Spooky Action At A Distance
Missive 9
The only thing worse for the Spectacular Failure than being loved, is to be understood.
Should someone else see him for what he is — to understand, commiserate, and feel for him — that is the one thing that truly leaves the Spectacular Failure helpless, defenseless, and more alone than they could ever be.
When a Spectacular Failure embraces a life partner, they enter into the most terrifying of mysteries. Spending much of their lives with someone who comes to know — not their thoughts, which no one can ever do — but their motivations!
Nothing makes a Spectacular Failure feel more isolated and exposed than when their life partner just knows. What they are feeling, thinking, and most of all, what they are trying desperately to hide — often from their life partner.
This chilling, humbling mockery of their hubris, all from just a word or a look from their life partner — is acceptable to the Spectacular Failure. It is as good as it will get and more than he wants. But it is, after all, all that he really has.
So be it.
As if Einstein was describing the heart of the Spectacular Failure and their life partner: spooky action at a distance. Never broken and never distant. Only apart.
It is the one thing that tells him that he is a part of the human condition. Everything else, everyone else, are just props in his life of transience.
It is the rare occasion when another person — either a fleeting or long-time acquaintance — stumbles across that rare moment of deep clarity and may see the Spectacular Failure completely. His almost anti-hero like nobility — the postman who never stops ringing — the relentless fighter that forever falls shy of achieving.
The acknowledgment and honest understanding of this fulcrum in his life by someone else is the only recognition they do not desire, and must, for the Spectacular Failure, be avoided at all costs.
It is usually a brief moment in this other’s life, often at night, often softened by liquor or fatigue, or by some other existential jolt.
Born from this is an unexpected moment of self-reflection. Like a film dream sequence that slowly comes into focus, this other sees the struggles and pain in their own lives that had been mostly blurred, just behind their awareness.
Then, it happens. Maybe they glimpse a photo. Or a letter, or a memory of a moment from their past escapes its prison, forcing them to feel a fleeting something that they typically refuse to acknowledge as coming from within. It is then this other’s perspective snaps into an alignment, for once not centered on themselves, but reflecting what they are feeling outward, onto the person they think they know — the Spectacular Failure.
Somehow, they understand, without trying or wanting to, that they really only see the shadow of the Spectacular Failure, and not the man himself.
For an instant, the other is filled with an illumination that chases the shadows — revealing, now, the man, the Spectacular Failure, standing in front of them, as is.
In this moment, somehow, the shadow drifts off the Spectacular Failure and becomes theirs — sharing the feelings and weight that once explained the Spectacular Failure. Those feelings and that weight are now with them — becoming their own.
Startled by seeing his new shadow, he wonders if it had been with him all along and never saw it. How could he have lived for so long, so confidently, and never noticed this darkness and uncertainty just at his feet? Can this really be the shadow that he casts?
This moment of brilliant clarity beams so intensely onto the shadow, pushing it away, to reveal, not the Spectacular Failure, but their own soul. Their spirit staggers. They now see their own lingering shadow of dread.
“How can it be?” They scream to themselves, like Mr. Jones. “How can that be me? I do have moments of doubt and desperation, yes. But…they pass! I am content! I am fulfilled! I have all that I want, and I have achieved! This just can’t be me that I see! And this can’t be how I feel!”
A true terror rises from deep within them. The glass quivers in their hand. They rub their eyes to try and clear the visions behind them. As they strain harder and harder to refocus, to see what is really in the light, all comes into focus.
They see it.
If the alchemy of the liquor fell into place. If their day was just long enough and pushed them just in the right direction towards their prayer of lament, reducing their self-satisfaction into the dregs now at the bottom of their glass. If the smoke from the ashtray swirls, fades, and dissipates. They will see the face, finally, the true face, of the person they thought they knew.
They see the Spectacular Failure. As he is. Triumphantly sad and forever alone. They now see him.
In themselves.
Just for a moment.
Just long enough for the bottle they will soon reach for to become a prism. They now see, through the refracting light, past the shadow, into the face of the person they thought they were and then into the face of the Spectacular Failure they thought they knew. They find themselves in the shadow of the man before them. Whose shadow revealed, for an instant, their own true selves, filled with insecurities and fears.
The light shifts, and as if the shadow was never there, they are returned to the face of the Spectacular Failure. Their “friend”, they now say, as if for the first time. But with a new, different misunderstanding. They feel proud of themselves, ever so briefly, while they allow the memory of their insights to linger. Just long enough to sense the relief of burying it again deep within their own shadow. Forgotten, for now. But never really gone.
The night moves along. The light gone, yet somehow the shadow remains. The faces having returned as they were before. And they say goodnight.
Alone now after saying nothing to the Spectacular Failure, and with that moment of understanding still close enough to the surface, the other attempts their own clumsy means of communication.
Knowing there are words, just not his own, he scrolls for a crowd-sourced meme — the Hallmark cards of the new millennium — that captures the thought that he believes is his own. Sending it along with “hearts” — in their fabricated and impersonal form — to the Spectacular Failure. Believing the clunky message says: “I understand.”
To the Spectacular Failure, to receive such a message is like being awakened by someone else’s nightmare. They know this person is incapable of honest, authentic expression and that this is the best they can do. But they almost never try. This time they did. The Spectacular Failure accepts that with the intent, not the execution.
Despite the prepackaged nature of commiseration, the moment of insight and connection defies and challenges the longing and belief that the Spectacular Failure is alone. That their existence is Sisyphus without a stone. It truly shakes the Spectacular Failure to his core.
To be “understood” is far, far worse than being loved.
The only hope is that when in contact with this other, it is never, ever, ever spoken of.
Next: Missive 33: Work Ethic™
Previous: Missive 16: There is No Place Like Home
Reading this felt like wandering into Jung's midway sideshow at Mr. Fish's *Circus Mortis.* Wish I could paste an image in, but no, Sustack doesn't allow that. You can see one of them in my "Dead Reckoning" post (https://terryrankin.substack.com/p/dead-reckoning)