Get Over Getting Over It

An unrelated photo of sea lions.

I will always be a supporter of anyone who needs to work through mental illness.  It doesn’t matter if you’re born with a bad balance of chemicals, or something happened to you that shocked your brain and threw your life off course. The best thing we can do, with every passing year, is to normalize mental illness, depression, therapy, and recovery.  Our culture has suffered enough from ignoring it.

That’s why I’m exceptionally irate when someone suggests that people ‘get over it’.  I’m not sure if there’s anything more offensive to someone who’s struggling.  And who’s struggling, you ask?  Well, almost the entirety of the human race, that’s who.  You see, ‘get over it’ isn’t a call for strength or perseverance. It’s one of those dog-whistle things spoken by those who lack empathy, or those who still believe all people are born on some even playing field.  Or, to continue the metaphor, they see life as a game and conquering illness or trauma is as simple as brushing dirt off your knees and getting back in the game. 

They don’t really believe that, do they?  As a society, do we? We have 22 or so veterans committing suicide every day…do you think if someone went over to their homes and told them to ‘get over it’ that it would help?  When you see a friend after they’ve lost a parent or a spouse, you don’t say ‘get over it’.  Every time September 11^th comes around, you aren’t inundated with images of the twin towers with ‘Get Over It’ scrawled across the bottom.  Why?  Because somewhere inside we realize that something is broken or wrong or sad or scary and we don’t know how to cope. ‘Get over it’ does nothing. 

When those who want us to get over it say ‘get over it’, they are continuing a story they’ve created in their heads.  They believe that they climbed out of the muck without ever looking back and somehow, they triumphed by sheer will.  Well, we all know this is bullshit.  People need help.  Friends. Family. Medicine. Education.  Even if they figured out a way to muscle through their pain and succeed, I’m sure they have work to do on themselves, and they probably aren’t as awesome as they seem on the outside. (The secret truth of Facebook!)

No one gets over it.  You work through it.  You deal with it by feeling it and understanding it and recognize what it’s doing to you.  You carry it with you for the rest of your life.  It doesn’t disappear.  You work your back muscles until you can shoulder the burden and still live your life. 

Frankly, I’m growing tired of these chickenshits.  That’s right.  I believe they are the whiners and complainers.  They are the cowards.  The ones who tell others to suck it up or walk it off.  The ones who think pulling yourself up is actually a thing. I am so sick of these tiny little emotional children telling everyone how to behave because they don’t like the way problems make them feel.  They are scared of compassion and love.  They are afraid to look inside and care.   Either that or they are sociopaths and we shouldn’t be acknowledging them anyway.  It takes guts to face your demons and break cycles. If you don’t think you could use some change and some growth…well, you’re friggin’ wrong.

I will concede one thing.  Although I believe that mental illness is a process that you need to acknowledge, those who recognize their issue but still refuse to do anything about it…well, you’re not making it any easier for the rest of us.  Understanding that there is a path for you to take is not the same as walking it.  You have to do the work or shut the hell up.

Fade in. A lunch table.

Typical lunch item in 1989.

Do you have a moment in your life when you realized who you really were?  Your entire DNA makeup, your purpose, your fate, your destiny?  The thing you were doing was you, without pretense or doubt?  You were where you wanted to be and doing want you wanted to do?  I do.  The strange thing was, I had two.  The first one I misjudged.  The second, I got it right.

They both happened in 1989.

The first one, the false flag, happened on a day of fun.  I was with my high school girlfriend at Wet n’ Wild, the only Orlando area water park at the time.  We were enjoying a day of chlorinated water slides and searing hot concrete.  We did all the regular stuff, and then she wanted to go on the Kamikaze, the big slide of the park. Riders would kick back and gain speed as the approached the bottom and when they hit the pool, they skipped like stones.  I like speed, but I was afraid of heights.  Still am.  But I wanted to show some backbone.  We waited in line until we reached the top, and I could feel the gentle breeze of the day swaying the structure back and forth.  I was already feeling anxiety.

The park employee at the top actually had to tell everyone that they are to remain in a sitting position on the way down, but nobody does it.  The only way to get moving was to lean back and haul ass.  My girlfriend went first.  She sat, she was pushed off, and she leaned back.  She soared to the bottom and skipped into the pool.  My turn came and I was already breathing heavily from

the view.  I sat as instructed, but instead of leaning back, I sat up.  The entire way down.  I plopped like a turd in the pool in front of my girlfriend.             

 I thought that was me.  Nervous, anxious, shy, cowardly, lame, weak, and about as un-manly as one could get.  For years, I thought I was doomed to a life of loserdom.  Coming in last, being afraid, being overlooked, being invisible.  Those thoughts informed so many decisions.  That slide down the Kamikaze was just an example of my limp dick approach to life and there was nothing I could do about it. 

