Deal with it.

About 8 summers ago, I rode up an ancient, hilly two-lane road in rural upstate New York with my friend Terry., who was searching for the grave of one of her 19th-century ancestors. We pulled off the road next to a cemetery in the middle of no place in particular, which couldn't have contained more than 20 or 30 graves. It was nestled at the forked junction of two roads which were bordered primarily by woods. She was jubilant when she found the grave of one of her distant relatives. As we were leaving the cemetery I happened to notice an inscription on one of the gravestones. I don't remember exactly how the flowery Victorian verse read, but the upshot was this:

“Where you are now is where I once was.

Where I am now is where you're eventually going to be.

Deal with it!”

The way many of us deal with the whack upside the head which is the realization of our own mortality is to resolve to be remembered, to live on in some form. We build actual or symbolic monuments to ourselves. We try to be famous, or at least conspicuously successful. We let funeral directors talk us into arrangements to purchase monuments worthy of a Civil War general for when the Grim Reaper finally comes knocking on our door. Those of us with millions to spare donate buildings named after ourselves to universities whose students will never know or care who we were, or set up endowments for organizations devoted to our promoting our hobbies, attacking our pet peeves or nurturing causes close to our hearts.

There's nothing wrong with respecting yourself enough to want a dignified exit. Giving money to organizations which support your world views is the sincerest way of backing those views up. But as for being remembered after you pass, my own view on the whole matter is this: if you want to be remembered after you're gone, don't try to do it by plopping a great stone monument with your name on it over your grave. Do you know how many people drive right past those things every single day without giving them a second glance or thought? No, if you want to be remembered, leave a legacy. The late composer/performer Frank Zappa remarked, shortly before his own untimely death, that he had no intention of making any extraordinary effort to commemorate himself as many politicians and celebrities routinely do (his grave isn't even marked). He didn't have to. His music will doubtlessly be studied and enjoyed by scholars and music lovers for many years to come.

To further clarify my point, how many of you have ever heard of Waldo Semon? Not many, right? Well, it just so happens that in 1926, Mr. Semon perfected a material called polyvinyl chloride, often simply called vinyl. I'd never heard of Mr. Semon until very recently but DJ's and “crate diggers” the world over (like yours truly) have him to thank. Even though vinyl is no longer used as extensively as it once was as a medium for recorded music, it made high-fidelity sound recording and marketing practical. There would probably be no CD's, MP3's or FLAC files if not for Mr. Semon's invention.

Frankly, if the only legacy that you leave behind after you're gone is the circle of friends, lovers and relatives who shed tears at your funeral, you're doing pretty well.

In Defense of "Can't"

This is America. We are, so we’re told, a nation of doers, not doubters. If there’s one four-letter word we will not abide, it’s the word “Can’t”. Far worse than the dreaded F-bomb, this word signifies disgrace under pressure, wimpiness, wussiness, loserhood. It’s a word that’s only uttered by naysayers, nonbelievers and other nattering nabobs of negativism. “Can’t” means cut-and-run. “Can’t” means you obviously aren’t serious about success. Better to bullshit your way to inevitable failure than to admit that something might be beyond the scope of your abilities.

How this childish attitude toward life got to be so prevalent, I’m not certain. Maybe it’s that story we all had read to us as kids called The Little Engine That Could. In case you missed it, a small switch locomotive is confronted with the task of scaling an extremely steep hill. The little engine keeps on telling himself “I think I can”, or words to that effect as he slowly huffs and puffs his way upward. He eventually makes it to the top of the hill, and gleefully whizzes down the other side to his destination (he obviously wasn’t working for Amtrak!). Meanwhile, back in the real world, author Shel Silverstein points out in his response to that story, "The Little Blue Engine" that "If the track is tough and the hill is rough, THINKING you can just ain't enough!"

Don’t get me wrong, I’ll never criticize anyone who seeks to push the envelope and get more out of their careers, their relationships, their lives. I’ve no complaint against anyone who weighs the odds, considers the facts and then goes for it. Those people are the reason why we have things like personal computers and the Web. And there’s a lot of transformative change that’s been wrought by people who kept on keeping on in the face of what looked at the time like impossible odds. That’s one of the reasons why an African-American man is now president of the United States and not a janitor in Chicago’s city hall. But perseverance is only a virtue if it is tempered with some degree of rationality. There are few people who create more problems than those who blindly throw rationality to the wind and rush in where more sensible folks might fear to tread, lest they be labeled “quitters”.

Many of us became indoctrinated with the gospel of can-do-must-do in grade school. If you had difficulty with a particular assignment or academic subject, your teachers probably said it was because you weren’t trying hard enough. And it wasn’t very long ago that “failing” or “problem” children - those with learning disabilities or other issues - were segregated in “special schools”, or simply put out to the curb for the criminal justice system to haul away. And speaking of learning disabilities, why is it necessary to medicalize the strengths and weaknesses we are all born with? How different is turning a child who cannot read or do differential equations into a patient or a “case” from slapping a “Dunce” cap on his head and making him sit in a corner, as was done decades ago? Our weaknesses are merely the reverse-sides of our strengths. I myself cannot handle numbers. I got to be very familiar with the folks at my college’s remedial math lab until I made up my mind to stop beating my head against the wall, and switched majors from engineering to English. A disappointment? Yes. Was it the right thing to do? Yes again.

If people are the least bit honest with themselves, they will admit that there are certain things which they will never be competent at, let alone excel at, no matter how much effort they expend, no matter how many hours they practice, no matter how many times they beat themselves up for failing. Like a suit that’s two sizes two small, some things just don’t fit. Success only happens when you are on the proper path to it.

Americans need to let up, sit down and take a long, deep breath. Contrary to popular belief, life is not a race, a contest, or a fight to the finish in which the man standing next to you is your enemy. There are solid, rational reasons why civilized society has renounced the Law of the Jungle. Permit me to posit the heretical notion here that life is meant to be enjoyed, that competition does have its place (and should stay there), and that in most cases, failure doesn’t need to be a mark of disgrace or the end of one’s life.