Missive 37
“Wherever you go, there you are.”
- Buckaroo Bonzai
So you'd better learn to accept — and make friends with — the Buckaroo in your sidecar. They’re with you for life.
Everyone, at some point, may take a step along the path towards who they truly are, but most never journey to the end — never to arrive at a place of self-discovery and understanding. Many people live in the Groundhog Day terrors of being found out.
“Fraud!”
“Hack!”
“Has-been.”
And worst of all: The “wanna-be” — the one who never even was.
They will do whatever they need — dress, stand, speak just the right way, with just the right affectations, to portray a character they were horribly miscast as — anything to avoid ever looking inside themselves to come face to face with their true identity, thoughts, and fears.
Never knowing who they are — with all the pain, torment, dissatisfaction — they remain perpetually confused, resentful. Looking only outwards, they seek validation from others, never finding the grace of self that being alone isn’t the same as being lonely.
The Spectacular Failure is — if not happy, or proud — at least violently content, at being who he is — never bothered by what “others” think of him. As if that could somehow even matter. He long ago turned a deaf ear to what other people thought of him — from the moment his mother didn’t comb his hair that one morning before kindergarten.
“You know, I like it like this!” he thought. And from then on, fuck it.
The Spectacular Failure lives with the knowledge — the understanding of self. Not with pride, hubris, or a willful stubbornness to change. Not something to embrace, or collapse into with despair. Just acceptance.
Think of a river somehow having a consciousness. The awareness of being a river. To always be moving but forever in the same place. To be forever changing but always the same. To always be fresh and renewed by simply being a river.
And to the world, the “others”, the river never needs care: to carry, to sink, to allow the others to grow, relax, and work in. Ignoring — while interacting with everything — at the same time. Knowing itself to be only just what it is — and nothing more. How can it be? It is just a river. The thing it always was and always will be.
Others may ignore or dismiss it — but none can deny the river. What it is and does, even if they don’t know where it came from or where it is going. The river is both useful as well as purposeless. Often abused, sometimes marveled at for its serenity or violent unpredictability, but always, eventually, ignored and taken for granted. Yet the river, through it all, just continues. The same — ever changing, never changing. The river it always was.
That is the internal strength of the Spectacular Failure. Call it pride. Sometimes he does, but not for long. Hope? Never. Purpose? Thinking a purpose would be nice — but soon realizing there is none at all. Just a river.
Some people, though very few, come to accept themselves, yet may never really be at peace. They think they should have been more, or gotten more — of something. Some may live in regret, or a feeling of forever being a victim, and then making the victim their identity. The misplaced belief that they just never got the break they felt they deserved — that good luck never was at their back long enough. Cursing only the wind of bad luck that seemed to always be pushing in their face, slowing them. Exhausting them. Making them bitter, tired, and dying before dead.
Boxcar once mused: “Death is God’s way of saying, ‘I’m sorry.’” Maybe, in our moment of death, if we are afforded that moment of reflection, acceptance, and final assessment, people may find peace. Honesty. Openness to who they were and the life they led. And while finally accepting their regrets, misfortunes, and missteps, they find calmness and maybe even relief. They may at last say, “It’s OK.”
These faces right before a death, if given the opportunity, sometimes can be seen as finally being at peace. If only they could have arrived at that place years before.
At least that’s what the poets tell us about the dream of the dying realization. And we have already made clear that the poets are, most definitely, liars. So perhaps not. Perhaps the faces of the dying present the realization of terror in the lives they have lived. What if, in that silent internal final moment, we manifest our true nature? Who we actually were throughout our lives. All manicured pretense gone and authenticity revealed. Anger, selfishness, resentment, rage — while hoping to pay off the devil with the occasional acts of kindness.
Perhaps the truth is that you die as you lived.
Now there is a scary thought.
Unless you get hit by a bus you never saw coming. Then you get off easy.
For the Spectacular Failure, that acceptance of who he is, knowing that, despite whatever lay in the wake of life, the river just flowed. He knows it was not to be any other way.
When asked, “How are you?”, the Spectacular Failure can only answer: “I couldn’t be better.”
It is the truth. He couldn’t be better — because if he could be, he would be.
While others may hear this as the attitude of an up, lively, hopeful and optimistic person — “I couldn’t be better!” — the truth is something far simpler. The Spectacular Failure knows that the truth is, what is. Everything else is just poetry. So the Spectacular Failure “couldn’t be better” if he tried. He can only be what he is.
I will look up who said this most wonderful line, though my brain tells me I am doing Nietzsche a disservice (well, somebody has to): “If you live long enough, you eventually become who you are.” And for some people — for the Spectacular Failure — he becomes a river. Accepting without question, regret or assumption, learning to live with contentment, knowing who he is.
As good as he can be, he already is. Whatever measure that is. He can’t be any better.
And neither can you. You just are.