Thursday 11/30/23
I have this new invention that is probably never going to pass beyond the conceptual stage—it’s hard to imagine it going into development. But that didn’t stop me from coming up with it because there was someone, I’m sure, in like 1423, or 4000 thousand years before that, who thought of a rocket to space, and just because he couldn’t make that happen didn’t mean he shouldn’t have had the idea, though maybe someone would have told him that he was all in the wrong as I’m sure a lot of people would tell me about my invention. Such is vision.
I do believe my invention has widespread viability. That is, it’s relevant to a lot of human lives. Solidly practical. No animal lives, though. Not sparrows, beavers—definitely not beavers—nor even snakes, because they have things to do. They’re important contributors to a world beyond their own. The world. Someone has to keep that rodent population down—hence, snakes. Every day starts with purpose if you’re a snake.
But let’s say you’re a human about whom nothing like that can be said. Anytime someone talks to you, you start bringing up these memories from your boring past. I know a guy who does this without fail. I call them his “rememberies.” I even wrote a little theme song for him that goes: “Me, and my rememberies/THEY/Remind me how it used to be.”
I end up humming this song whenever I think about him, which is the most interesting thing I can say about this person. You have to wait for him to get done with his reminisces, and by then the conversation is over. He has nothing to add. He never will. The whole of his life is that way. He’s more or less useless. He’s useless enough that when you examine the trace quantities of his use, you think, “Well, does that even really count or am I fudging?” and “Would anyone actually miss any of this? Would they even notice?” We’re talking a few grains of sand here under the rug. Not a pile of boulders.
So what are you doing here then? Why bother? Just for you to technically exist? Selfish. Clearly not why you were given the gift of life, which is more like a loan, with an end of the bargain to be kept up. So you’re not playing fair at all.
Then you have that person who can only respond with the most prosaic, clichéd language when they encounter anything of significance, which is the same as the language they use all of the rest of the time when they’re responding to things that are prosaic and clichéd.
What are you contributing? What do you add to life? What do you add to your own? The plan is just to…be here? To…blah. That’s enough? That’s what you think you should do with your life? You’re not trying to do more than draw breath. Anyone could be you so why should you bother? Because you like the weather where you live? You enjoy dessert?
I have a solution: I call it the hanging room. It’s in the basement. You go down into the hanging room, and you do what you need to do.
This buddy of mine, when something isn’t so great, and no larger good can come of it, only bad things, like with some relationship—any kind of relationship—will advise, “Just be done.” I love that phrase.
Just be done.
Mainstream that. Doesn’t need to be this huge issue. Your life isn’t. Neither is growing, learning, or fostering to you. They’re not happening. So what’s the difference?
One day you just say to the wife—or the husband—“Honey, I think that’s it for me, I’m going down into the hanging room. Okay, I’ll see you.”
And she—or he—can respond, “Sounds good.” Or, “You have a nice time, dear.”
Wife goes out to dinner later with friends, and one of them asks, “Where’s Jack?” and the wife goes, “I think he went down to the hanging room,” and Jack’s friend Henry thinks, “Huh, maybe it’s about time I go down into the hanging room. Couldn’t hurt. We did get the thing, after all.”
The key is not to make this a big deal. If you don’t live your life like it’s any kind of deal, let alone a big one, then this should be pretty basic. Pretty parallel, you might say. Less of a skip and a jump than a hop to a hang. (I think it’s the hop that is meant to be the one that covers the shortest distance.)
* From "The Hanging Room"/Become Your Own Superhero: Intrepid Exceptions to Modern Fiction
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