A Journey

A Journey

There was once an ordinary 21st century American man. He lived, in America, a life of utmost ordinariness, this being the time immediately preceding the Great Calamity. He was young, friendly, funny, and tolerably unhappy, and he would have continued living this ordinary experience if his innate curiosity hadn’t pulled him to a less gratifying path.

His ordinary condition was characterized by material plenty, social estrangement, and a constant, generalized, low-level anxiety that was always present when he looked for it. Further, it was characterized by a troubling, profound dissatisfaction that he had never comprehended sufficiently to address in a rational and constructive way.

Naturally inquisitive and genuinely truth-seeking, the man began a personal inquiry into his unpleasant condition. His inquiry began with reviews of his nutritional habits, and with mood logs charted against sleep patterns, and with other measures to evaluate and optimize his lifestyle. These things seemed far from the heart of the matter, and availed nothing.

So the man continued on his introspective journey, and the inquiry proceeded, appropriately, to critical assessments of his beliefs. But his profound dissatisfaction nurtured his good critical assessments into a third thing: an aggressive cynicism that grew to become a destructive force, systematically killing his internalized faiths.

These faiths, by virtue of being uninterrogated, cushioned and narrowed and simplified the life journey of ordinary American men in the 21st century. This man, however, crusaded against these faiths, as if to purge insidious influences from his mind, as if to cut malicious fetters that bound and limited his exploration of life and his quest for peace.

He uncovered, inside himself, embedded narratives – religious, superstitious, western and eastern, as well as purportedly secular – that undergird ordinary Americans’ approach to life. He interrogated the narratives and found them all baseless, mythological, and useless to him, and he discarded them.

He and his cynicism dug deeper into his psyche, every month and every year, and teased out unexamined philosophical foundations of his worldview. He evaluated them and always found them lacking, and discarded them.

One day, he discovered a very deeply buried, foundational belief, common to his many internalized philosophies and mythologies and to his brain-orienting, narrative points of reference. All the components of his syncretic and confusing worldview were built upon this deep but flimsy contention: life is a good thing.

With words put to it, the weight of this contention, hidden in its foggy mysticism, dissipated instantly, and the belief seemed pitifully fragile. Reworded in a dozen concise ways, he thought, it was a contention more fit for a bumper sticker, or for that most discrediting of philosophical media, a t-shirt displayed at a beach boardwalk giftshop or three. The man tossed even this contention away.

Over this time, this ordinary American cynic cleansed his mind of every illusion as he discerned them, except one. He still entertained the naïve notion that careful study and meditative reflection would one day relieve his dissatisfaction and allow him to relax. It so far hadn’t.

The enthusiastic cynicism he harbored caused him to jettison his culture’s long-forged illusions as he discerned them in himself, yet he never felt lighter for having unburdened himself of them. In fact, he felt worse. It is very difficult to recover discarded faiths, and he and his cynicism bonded more closely for every faith discarded.

He became unpleasant to have around for more than a short time because of his unpleasant attitude. His life in many ways stagnated, as his cynicism dulled his resolve to make choices regarding his professional trajectory or social circumstances.

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One early evening, perhaps 20 months into his debilitating inquiry, the young man was laying on his parents’ carpet, petting his parents’ old dog, for whom he had great affection, while also ruminating about the futility of life and the inevitability of death, as he was wont to do, when suddenly he was struck with a fantastic idea.

It was the kind of idea that could only be sparked by close collaboration with a wise old dog who is always happy to see you, and it was sparked in no small measure due to the unopposable, penetrating positivity radiated by such a dog. It was canine-assisted idea generation. The idea was this: dog hospice.

Wouldn’t it be great, the cynic thought – forgetting for a moment that he was hopelessly cynical – for aging and dying orphan dogs to spend their final days on a large, green, pleasant dog ranch, instead of at a less pleasant dog shelter with no hope of adoption? Dog shelters are cramped, stinky, dim, and necessary (and bless the convicts working them for court-ordered community service hours) but perhaps we could do better. We need more convicts, he thought, to maintain the shelters in a happier way. But perhaps a better facility – a dog hospice with a visiting veterinarian, space, and a welcoming name – would be even better than additional convicts.

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The fact that he was a hopeless cynic rushed back to him at that moment, and his excitement at having a fantastic idea was smothered by a heavy blanket of pessimism and futility. All the obstacles to opening a dog hospice presented themselves to his brain in procession, excusing him from entertaining the possibility any farther.

“Dinner’s ready when you are,” his mom called to him from the kitchen doorway. Dinner, he thought sharply: nourishment, growth, homeostasis, life – what’s the point? We’re all going to die anyway.

But he was hungry, and it was spaghetti, so he ate, and thought, why not? After all, we’re all going to die anyway.