That’s what I used to think.  Actually, my moment of definition came a lot earlier. 

I was listening to a podcast with Bill Hader a few months ago, and he was asked what he thinks about when it’s time to be funny or write funny stuff.  He explained that he’ll never be as funny as he was at his high school lunch table, and everything he does is an attempt to get those guys to laugh.  I can safely say, that goes for me as well.

Most of high school was an absolute shitshow of disappointment and missed opportunities for me.  But at our lunch table, I felt at home.  I just started writing every day for a creative writing class and I began to write extra just for me.  And the table.  I shared what I had with my friends and tried to get them to laugh.  We unloaded all the SNL quotes for the previous weekend and cycled through thousands of jokes from a million sources.  I didn’t know about any other tables that were like this in high school, but I also didn’t look.  I didn’t care.  I actually got to be me, be funny, be creative. The rest of the school didn’t exist outside of that table.  That girlfriend I got?  One hundred percent got her attention because of that table.  I was funny and charming and at the very least interesting at that table.  Outside of it…I felt like the size of a walnut and just as cool and attractive.

It was because of that I wanted to try comedy and write all the time.  I wanted to sort out my thoughts and use writing as entertainment and therapy.  I gathered tiny pebble after tiny pebble to eventually create a decent-sized pile of confidence.  It wasn’t much, but it was enough to get moving.  I know how to read an audience, disseminate information, and use timing to illustrate a point because of that table. 

I write this because we are all obsessed with stories.  We want our lives to have a narrative that makes sense, even though that is nearly impossible.  But we have to understand ourselves, and the structure of a story is one way that we explain the events of our lives to others.  We should just take extra care to understand what the actual pivotal moments are that shaped us, and not ones influence by pop culture, depression, or someone else’s story. My life didn’t begin with the failure at the water slide, it began with my victories at the lunch table.

That’s my story.

Focus and the Bloody Shirt

Have you ever watched the John Wick movies?  Have you ever seen any action /adventure films…maybe some thrillers?  I re-watched Drive with Ryan Gosling the other night and there was a scene that flipped a little switch in my brain.  All of these movies are my guilty pleasures for one reason or another, but there is a common scene that pops up and it’s always bumped me.  Not in a bad way; it’s just something I’ve noticed.

After a big action sequence, or an extended, well-choreographed shoot-em-up, the protagonist leaves and travels to another area to keep the move going.  In the case of John Wick, his car was trashed, and he left on foot for the city.  The next scene sees him exiting a bus in downtown New York.  It wouldn’t be remarkable in the least except that his shirt is covered in blood.  Some of his, some of the enemy’s, but there is no doubt that he is visibly…fucked up. In Drive, Gosling’s character walks through a crowded area after he escapes with his life.  His signature jacket is smeared with blood from the assailants he just left behind.

Now, I realize these scenes are put there to show continuity and that our heroes have suffered.  I got it.  Since movies are there for us to interpret whatever we want anyway, my mind went a little further.  Normally, if one of us splattered blood all over us, we’d change our clothes (or throw them away). I’m pretty sure even the most casual of us would do it before we strolled down the sidewalk or got on a bus.  Not these guys.  Why?  It’s not just because they are tough and don’t give a damn what you think.  Nah, that’s too easy.  We know that.  I like to think that what others think, believe, what they may say, what they tell a cop, what they may take a picture of, doesn’t even cross their minds.

The outside world and its opinions and rules and history and biases and interference do not register to our heroes.  For the extent of the narrative in front of us, they are singularly focused on survival or several days of high-octane ass-kicking revenge.

Sociologists research contentment and happiness and they’ve concluded that what human beings crave above all is focus. Not money or things.  Not love or friendship.  Not Oreos or the beach. They want those precious few moments in life where you lose yourself fully in the task at hand.  It’s when we can fully take a breath and cut out every other thing that makes noise in our lives.  Only through focus can we step back into the din and appreciate love, friendship, things and Oreos. You can get it through meditation and fitness, maybe some solitude or reflection.  Most of us need to be doing something.  I think that’s why my wife likes being a chef.  It is an all-consuming job while she’s there.  When she’s home, she’s home.

Movies give us stories about those rare times when there is a purpose-driven focus.  A hero on a mission.  A ticking clock where everything in the world is sidelined until the job is finished. That’s focus.  It’s sporadic in our lives.  But like sleep and exercise, our body needs it.  I’m starting to think that’s why we like movies in the first place.  At least the exciting ones.  So many stories are about abandoning your daily bullshit because of a life and death scenario.  It’s not just a thrill, it’s focus.  What’s happening right now, at this moment, is all that matters.  We’d all like to live life in that manner all the time but it’s impossible. 

