Honestly, One Day

We often commiserate with friends around fires, dinner tables, and lecture halls on this topic. We regularly ponder this thought late at night during a mild panic attack, or faint pain during a heart beat. What would we do if we simply had one more day left. If we were not inhibited at all by our inevitably fatal fate and can live that day to the fullest, devoid of any harm, bereft of any constraints.

This is usually a thought that people of elder years start to let build up within the cerebral cortex, but shouldn't we all let it marinate between the synapses a bit? Sadly, shit, for a lack thereof a better word, happens. Instead of a bucket list of things I want to do over a long period of time, I think about the one day.

You hear many people talk about their ridiculously embellished ideas of a lavish trip to a foreign country halfway around the world. Clearly these people have not put a whole lot of time into this thought. If you are living in CT and want to fly to Tahiti for your final day of life, you are going to spend 14 hours in the air, 2 hours checking in and out of the airport, and a 1 hour layover at LAX. There is an outside chance you see a D-List celebrity like Pauly Shore. carrying his puppy through Terminal C, but most likely this will not occur. You will be dropped off in a foreign location, luckily without much luggage, since lets face it, you don't need clothes for tomorrow. Meanwhile, 17 hours of your 24 hours to live has been spent dodging chip shrapnel from the fat fucks who overindulged in airport snacks, and it costed you $137 dollars in nips just to get a goddamn buzz going in air. You are now left with roughly six hours to get some sun burn before you say peace out world.

Then you have the derelicts. Usually these are your friends or family members that consider reading a horror/thriller novel to be "pushing it to the limit." They decide on their last day, they want to go Sylvester Stallone on this bitch and go rock climbing, or base jump, or let a complete stranger dry hump them from 20 thousand feet and skydive. I am all for adventure but I do not believe these folks really contemplate their actions long enough. Having never done any of these things in their pre-finite lifetime, they do not understand the dangers fully. One day to live does not mean you are the terminator and you won't die. It does not mean that you definitely have that 24 hours. It doesn't mean go out in the street and see what if feels like to be a human pinball off taxi cabs. If something goes wrong; the chord snaps, plane goes down, rock falls loose, river takes a dark turn, storm comes abruptly....your final day is cut short, just because you wanted to play librarian goes Evel Knievel.

Not to mention you are probably not going to be able to convince many of your friends and loved ones to do this with you. You will most likely be left with a bunch of thrill seeking, adrenaline junkies who have another 40 years on this planet and wont believe you, let alone sympathize with you about the fact that you are embarking on one of your final journeys. I blame Tim McGraw, Live like you were dying, for all the people that would spend their last day like this.

I have put some thought into this and I see the day playing out two ways.

`1. One day is not 1 Millionth of enough time to thank all the amazing people in my life for simply being there. My mother, father, and stepparents for their amazing gifts, upbringing, support through college, and food. My younger siblings and their love, guidance, and energy they give me each and everyday to wake up and make them proud, help them to succeed. My best friend Aaaron, and the comedy tour we never started. My close friends, my new acquaintances who have helped to make Boston a new home. The list could go on and on..but I'd bring all these people together. I supply everyone with the proper amount of red bull, diet coke, 5 hour energy shots, or cocaine, whatever is needed to stay up for awake for a full 24-hour period, and we would dance the night away, dance this life away.

2. I'd go Holden Caulfield on the world. I would become a day long reclusive animal, reaching out to only long lost friends or mild acquaintances. I would make poor, feckless, and fly-by-night decisions...I would have no one to answer to and no one to tell...other than possible the coroner at East 5th and Broadway. My bank account would be emptied and a superfluous amount of checks that I never used will be archaically scribbled onto with large sums, just begging to be bounced. I would sleep with prostitutes, drink elegant scotch, smoke menthol cigarettes with pot dabbed on the tip, and blow on the filter. I would slide comfortably into the next chapter of my life, that would undoubtedly be furnished with red and black curtains, and an insanely hot temperature.

Too far? Too dark? Good lord, who knows.

The Relevancy of Age

We are asked daily to input our date of birth; in the doctors office, signing up for a subscription online, applying for a credit card. We are asked just as often how old we are by new friends and acquaintances, co-workers, bartenders and bouncers. I find myself asking the question - How much does age matter?

For many things that require an age it is simply for legal backing. The law has stipulated that the same men who can die for their country cannot concurrently indulge in a beer or even a glass of whiskey to help wash away the thought of death from their mind. A cliche' analogy there, but yet a real truism that deserves attention. The law decides that people under 21 are not responsible enough to enter and leave a bar intoxicated. In Pennsylvania studies have shown that nearly 70% of drunk driving fatalities occurred within the ages of 21-30, not within 18-21. At 21, people decide they have reached the age of being reckless.

Age seems to be more of a hindrance on society, not only with drinking, but more importantly with love and relationships. I may be biased here coming from a divorce situation where a mother and father of the same age remarried 14 years older and 9 years younger respectively. They both appear happier, more content, more in love. When a man of 25 dates a girl at the age of 20, its deemed "not socially acceptable," by many people. Why? At what point does a girl or a guy reach the maturity level in which they can comfortably date someone more than 5, 10, or 15 years older than they are? Should there be dating laws to go along with sexual encounter laws?

When is a person old? Is it relative? Relative to what? Health, appearance, grey hairs, speech, education? These are all questions that come to mind when thinking about the ever perplexing concept of age, merely a number of years that you have existed on a planet.

