Rick's March Tirade
The Courage to Be Ordinary
I was disturbed last week by a strange and inexplicable feeling
that settled over me in my cubicle. I became aware, as one becomes
aware of rosy-fingered dawn or a dead woodchuck on the front steps,
that I no longer resented my job.
What made it all the more disturbing was that I was writing,
under brutal deadline pressure, a promotional brochure for our
company's new line of Chicken Soup for the Soul(R) personal
organizers. A year ago the idea of creating such a brochure would
have made my facial muscles twitch. But here I was, eagerly piling
benefit on top of benefit, genuinely hoping that these friendly
products would take flight with unchickenlike wings and soar to
unchickenlike heights.
Why did my positive attitude disturb me? After all, I had long
been a conscientious practitioner of my craft; I always took time to
fine-tune my prose and infuse it with the industry's most highly
sanctioned motivational words and phrases. I often stayed after
hours to ferret out inaccuracies of fact and syntax. I took pride,
if not joy, in my work.
But there you have the nub of the problem: no joy. Like most
writers who prostitute their skills to earn a grown-up salary, I
lived perpetually in a state of low-key rebellion against the
confines of my job. I was a Grand Prix driver forced to tool around
town in a 1966 Dodge Dart. Not to rebel was to surrender... to die
the inner death... to take a headlong plunge into the vast casserole
of mediocrity.
Now, suddenly, I could smell the lima beans. Was I already
simmering in the covered dish from which no talent ever escapes? Was
I finished as a writer, cooked to an unappetizing mush by all those
years of hawking personal organizer systems for a living? Maybe my
soul had turned to chicken soup.
But I didn't seem to care. And it was beginning to DISTURB me
that I didn't care.
Those of us who set out to be singular individuals use up
prodigious amounts of energy in the cultivation and maintenance of
our singularity. We read singular books, travel to singular places,
search for singular mates, grow singular houseplants, think singular
thoughts, develop singular neuroses.
We're obligated to resist the bland and lethal enticements of
mental stability. Like masochistic oysters, we actually WELCOME the
irritating grains of sand that work their way into our shells; we're
confident we can grow pearls around them.
It's not an easy or salubrious way to live. The irritations don't
always produce pearls; most of the time they're just irritating.
Singular people are often singularly miserable. But they tend to be
perversely happy in their misery. Most of them are convinced they've
followed the arduous path reserved for warriors of the spirit. From
their lofty trail high above suburbia, they look haughtily upon the
rows of mass-produced homes with their fake Palladian windows and
neat little lawns. They're inclined to scoff at the sport utility
vehicles parked in every driveway, at the backyard grills and tacky
swing sets, at the transplanted twigs that pass for trees. They
reason that surely no great mind could ever emerge from a setting so
depressingly dull, so monumentally mundane, so clearly wanting in
SINGULARITY.
I'm ashamed to admit I used to be one of them. But I've been
taking another look at the landscape. And I have to tell you that
it's starting to look greener and more congenial all the time. Tired
of marching on the rocky trail with only my singularity for company,
I'm beginning to appreciate the allure of the ordinary.
The solid asphalt driveways and fertilized lawns beckon; it's
useless to resist. Follow me, if you will, while I taste the life I
might have enjoyed had I opted to be less singular.
Here I am at home, married to a well-bosomed, blithely
extroverted customer service manager who owns 51 pairs of shoes and
every album ever recorded by Barbra Streisand. Her brisk but
engaging smile conveys mental competence and responsibility; not for
her the rarefied atmospheres of the skyline trail. Note the
refreshing brevity of our conversation: "Could you remove that
squirrel nest from the roof gutter tonight, dear?" No
intellectualized rhetoric here; no jockeying for power or getting in
touch with our feelings. Just simple questions answered by simple
actions. We keep each other satisfied yet neatly contained within
the parameters of our neighborhood culture. We sleep in the same bed
and wake up prepared for work. You're glimpsing domestic contentment
at its most productive.
And what of our children? No need for me to teach them about
dinosaurs, planets, or the role of the internal proletariat in the
decline of the Roman Empire; their nimble minds are productively
occupied by their Nintendo sets until bedtime. Meanwhile, I consume
half a bag of Doritos while watching approximately 45 seconds of
every show on cable. In my spare time I read an occasional
bestseller about affluent white males with effective habits that
enable them to write bestsellers about affluent white males with
effective habits. When I'm finished, I slide it back onto the shelf
with the 19 other books I've accumulated during my lifetime.
Weekends, I work on my golf game, romp with our golden retriever
(the canine equivalent of a sport utility vehicle), prune the shrubs
and enjoy regular trips to Kmart, comparing garden hoses and weed
trimmers, gripping them in my hands and experiencing the palpable
pleasures of home ownership.
I labor diligently as an advertising copy chief, which I'll
continue to do until I retire or keel over from a massive heart
attack, whichever comes first. And when it's my appointed time to
meet the local mortician, at least I'd be able to look back on a
fleshed-out life of peace and property, regular doses of fortifying
sex, sundecks built, weeds trimmed, roof gutters cleaned out,
children raised and unleashed upon the world.
I'd be eulogized as an exemplary husband and father, a model of
community spirit, an all-around good citizen in the ancient
tradition of Jimmy Stewart. An ordinary man, yes -- but hardly a
mediocre one. I'd have been SINGULARLY ordinary.
It's not such a bad life, this cultivation of the ordinary. Why,
then, do we still have to suppress a chuckle as we contemplate the
mild felicities of suburban domesticity? Have we no sense of
decency? And why is it so hard for us self-described singular types
to let go of our singular ambitions -- those wanton deceivers, those
robbers of time and energy, those dubious substitutes for a life of
honest warmth and texture? Why persist in our costly aspirations
when our singularity fails to deliver, like a slot machine that
refuses to pay out after 40 or 50 thrusts of the handle?
