I’ve eyed laziness like a coveted obsession in a storefront window, as if I could afford it. I’ve looked outside from my writing desk to watch for apathy coming down the sidewalk, ready to open the front door. All of these things populate my life. But this weekend I snapped and punched despair in the neck.
We all know, especially those of us who set goals, that living is a series of starts and stops. It’s just a matter of how realistic the goal is, and how long it takes us to redefine it before we actually get there. But I’ve vowed to stop stopping.
It’s not the writing that takes the toll, or my [boring list of things I have to do because of the choices I’ve made], and it isn’t the work itself. It’s the thinking about it. “Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now,” says Hemingway. I like that because it isn’t a future promise–it’s a present order. You have to be your own cop.
If I were writing about my own metacognition (ironic)–knowing what I know–or at least thinking about what I’m thinking about….a lot…I would have completed a Funk and Wagnallian collection by now, with film options. But narcissism comes at a cost, and from it does not emerge confidence.
There is no book or regimen or religion or song that I’ve come across that lights up my DNA and turns the focus knob to perfect in the world. This is something I’m saying in my own way but something we all know and find at different times. It’s been cliched all over the place and striven for by gurus who are paid to know yourself better than you. It’s too bad that Freud spoiled ego for everyone because when life is hell and all closeness seems stripped away it barks in the night until you notice it and let it back inside. And it remembers. And it will tell you the story again.
My former self had to yell at me this weekend when I had hit bottom, knowing I was bound to get back up, but wouldn’t even bother to look where up was. My ego called to me from deep inside, deeper than the cliche of it, more ubiquitous than my blood, deeper than we have measurements for. And it told me to do what I’ve always known how to do. Fight.
Watch this:
As a child I knew how wild I was and didn’t feel bad about it. And as Norman Maclean puts it, “His toughness came from somewhere deep inside. He simply knew he was tougher than anyone else alive.” If I couldn’t do it, it couldn’t be done. None of this “I can’t do it.” We patronize when we say of children, “he has chosen not to do it.” That’s not right. He WON’T do it. Maybe because he can’t. And he needs to find out exactly where that edge is and confront it.
Through the taming gentility that I’ve done to myself, having learned from watching others, I’ve made myself a victim in my not-that-old age. Get off your ass and do it isn’t prevalent enough, and I feel the full effect of depriving myself of it now. But I feel it less than on Friday. Because on Friday, my good Friday, my ego talked to me. It concocted a tailored aperitif of disillusion, rage, madness and clarity.
There will always be the natural resistance to unpleasant things. Sleep over work. Food over movement. Beer over water. But if you sit and listen closely to who you really are–the one nobody can write a book about, or give a speech about, or capture on a screen–you will see that, although flight is lovely, fight is eternal. I learned how to write a Hallmark card this weekend and here’s the inscription: If no one else is willing to kick your ass, you’ll have to do it yourself.
