Wow, I think this may be the first time in history that I had a brilliant idea for a blog topic before it was too late because I had already written the damn thing.
The best ideas seem to come to me in the time between 7 pm and 8 pm. My power hour, I guess. Something to think about in the future.
Anyhow. What I want to talk about tonight is a revelation I had not half an hour ago about myself and what I want to do to make myself more comfortable in my own skin.
Other people’s skin never fits me.
It was a double barrel revelation,two insights that happened as one.
First off, I realized that a lot of my negative self-talk revolves around my lapses in memory, clumsiness, and general cluelessness. My inner prosecutor loves that stuff.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. That was the other barrel of the revelation. There’s a completely different way of looking at things that is much kinder and less malign version than my usual self-loathing.
I’m not a total loser that sucks at life and therefore sucks in general.
I’m a hilarious sitcom sidekick! I am that lovable goof Michael, the nerdy friend of the main young male character. Let’s call him Tad.
Tad : Well yeah, he’s brilliant. He gets straight As without even studying. He knows more about everything than I know about anything. But boy, that kid needs a minder. Always walking around with his head in the clouds, thinking the big thoughts, not really paying attention to reality it all. I’ve had to stop him from walking into traffic like a dozen times and I’ve only known him for six months!
Tad’s Dad : (nods) A wise man once said that “those who live with their head in the clouds are at the mercy of the puddles in the road. “
Tad : Exactly! And he’s always forgetting things. Things nobody should forget. Like his own phone number! Or what class he’s in. Things like that.
Tad’s Dad : You know what I think?
Tad : No, what?
Tad’s Dad : That he’s awfully lucky to have a good friend like you looking out for him.
Tad : (blushing but pleased) Aww, DAD!
Tad : By the way, who was the wise man who said that stuff about the puddles?
Tad’s Dad : Me. Just now. You were here.
Tad : (eyerolls) By which you mean you don’t remember.
Tad’s Dad : Give that man a cigar!
Tad laughs, pleased with himself.
Tad’s Dad : Only not really, because you know how we feel about the tobacco industry.
Tad : (eyeroll) Yeah, I kind of figured that out by myself.
That’s an excerpt from my never before released pilot. “Brad and his Dad”. Watch for it this fall on nothing!
Actually, as I wrote that, I noticed three things :
- That was a lot of fun to write
- And also easy. Almost like I should be writing this kind of thing for a living. I wonder if there’s a school that helps you with that… 😛
- At some point, in the back of my mind, I started writing it with Family Ties in mind. Michael J. Fox as Brad, Stephen Gross as his Dad. Guess I really do have sitcoms burned deep into my mind!
Anyhow[1], back to the point I am almost positive I was trying to make. By simply re-imagining myself as a goofy but lovable sitcom character, I can access deep, powerful symbols in my mind and use them to defeat my inner prosecutor.
Because seriously…. fuck that guy.
This might seem like a very strange form of therapy to someone who doesn’t know me very well. But for me, therapy is all about the re-imagining. What one of my favorite poets., MC 900 Foot Jesus, called “dreaming it anew”.
If I can come up with a better dream of myself, a new and superior dream that better solves the problem of myself, then I can become that dream.
That’s one of my most extraordinary powers.
It’s also extraordinarily dangerous.
These revelations also fit with my recent thoughts about the scrappy underdog archetype, and what makes it work.
So far, it goes like this :
People don’t need you to succeed. They just need to see you trying as hard as you can. As long as you can do that, people will love and even protect you.
I learned this lesson from a show called Dirty Jobs, hosted by Mike Rowe. Every episode, he showed up at a work site for some crazy awful job, try his absolute best to do the job while all the workers were watching, fail miserably, and after that, they all loved him like a brother.
In Machiavellian terms, it’s brilliant, because by trying as hard as he can but failing, he gained the workers at the site’s respect while also establishing that he is both a regular, relatable, working-class kind of guy and yet, absolutely no threat to anyone’s position in the existing hierarchy.
All you gotta do is try.
I wish I had known that when I was being such a little shit[2] in gym class as a kid. I would have been way better behaved. I gave gym teachers such a hard time when they were just regular people trying to do their jobs, too.
If I had known the secret was to try as hard as you can, I would have tried as hard as I could, and maybe my fellow students would have liked me more.
This new idea runs contrary to my inner oddsmaker slash accountant, who enforces a very strict effort versus reward on every possibly action, and insists that only things with a good chance of immediate, tangible rewards.
And, I hasten to add, was an ironically detached little shit even back then.
That one lesson about trying could have saved me a lot of pain and isolation.
In fact, with that one lesson plus a clue update about trying to fit in being toally worth it sometimes, and I would have had an entirely different childhood.
I will talk to you nice people again.