I'm only human

We think we’re like cheetahs, but we’re not. Cheetahs train their bodies and their minds to perform the way they do by instinct. We humans, having acquired consciousness with all of its attending benefits, have to learn most of that high performance stuff. In an environment in which the primary predator is the drunk driver, our natural inclination is couch potato. Food and shelter, while not assured, do not require precision and intensity. You can get better stuff if you work at it, or even easier, have that happy accident of parents who are better off. But to really reach your human potential, you have to work at it. Discipline and effort are not instinctual for us.

Now I am no slouch. Not entirely, anyway. But although I did well in Calculus I, I mostly use a calculator for simple arithmetic. I never read the New Testament in the Greek. I know who wrote War and Peace, but heck if I know what it was about. I can still picture in my mind that woman riding in a sleigh in Dr. Zhivago, but that was a movie, and the book was by Pasternak, not Tolstoy. I think Bertol Brecht wrote plays, but I can easily sing you the theme song from Gilligan’s Island. I can debate Ginger or Maryanne, but I couldn’t tell you Lincoln or Douglass’s position to within a half-farthing. Don’t know what I’m talking about there, either.

Let’s face it. Whatever we say, we are mostly hedonists. And most of us don’t work all that hard at our pleasures. Sex motivates some, as you would expect. And we are preoccupied with consumption but we have mostly evolved past hard physical work or mental discipline. Imagine cheetahs always looking for the easy way. Of course, they have no choice.

There are some of us who have achieved some things. The rest of us generally ride coat tails.

Well, I’m now two-thirds through my four score and three, or whatever they’re predicting these days, and the question I have to ask myself is do I feel like it’s worth the effort? I did what I did to get me where I am - with a lot of dumb luck. Is it worth trying to make more of myself when I’m going to come to the same end as Shakespeare did some years ago or some contemporary total slouch who died when a drunk driver plowed into him. Is there a point to discipline and effort, for me?

At the very least, I resolve to try to give more credit to those who are trying. And dammit, I should give myself some credit – when I deserve it.

At least I know a continuum when I see one. I can look down it or I can look up. Show me how it’s done right, and I’ll try for another step up. I’m only human.

One soldier's condition

In a short film by Steven Wright of deadpan comedic fame called ‘One Soldier,’ the tale of a man unable to make sense of it all is told. Misery and confusion never leave his face and voice.

He comes home from the war and in one scene he’s trying to explain to his wife how odd it seems: first, we don’t exist for a very long time, then we are alive, then we don’t exist again for a very long time. “ Doesn't it seem like life is just an interruption from not existing?” he asks.

In another scene he’s talking to himself, saying how everything is going too fast, and since he can’t slow time down, maybe he should just make it stop – for himself, at least. If nothing else, he wouldn't have to spend so much time thinking about death.

He then ends up killing a man who is urging him to be a more vigorous soldier and kill other men whom he doesn't even know. He is sentenced to death by a firing squad. At the moment before his death he suddenly exclaims, “My God, I wasted my whole life thinking about this stuff. I should have just gone fishing. I should have had a sandwich or had a few laughs. Now I get it.” The shot sounds.

Then you see him wandering in a hillside cemetery and he says in conclusion, “I’m going to miss being alive.”