I was watching a TED talk the other day talking about juvenile delinquency and its correlation to those on death row. 80% of men on death row spent time in a juvenile delinquency center or were incarcerated at some point. The speaker, David R. Dow,  talked about a young boy who had witnessed his father being shot, was chased through his home by his deranged mother with a butcher knife, beaten in two different foster homes, and eventually imprisoned. He was 14 at this time. At 14, he was older than me in experience.

Allow me to deviate from a piece of thought provoking prose into an op ed to conclude this entry. I would like to propose that I do not believe age does matter at all. Levels of maturity do, experience does, education does as well. In our society we are so keen on measuring things, age is just another measurement, and it is the simplest measurement for gauging someones ability to coexist, and match up against others. Next time I go to the bar I would rather the bouncer pull up my resume, my dating record, and then arm wrestle me to decide if I am an eligible patron for their establishment.

My parents relationships work....now. My birth mother and fathers relationship did NOT work when they were together, and age, along with many other things was a factor. At the time of their divorce they were at completely different ages, yet their birthday never changed. Why is that? Age is not a good indicator for how "old" someone is. For me, the world is for the most part in order.  Stipulations and public biases throw it off its axis.

One Page to Sell Yourself

Sparked by this weekends events of assisting a friend, name not needed, in helping to set up an online dating page, I realized something. Maybe not every day, but very often we are given one page, or small platform to sell ourselves. To prostitute the hell out of our looks, brains, skills, attributes, and abilities, and mask any possible flaws or non-fortuitous traits.

On page to sell yourself. Think about it, and start simple.

Resume:

This is one page where you get to boast about your achievements, past work experience, awards, grade point average, college background, and if you are creative enough dick length or breast size. The actual resume is probably the lesser grandiloquent pieces of the two parts to a resume. The resume is simply a bullet point sheet that modern society and critical writing courses have forced upon us to be able to separate likely candidates and rank them. The cover letter is really where you give an overblown and ostentatious presentation of your skills and how they relate to a specific role. The letter is generally the same to each company or employer because you have exhausted all the strong vocabulary words you possess, and cannot half-honestly boast any further about yourself and "successes." You have a page to pimp the shit out of yourself and there is a good chance you don't even have that. Most of the employers will skim your masterfully crafted pretentious piece of self-capitulation and either decide to call you to hear more. They will disregard the rest of the letter or just toss it into the waste basket next to Jeremy Rennick and Susan Wainthrop, two others who will remain unemployed.

Facebook/Twitter/Blogs:

I feel these three are completely over-saturated by comments and fun poking remarks so I will keep this brief and tie them all in together. Each social media avenue is a way to sell yourself to your friends, family, and colleagues. It is a place to sell them on the fact that "you're worthy of their time." That you are a fun person to be with, that you a knowledgeable person, that you will help their status in this world in some way...I fear we are all sociopaths. On Twitter you write about your thoughts, but wont put anything up there that too many people will disagree with, or anything you feel they wont pay attention to. You hash tag the shit out of your comment making it practically illegible, just so that it shows up on various feeds and you expand your reach. You throw in a few @ signs and create a symbol that looks like some sort of Japanese character mixed with an ancient Egyptian war token. This is followed by the false belief you just made twitter art that will become the hottest trending accident since #winning.

Facebook is too easy. Clearly you are using that page to sell yourself by posting videos you think you are the first to see (meanwhile its has 8.2M views in the last 24 hours). You are pumped about some political jargon and want to insight a fucking fantastic discussion on your wall that only excites 3 people in the entire world while pissing off 300 who get the feed updates.

And blogs. I'm selling myself right now with this long one-pager. I am trying to come off as a witty, narcissitic aspiring writer who thinks way too many people care about what I say. My hopes are that they will care and I have successfully sold myself to 5 or 6 more people who might read my next post about womanizing, the modern tree and how they tie together.

The Online Dating Profile

This is the mother of the self selling one pages we put together. You are convincing people of the opposite sex, and well maybe the same sex if that is your journey to spend time with you outside of the internet. These are people who have never met your charming ass self and have but one page and a maximum of 20 photos to decide if they would like to risk the chance of your being a serial rapist or practicing man witch and take this thing to the next level. The online dating profile is your place to shine, to show all your amazing self-centered qualities, without sounding like a self-interested, pompous and vainglorious pric. Unless of course that is how you want to sell yourself, and if so, by all means rock this shit out of that profile, you may even "find love in a hopeless place." If you are a female you're trying to explain how you are gainfully employed and in no way need support from a male, but think a guy should open each and every door, gather flowers when he has been out of line, who is never weak and always strong, and believes you whether you are right or wrong. You then will post 10-15 photos that are of course, in your mind, the best photos you have ever taken. They will show just enough skin to reveal that you are not devoted to god, but will likely not fuck on the first 2-3 dates.

This page is where you can talk about the things you cannot live without, things you are okay with not living with. You can talk about your career goals no matter how far off they are from what you are doing, making yourself sound cultured, sophisticated, and motivated. You need to sell yourself, otherwise you will stay just as lonely as you were before your decided to pay $75 for a three month membership to online date frolicking, resulting in an overall waste of time, typing energy, money, and emotional distress.

With all things that you sell, there is a success rate, and a failure rate. Most of us don't even realized the amount of time we spend each and everyday making people "want" us. It is really a part time job, especially if you are online dating, updating multiple social media avenues, and applying for a job - not sure how we find enough time to do all this selling while working a 9-5. Seems just easier to go to a street corner, throw on a dress and skip the underwear, shake our ass, change our voice, give someone a good time for an hour and walk away amicably. Good lord, I guess we are not heading for social entropy after all.