Ok. Time to do some Cliché Culling. Life really isn’t short. It came to me as I was considering why someone I know can’t sit still through anything. He loves the part of GOING to do something, say, a movie, but as soon as the movie actually starts, he’s squirming in his seat and ready for the movie to be over. He likes the idea of getting in the truck, but can’t stand sitting while you go anywhere. He likes the idea of playing a game, but if it isn’t paced faster than speed metal compressed to time-and-a-half, he’s ready for it to be over.
I think this is a symptom of “life is too short” syndrome. So where does this syndrome come from? Ugh. I called it a syndrome. Someone could make a cottage industry out of Life Is Too Short Therapy. I hate that.
Believe me, I am all for capitalism. I think free markets are the ONLY way to keep power in the hands of the PEOPLE rather than dictators. However, I think with free enterprise comes a measure of responsibility that the ignoramus or the unscrupulous are not prepared to deal with. Do I think they need government regulation? No. I will come to my solution in a little bit but I don’t want to turn people off that fast.
I think the problem is that we’re letting “pop culture” define us rather than us defining our pop culture. A little thing catches on (dark humor in commercials) and suddenly everyone thinks all commercials, to be successful, need dark humor. The damage that is done is seen in things like “life is too short” syndrome. It’s a catchy phrase and gets plastered all over the place, but what it does is cause a frantic fear of death manifested in frenetic instability and short attention spans. In other words, if we’re not getting maximum gratification NOW, we’d better stop what we’re doing and try something else.
The fact of the matter is, though people may look at our lifespan and say “wow, I’m going to die before Star Trek comes to pass! I’m a loser mortal with a speck of time to live, and I won’t get ANYTHING done of importance – I’m insignificant and I need someone to blame, or a ‘lucky shot’ to make me significant”.
Yet, how many of us sit for hours on end either bored out of our skull, watching re-runs or movies that we don’t really care to see again (some are worth it, but how many times do we think we’re wasting our time ‘this time’?), or playing hours on end of solitaire because we want something mindless and at least somewhat gratifying (hey, if I’m lucky, those cards will bounce – nobody will KNOW it but me, but I WON!!).
I’m not saying we shouldn’t take time to play silly computer games. Rather the opposite. We should recognize that, since we CAN, life is not only plenty long, there are hours and hours to fritter away every week. Ok, some weeks are so packed full all we want to do is go to bed, but in general every week has several hours in it (sometimes evenly across the evenings, sometimes packed into one ‘lost’ Saturday afternoon) in which we have no plans.
Relax. Take a deep breath. Calm yourself for just a few moments and listen. Let your mind clear as much as possible (this is actually one of the toughest skills in life, I believe) and then see if one of those quiet little voices that’s been nagging at you comes out. “Hey, I’ve been meaning to gather all the pictures of my last vacation and write some good captions to go with them.” “Oooo... I wanted to wash the truck yesterday, make it sparkle, but I was in the middle of a long, boring meeting with that sloth the company appointed to be my division manager.” “Oh! I have hoped to pull out that old Rush album and listen to it again.” Some things that come up may be chores, some things may cost money “That’s it! I wanted to go see what new Lego sets were at Toys’r’us! I could go to the toy store!”, some things may seem like a waste of time. However, they are things that you wanted to do that you didn’t get to. Realize you CAN get to everything. Write that book. Draw that picture. Buy that modeling clay and make something.
I carry a little notepad around with me. It’s in one of those small zipper containers that looks like a Day-Timer wannabe. I take it into movies, I take it to my kids’ gymnastics classes, I take it to meetings, I take it to the park. It’s not heavy, and it’s not big. If I think of something I want to do but can’t at the moment, I write it down. Since I love writing so much, often what I want to do IS write, so I can do that right then and there.
Ok. So what is the solution to pop culture I was talking about? Now, I don’t think you can get rid of pop culture. It’s a concept, really. I would define it as parcel-glimpses into what is attractive to our society at large. My contention was that we’re letting those parcel-glimpses get out of hand and define what is attractive instead of what is attractive defining the successful parcel-glimpses. What is it that fortifies us, makes it so WE define pop culture instead of pop culture defining US? We need to be strong and self-assured. We need to not only believe we know when something is influencing us, but we need to believe we can turn off its influence. We need to believe we are stronger than a clever marketer. Not that we don’t need products and services, but that we have the strength to buy (or buy into) only what we truly want or need, not what someone else is trying to make us think we want or need.
The answer is religion. Whether it is Hindu, Moslem, Christian, Hebrew, Shinto, Buddhism, Therapy-ism, or whatever, it is actually designed to help us recognize right from wrong. People can set up awful prey-upon-the-weak industries in the NAME of religion, but I’m not talking about the organized institutions ostensibly set up to perpetuate religion. I’m talking about the religion itself. Some of them don’t agree on God (ok, none of them really agree on God) and many of them appear to be at direct odds with each other. But when you get down to it, every major religion in the world says specifically that you should try to get along with and live peaceably with all your neighbors, be they of another religion or yours.
In one sense, religion is the study that there is another power apart from pop culture and peer pressure. The other thing every major religion deals with is our tenure here. Whether they preach of a promised paradise in after-life or they teach that life itself is eternal and all around us is allegorical, mystifying illusion, they talk of more than the “short span” we fear here. Now, whether you believe they’re right or wrong, whether you believe they’re brainwashing or re-directing attention, one important thing happens:
You take your panicked attention of the supposed short-term of your life. The nice surprise? You may look up from your fulfilled life and realize you have accomplished all sorts of stuff, and have PLENTY of time left to do more.
The danger, or “wrongness” (I prefer that word to the mis-understood “sin”) of instant gratification is that it pre-supposes there is no set-up or build-up to gratification, that there is no pleasure in the set-up or build-up to gratification, and even tries to dim the fact that gratification is GREATER if one has done the set-up or build-up.
Try living without your cell-phone for a month. I did and I haven’t had one for years. Not only do I feel I have plenty going on, and therefore that a cell phone is not vital to my success, but I have re-learned not only to trust others (that they will follow a plan without constant goading or progress reports) but to trust myself as well (that I will follow OR MAKE a plan without constant tweaking, poking, prodding, changing, nudging, or assuring others that I’m doing it). I also get a HELL of a lot more done.
Don’t become a victim of the dark parts of pop culture.
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