On the other hand, what happens to us when we finally abandon our
singularity -- along with all the accumulated hopes and whims, the
years of assiduous cultivation, the finely honed skills, the arcane
knowledge lovingly stockpiled in our minds like tropical butterfly
specimens at a natural history museum?
What happens when Mozart's piano concertos, Monet's landscapes
and Melville's dark prose are driven out of our memory and into
permanent exile -- by small talk about school districts, property
taxes and the current crop of NFL rookies? What happens when our
souls relocate to suburbia once and for all?
What becomes of the formerly singular?
I can speak only for myself. The hard truth is that I'd probably
make a depressingly second-rate ordinary person -- certainly below
average by the standards of first-rate ordinary people. I don't know
about you, but the obligatory soccer games and excursions to Toys
"R" Us would fray me at the edges. I don't want to hear
about sundecks and Super Bowl parties. I'd never get the hang of
expanding the laundry room or installing shelves in the linen
closet. I can't tell you what spackling putty is; I'm not even sure
if I can conjugate the verb "to spackle." Don't ask me to
calculate the advantages of a 20-year versus a 30-year mortgage. The
last time I tried to balance a checkbook was during the first Reagan
administration.
After a lifetime of singular aspirations, it takes courage to
admit it was all a noble flop. It takes as much courage to embrace
the ordinary, especially if we have no aptitude for it. Do we dare
to eat Velveeta?
If we wait long enough, we might not even have to make the
decision ourselves. Time, that silent cat-burglar, tends to steal
our talents eventually -- especially if we've been careless with
them. And once we're left without talent -- without SINGULARITY --
we don't need quite as much courage to be ordinary. It's just a
matter of stoical resignation followed by a furtive sigh of relief.
Maybe I was relieved to enjoy writing about our new "Chicken
Soup" organizers. Nursing a grudge against your livelihood is
no way to live. And now that my claim to singularity is fading with
every brochure I write, it won't be such a difficult adjustment.
Part of me has always craved the ordinary, after all. I always
did like meat loaf and marigolds. I'm fond of beagles and blue jays.
As I see it, polyester-blend shirts have their virtues and Donna
Reed was the ideal wife. I'd rather hear "By the Light of the
Silvery Moon" than anything by Stravinsky. I enjoy the crack of
a baseball bat making contact with horsehide. The glint of
late-afternoon sunlight on a patch of suburban lawn has always
filled me with immoderate pleasure. I can even overlook the tacky
swing set.
Yes, and bring me another helping of chicken soup while I still
have an appetite.
Here's the complete archive of Rick Bayan's immortal tirades for your reading pleasure:
December 2002 — Hello, I Must Be Going
November 2002 — A Raving Moderate
August 2002 — Is Western Civilization Worth Saving?
July 2002 — To Scam or Be Scammed
June 2002 — I Read the News Today, Oh Boy
May 2002 — Speechophobia
April 2002 — Fanatics on Parade
March 2002 — The Prestige Gap: A Lament
February 2002 — On Becoming a Dullard
January 2002 — Art for Slackers
December 2001 — An Unsolicited Christmas Card
November 2001 — A Tale of Two Tribes
October 2001 — On the Fallen Towers
August 2001 — Why Do We Bother?
June 2001 — Notes from a Doomed Planet
May 2001 — The Museum of Discarded Names
April 2001 — Indecision
March 2001 — A Slight Case of Insanity
February 2001 — Letter to a Conscientious Critic
January 2001 — The Cynic's Inaugural Address
December 2000 — The 50th Tirade
November 2000 — Travel Advisory
October 2000 — Beyond Work
September 2000 — More Work
August 2000 — Work
July 2000 — The Doves' Nest
June 2000 — Great Affectations
May 2000 — Tale of a Virtual Village
April 2000 — The World Is My Obstacle Course
March 2000 — A Living Heck
February 2000 — On the Treachery
of Time
January 2000 — A Letter to the
Future
December 99 — Rare Bird
November 99 — Not Just Another
Obscure Ethnic Group
October 99 — Extinction Reconsidered
September 99 — Good Life, Bad
Life, Better Life
August 99 — Household Relics:
An Elegy
July 99 — A Meditation on Profanity
June 99 — In Praise of Sloth
May 99 — A Bug's Death
April 99 — Obligations!
March 99 — The Courage to Be Ordinary
February 99 — A Grave Story
January 99 — What's Left for
Men?
December 98 — On the Uses of
Friends
November 98 — A Cynic's Thanksgiving
October 98 — Grand Illusions
September 98 — Filth
August 98 — Will the Real God
Please Stand Up?
July 98 — Adventures in Downsizing
June 98 — Lady Longevity
May 98 — Uniquely Human, Uniquely
Clueless
April 98 — The Mathematics of Excess
March 98 — Humbuggery
February 98 — Love and the Single
Cynic
January 98 — By the Sweat of
Your Brow
December 97 — Is Suffering Unfashionable?
November 97 — The Tao of Housekeeping
October 97 — The Sensory Deprivation
Blues
September 97 — Down with Natural
Selection!
August 97 — Noise
July 97 — On Eating Our Fellow Creatures
June 97 — Trouble in Book-Land
May 97 — Interview with an Unemployable
Man
April 97 — The Cynic's Dream
March 97 — Inequalities
February 97 — Flesh and Mortality
January 97 — How to Be a Success
December 96 — Why I Can't Hate
Christmas
November 96 — How I Became a Cynic