It’s why we do all the fun stuff in our lives.  It’s why we play games, or knit, or build stuff in the garage.  It’s why I’m writing this right now.

I Love Time Travel - Part 25 - Avengers: Endgame

America's asses.

You like nerdy superhero movies and the mother of all of them comes out.  The whole world is ready, it turns out to be a great time, and it includes time travel.  I like Avengers: Endgame a lot, I like a lot of the choices and the endnotes for a lot of the characters.  But the time travel stuff…I’m not so sure about.

(Argh!  Thar be spoilers ahead!)

I don’t need to break down the plot.  That’s not the problem.  I don’t even disagree with the choice to use time travel. They already introduced a magic glove that can rearrange the universe, so what’s wrong with a little time travel?  My problem lies in the discussion of time travel and their attempts to make it happen. 

Scott Lang is our audience surrogate/dummy and assumes time travel works like it does in the movies (of which Endgame is one.)  Banner and Nebula explain, as if Scott never paid attention in Physics class, that time travel doesn’t work like that at all.  They say that…well…in a dumb way, that traveling through time has NO CONSEQUENCES for you whatsoever.  You can go shoot yourself in the past (as Nebula does) and nothing will happen to you.  You can save JFK, give yourself lottery numbers, or kill baby Hitler and not a damn thing will happen to you.

Ick.

First of all, how the hell do they know?  I understand that Banner’s all green and smart, but so far, no one has ever successfully accomplished time travel it without a magic ring. I always assumed that we won’t ever know for sure the nature of time until we figure out time travel.  It’s all theory by people way smarter than you and I. The problem in the fictional world is that you’ve set up a method of time travel that is shitty to the entire universe outside of the travelers themselves.  If I need an Infinity Stone, I’ll just go steal one, no matter what happens to the world I take it from. In a nerdier sense, that means no Scarlet Witch, Vision, Captain Marvel, the Guardians don’t get together, the Avengers themselves don’t get together.  If I’m Thor, and my hammer has been destroyed, why not go back and steal it from my younger self?  Now younger Thor doesn’t have jack shit!

It’s not until bald Tilda Swinton explains to Banner that they can’t just steal the stones and take off to another time that we right the wrong of our heroes’ original plan.  The stones are integral to the development of all of these characters and their lives, so after they are borrowed, they have to be returned to the time and place they came from. So, what we understand now is, that it is important to preserve the timelines and not just pickpocket important shit from them and split. Got it.  I just don’t follow the logic that your timeline can be screwed around with, but the other timelines have to remain intact? 

(Remember, I’m only interested in fictional and/or cinematic time travel.  It doesn’t exist in reality (yet?) so we have to play it out in make-believe.)

The 2 major camps of time travel are the loops and the strings.  Loops go back and can’t change shit, and strings can change whatever at a high cost. Each camp has a glaring flaw.  Loops eliminate free will and strings can’t account for the replacement of the second self.  (Marty McFly comes back, everything’s different, including him.  Where’d the other Marty go?)

Endgame time travel is a different breed altogether. Are they really positing a passive time travel?  Breaching the limits of time and space with no repercussions at all? It served this story because it needed to set up the ‘time heist’ to retrieve Infinity stones and not to alter the past.  But a transgression against the nature of time that in no way can endanger your own timeline is tough to swallow.  I mean, in reality, it could very well be how shit works.  I don’t know. (Jim – History major, shitty at math.)  As far as its current realm, the one of science fiction, it kinda sucks.

Here’s what I think happened.  And this is my writer brain kicking in.  The obvious choice is to go back and get the stones through Scott’s idea and Tony’s super-science.  You go back, have some hilarity, have Cap fight himself, meet a younger Thanos.  Action, adventure, and 2.5 billion dollars.  But the writers knew that this was RDJ’s last hurrah as Iron Man and a total reset was out of the cards.  Tony needed an exit and the snap had to hurt. With this version, his daughter’s life is preserved, he goes out a hero, and cashes his Marvel checks for the rest of his life. That’s how we got the movie we got. Because the final plan hinged on the fact that Morgan Stark had to remain in existence, everything that we saw in Part 1 had to stay put.  I honestly believe with so many characters, a time stone, Pim particles, and a hundred other variables, they couldn’t fuck around with time travel consequences.  It was just too much.  That would have made it a 4-hour movie!

But hell, I still loved it.  I would like to point out that Endgame is the highest-grossing movie of all time; which that means that the number one slot is currently held by a time travel movie. (Drops mic in nerdy fashion.)

