I wonder often about what I could be if I just got out of my own damn way.
My bad habits have ranged over the years from innocuous to injurious, from seductive to sad. I’m going on two months of not biting my fingernails, for example. Aside from an extra cold now and then and the stigma of habitually doing something gross, it’s not that bad, and now just a small bad habit defeated. A clearing of the throat and a test of resolve before tackling larger ones, perhaps.
I didn’t have a drink last night. It’s a habit that’s not always sad or injurious, as far as habits go, and in fact has facilitated plenty of unique conversations late into evenings, generated fodder for music, provided gustatory pleasure and cerebral intrigue. But abstaining, for a night or several, is a corrective measure regardless.
I talked with a mentor of mine in grad school about what happens to people who never grow out of going to the bar, being sloppy and reckless, fully beholden to the romantic image of the barfly. “Eventually, it stops being cute,” he said.
Something like that.
If I didn’t feel so good physically this morning I would be furious at the obvious realization that my own bad habits are usually what leave me so worse for wear. I’ve been yapping about my joints hurting and being tired and gaining weight for months, and it turns out 800 extra calories of beer a night might contribute in a meaningful way to any or all of those things.
I’m grateful at how easy it was to take a night off, too. I even sat in a bar watching the Sox actually win a game with a buddy of mine, and I didn’t succumb to the gentle urge to order a Headway, and then three more, while we waited to celebrate Bruce Springsteen’s birthday with perhaps the most heterosexual activity ever performed: three grown men, two of them sober, sitting in a living room listening to Bruce Springsteen on vinyl.
It was a good night. Its recollection is made even better by the fact of clear memory, the knowledge that nothing I said could be attributed to anything other than who I was when I said it, and the simple pleasure of being with people one cares about without any added haze. Last night, the only haze was laughter.
It implies that maybe, after a little break, I can resume consumption at a reduced, more socially and professionally compatible way.
Before we vomit together from naked sentiment, we can move on. Accept my apologies for being aggressively earnest.
Last week I wrote about the insularity of writing about the self and everyday rhythms while so many bad things are happening out in the world. I still feel that, acutely in fact, to the point that the idea of terminating this weekly writing practice entirely is appealing to me sometimes. The problems of the world are so big, and I’m so comparatively small.
But I didn’t set out to save the world when I decided to start doing this. It’s about discipline. So I’ll continue—consider it another instance of me getting out of my own way.
Truly, I seem to do better when I dispense with the notion of a “big world” out there, anyway. There’s only so much that’s within our control. Worrying about the things that sit largely outside my control usually just leads me to barstools or friends’ couches trying to drink away an imagined shame at my own inadequacy to save the world, when in reality I should probably be going home to sleep, waking up early to replace that burnt out headlight bulb, doing some laundry, petting my dogs. Things I did last night and this morning.
There are still other things that can and should be done. I will continue to at the very least acknowledge that a situation with moral imperative equivalent to the Holocaust has arisen in our lifetime, and yet so many of us sit idle in consumptive inaction, while others actively dispute the situation’s existence, or worse, applaud its progress. The region inches closer to full-blown conflict as Israel edges its way into Lebanon and kills nine-year-old girls with pager bombs, while the US continues to aid and abet it with funding and free PR.
You might be mad at me for talking about it, especially nestled in a journal like this that started out comparatively cool and meditative. But maybe we shouldn’t be able to escape it.
Discussion of it should be everywhere.
Even if the US reverses course, stops funding Israel, and fights on the right side of history in the event of a future, hypothetical regional war, what has already been done should fester a guilt that can never be absolved. If not for you and me, then for the people in charge, at the very least.
Should, should, should. If only history was governed by the word “should.”
If only we could know what the world could be if it got out of its own way.
matt nilsen 