Surprisingly to some of my readers, the one thing that writing a blog has taught me is to extoll as much sheer rationale and logic as possible. I know some readers just roll their eyes "oh here we go, Bush bashing..." et al. But whereas in the past I would just blurt out my feelings/thoughts with no guv'nah, at least the stewardship of a blog has demanded that I at least pause for reason. This is not to say I will be right; many times I have revisited my pages to find myself in error. But before I hit "publish post" I do try to make sure I've seen everything through everyone's eyes. Yes, racism is terrible. But why? Is it possible it, as a natural order, has brought us where we are today? Yes, Hitler was a douche...but from a sheer objective, rational stance WAS he a great leader? And on and on. If someone says "John Edwards sucks!!" I can't just screed back "no, you suck!" I have to sit back and think well, DOES Edwards suck?
As a rule, I am an emotional man...I see things in black and white and explode thusly; frustration and the knowledge of superiority lead to my spitting out spectacular venom on right vs. wrong. But the great thing about being Xmastime means I have to step back, dry off the page, and become my own devil's advocate. Slow logic trumping quick rage. Every time.
I think I've written here somewhere about when I was a kid, and my brother and I would be playing basketball. Something would happen, and fucking alarm bells would go off in my head, and next thing you know I see nothing but white rage; I'd take the ball and hurl it at my brother, quickly upon which I would clamp my teeth down over my bottom lip and then flail into him; arms and legs kicking while I screamed like a banshee. I was a whirling dervish of limbs and tears and screaming and emotion. My brother? Bemused at best, fighting me off for a while before getting bored and dispatching of me. I'd be shaking with rage, and he'd be sipping Kool-Aid nonchalantly. And he was right. Calm always beats rage. Period.
When we were kids we had some sort of cake to share with each other and my mother gave us the old "one of you cuts it, the other decides which piece to take" routine. And it's my job to cut. I remember standing there, knife hovering, and I start bitching and moaning. I hadn't even cut the thing, but I was welled up in rage re: "he's gonna take the bigger piece!!" Fucking christ. I was the one cutting, the slices were in my hands. But I was so emotional, so fucking mad that he might get a crumb more than me that I worked myself into a frenzy. To this day, I can see him watching me as I held the knife above the cake, bitching and moaning and crying. Looking at me, clear-headed, he finally says "why would I take the smaller piece?" I was furious at his instant rationale; of course about 2 seconds later I saw that he was right. All my histronics, all my emotions, and in the end about 3 seconds of raw, rational thought defeated all my dramatics. A lesson learnt.
Logic and reason. Two things I need to learn.
3 comments:
Why not just cut it in equal parts and avoid the controversy? your mom meant well. My grandmother, AKA Nonna, perfected portion control. "Everyone, the same", her motto. There was no ice cream scoop in that house. you handed her the knife and she'd open the sides of the box and hack it into perfectly symmetrical 2 inch slices. No lessons. No rage. Feed the kids and get em away from the table. Done.)
you've looked at cake from both sides now, from give and take and still somehow, your brother got the bigger share, he really couldn't care at all.
Don't EVER sacrifice your emoticon. It's the only thing that keeps some people coming back.
That, and the easy ass.
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