of experiences that roll into every new creative or business expression. Maybe it’s just the settings I’m confined to or maybe I’ve exhausted the thinkers and professors I admire, but all I see are walking wastes and excuses. I see backstory of how you become confident in your pursuit of a discount hotel and casino, and it has little to do with plunging deep into the world and seeing your place as something of consequence in it.
I forget if it was a quote from a show or just a sentiment I come across often enough, but I believe there’s this sentiment regarding happiness that drives most people. If you look for validation from others you’ll never find it, if you pursue what it is you actually want it can be achieved. I’ve thought about similar sentiments regarding being the hero of your own story in the past. It still feels incomplete, because you’re nothing if not in the interplay. Or if you have an incapacity or unwillingness to understand the basest form of what constitutes your happiness, hand after hand isn’t going to bring it to you. New parts for mother-fucker mouth’s bike aren’t going to put a shine on his disposition.
There’s a lot of truth in the idea that you can’t serve others if you haven’t taken care of yourself. I feel me trying to get off grid or generally off bills and free up my time to explore and think serves both ends. I’m very desperate to surround myself with people I’d like to be more like. I’d love to wake up everyday and see the potential for real change or growth be it in my physical environment or shared mental infrastructure on how to approach life at large. I think maybe we’ve just been starved of our capacity to go about things in a holistic or comprehensive way. All we have is people acting like the relative bad actors bred from their particular circumstances. Perspective needs to be forced.