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Later that evening, the cynical man was walking through town to his apartment, when he came upon a crazy old man on a park bench. The crazy old man was clearly crazy, but apparently jolly, and too old to be much of a threat. So the cynic walked by and prepared himself to give thirty-five cents or a cigarette to the crazy old man if asked. But the crazy old man did not ask. Instead, he rocked and bobbed and engaged the cynic with a smile and offered this advice: “keep tootin’ that horn! One day you’ll see your name in BRIGHT LIGHTS!”

These words resonated deeply with the cynic, because he entirely misinterpreted them. The message he received, though, whatever it was, briefly softened the cynicism mineralizing inside of him, and permitted faint emotional memories to rise to his conscious experience as he walked. These memories were not of peace and satisfaction, but of a different type of struggle – positive struggle – for academic, athletic, social, and romantic achievements.

He slept fitfully that night, hearing the stirring words repeated in his short dreams: keep tootin’ that horn! Keep tootin’ that horn! Keep tootin’ that horn! He tossed and turned, dreamt a particularly inspiring dream, then shot up in bed. “I’ll do it! I’ll make the dog hospice!” he shouted with gusto. Thus satisfied with conviction, he slept soundly until morning.

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The ordinary American, not uncynical but challenging his defeatism, began the very next morning to reach out to good friends for advice on his new project. They dutifully and readily provided him with feedback. At that time, the project seemed to have its own momentum, though the cynic was cautious not to be too optimistic about the prospects of an easy success. It felt good.

One friend even introduced the cynic to a similar program that was already up and successfully running in America. The cynic was guardedly excited, and intended to reach out to the people of that program for guidance. The deep and heavy cynicism felt more fragile, and a small fracture developed in it.

He wrote a short post about his project on his social media account – the first post he had made this year, and the first in years that wasn’t a political criticism. One old acquaintance responded with a critical comment, but that did not derail the cynic’s oddly positive disposition. It seemed the young man may have begun departing from his deep-walled path of total negativity.

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The following day, while scrolling the internet for further project-related information, the cynic came across a terrible news story. He was reminded that life can be, and quite often is, a brutal thing, and so often of a severity that begs the question of its value at all. He felt the crack in his heavy block of cynicism begin to repair itself, as if with lead solder, making it heavier than it was before.

The cynicism was there, and it made sense to him, but he was unsure whether to go with it this time. It reliably offered a small measure of strange comfort, but in all this time it had never offered a gratification.

The man peered at the cynicism as if it was new. He appraised it from a slight detachment, in the same way it had encouraged him to step back from his beliefs for critical reevaluation.

And so, the man thought for a moment. Cynicism was a most useless thing, he decided, looking at it and what it had done for him and for the world. And he was surprised at how suddenly obvious this became to him. Cynicism was good perhaps only for misers and misanthropes who console their selfishness with it. And for lazy and cowardly people who use it to excuse their disinterest in improving their behaviors. And he knew this once but had forgotten it. This simple knowledge was buried perhaps, or carelessly discarded within a heap of other beliefs and faiths. He did not want to be a miser or a misanthrope. He did not want to be unhappy.

But the cynicism was still there, and its allure was somehow growing, even as he considered its uselessness. This became a critical moment. It seemed that the window for him to interrupt his well-worn pattern of cynicism was closing right then.

Quickly, he made a decision, and firmly determined not to embrace his cynicism. And as the heavy blanket of pessimism and futility began to drape his shoulders, he shook and shuddered and cast it off.

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The man felt good, and kept working.

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He wrote up a big plan for a dog hospice. He would seek some advice on how to finance the project, and where to locate it. He worked, and stayed positive.

His cynicism, however muted, was not vanquished. It peaked its head at every small opportunity. The man kept vigilant, to prevent cynicism from sabotaging his project and his mood.

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Then one day there was a big loss in the family. His parents’ dog passed away. The dog was a good, loyal dog. The American man was very sad, but did not like being sad, and much preferred a resigned indignation to a proper grief.

Though he was somehow unaware of it, he instinctively receded into his mind and sought the cynicism. It was there, ready to embrace him with calming reassurances of “it’s not fair” and “what’s the use,” and even “let’s drink in honor of the dog.”

The household was morose. The cynic noticed how quiet his dad had been all day. His dad’s quietness stirred in him the natural response of wanting to comfort and console. He thought and he looked for comforting words to offer his dad. But having found nothing at all to offer, he then recognized that he had fallen back into his cynicism, and he was surprised. The man spurned his cynicism right then and immediately reframed his loss and his family’s loss in more helpful terms. The family grieved healthily, together.

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The ordinary American man was no longer an unpleasant cynic, but was now just a healthy skeptic. He was not wrong that life is terrible, and he was not far from where he had started philosophically, but now he understood that a dark, useless, miserable cynicism is the wrong response to the terribleness of life.

The dog hospice project stagnated and then was effectively shelved until such time as the skeptic remembered about it and also had the time and money, friends and energy, to carry it forward.

Of course, the hospice was never built, because the time, money, friends, and energy, which would have had to intersect with each other in a quadruple coincidence, were all consumed in the great, calamitous event that was soon to occur.

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