Stop Bitching About Millennials, Please

Here's your new flag.  Deal with it, you old sumbitches...

Okay.  I’ve had it.  I mean, it’s sad to see, but now it kinda pisses me off. And I don’t want to be pissed off.  Everyone is pissed off these days already, and some with good reason.  I don’t think I can stand idly by and listen to old assholes complain about millennials anymore without at least saying something.

And that something is: “Shut the fuck up.”

I read one of those click-bait type articles about a year ago that listed ten reasons why millennials catch hell from old farts.  Most of it was news to me, so I asked my millennial-age daughter about them and she said it was true.  Because of social media, the age-old practice of geezers pointing a finger and shaming young people for not being the same as they were has been multiplied times a million. That’s how we do it in America.  You grow up, you bitch about everything, you become an adult, you bitch about that too, then you grow old and bitch about all the younger humans that are replacing your sorry ass. I’m not sure it’s as global as some of us may think, but it’s as least as American as bald eagles, George Washington, and bottled water.

Speaking of Washington, I’m sure he bitched about his kids and his grandkids, too. 

Here’s what I’ve discerned.  Boomers don’t like millennials because they use phones and computers for a lot of tasks.  They are biased against the use of avocadoes for some reason, and they despise their work ethic. The Gen X complaints seem to be a little more generic, although they also deride the work ethic.  In general, that seems to be the static between the generations.  So, hey, millennials, maybe your work ethic sucks.  Maybe it doesn’t.  I don’t know.  This is coming from Gen X-ers who were too sad, angry, and introspective, and Boomers, the most self-righteous, spoiled, privileged generation that ever lived on planet Earth.  So, take that criticism with a very large chunk of pink Hawaiian sea salt.

Millennials knew from a very young age that the environment was in critical danger and that the American dream of financial independence was just that…a dream.  They learned that shit in first grade. They had to look forward to tiny wages, bloated student loans and rent that they couldn’t afford without a roommate.  Not exactly the GI Bill. They grew up in the middle of a war in the Middle East that no one even acknowledges, 9/11, and the resurgence of Nazis.  They understand we have all the money, tech and manpower to undo a lot of these problems right now, but the government is still hindered with ridiculous people who still have a problem with Darwin in textbooks, deny climate change, and think the key to unity is saluting a flag. 

And your problem is their attitude toward work?  And spreading avocado on toast?

No, millennials are smarter than you.  They’ve figured out that the system is one designed for a privileged few and there are several ways to fix it.  Maybe they don’t want as much shit, so they aren’t concerned with chasing the dream of being a millionaire.  Maybe they can parse information better, and separate hype and bullshit from reality, no matter how unpleasant it may be.  That could be the benefit of the onslaught of information through the internet.  Hell, that could be their legacy.  I will say, though, that apparently millennials don’t like to have sex that much.  Yeah, that’s something you guys might want to work on.

What I hate most about this is that the assumption is that they aren’t tough.  They are soft.  I remember hearing it about us when we were kids, and I’m sure the Boomers heard it too.  Tough…for what?  Why is toughness such a priority?  Are we living lives in the richest country in the world, or are we preparing for ‘the event’, whatever that may be? “When shit goes down, this generation won’t be ready.”  For what, exactly?  Aliens?  Zombies?  Thanos?  Everyone gets compared to the World War II generation, but let’s be honest.  They weren’t raised in the 1920’s to fight Hitler and the Japanese navy.  They were just regular people until some seriously tragic bullshit came their way.  They rose to the occasion. 

Another legacy of millennials could be that they prevent any more tragic bullshit from coming around.  Who knows?

I’m sorry, I have to double-dip. I can’t stand that toughness garbage.  It is such a macho egotistical extension of manly horseshit.  These guys act like they were forged in fire and they are truly only complaining about the most inane crap. “These kids are soft!  When I was growing up, we didn’t have rearview cameras in our cars, we had to turn our heads!  I say a little less reading at age five and a little more climbing trees!  We didn’t have cell phones, we had to use a landline!” Your tattoos or choice of pick-up truck does not make you tough.  You’re a soft American consumer, just like the rest of us.

It’s also scapegoating.  You want an example of an actual scourge in our society?  It’s blaming a group of people for its problems.  Its why we have a reality show host for a president and people think racism is just ‘one side of the story’.  Scapegoating is one of the oldest tricks in the book because it works.  Your problems are your own, and you should know that.  It’s not because of changing sexual identity, women’s ascension through the American power structure, or the mere existence of a new generation.  Stop blaming others for your dumb circumstances, and please, for the love of all that is holy in your life, stop blaming people for blaming people!  Come, on, man!