The Referendum

Usually spending large amounts of time reading random things on the internet makes my soul hurt. But occasionally it leads you to something great like this piece from the New York Times last month (propers to the always excellent Boxing Metropolis). It’s called “The Referendum” by Tim Kreider and you might have already read it as its been circulating the internet for a while now. But even if you have, I urge you to go read it again. It’s that good. Not only is it one of the best written things I’ve read this year, but it perfectly articulates so many things that I’ve been thinking about and feeling recently. There’s really nothing I can possible add to make it any better.

But I’ve never let that stop me before, so why start now?

Not to violate the basic rules I set up for this blog, but "The Referedum" has inspired me to get personal for a moment and talk about something that has everything to do with me and nothing to do, even in a tangential way, with pop culture or politics. I don’t know what it says about me that I can so personally relate to the struggles of a guy in his 40s, but I know that the ideas he addresses pretty closely tie into the three big lessons/ideas I'll take from this year.

1.) We are too closely connected
Shocking I know that I would have some issue with modern technology, but I really think human beings aren’t meant to be as closely connected as the internet now makes us. There are people I’ve never met in real life that I feel intimately connected to. I could write books about the lives of people I’ve met less than a handful of times. And with so much information about others at our finger tips it’s easy to write entire stories about the lives of others by simply filling in some blanks. The only problem is, those blanks are often massive gaping holes and the things we fill them with are pure invention. But we allow these stories we create to have the weight of fact and to have an actual affect on our being. But for every facebook or blog post about that Broadway play someone got cast in, or that piece they got published in The New York Times, or that summer they spent in the south of France, there are hundreds of posts they didn’t write about that audition they waited at for eight hours only to not even be seen, or that article they spent weeks working on that they never wound up feeling remotely good about, or those six months they spent living off unemployment checks. People mention the good and occasionally the mundane, but rarely the bad. But yet since we have a wealth of information seemingly available to us, those things that get mentioned take on the air of total truth. It seems like we have the whole story because we have 200 pages of the book, but in truth the book is thousands of pages long. And we were never meant to have that many pages in the first place. It’s dangerous and we‘re not evolved enough to handle it.

2.) People want to justify their life choices
Mr. Kreider’s main thesis is that there are so many choices available to us that we’re always wondering about the road not taken. The choices we didn’t make. That way of thinking can be overwhelming and lead to a deep existential crisis so we try as hard as we can to justify the choices we make as the correct ones. The superior ones. That’s why so many married people encourage others to get married, or so many people with kids talk about how great having kids is, or why I’m always trying to convince people that moving to LA is great idea that they should really consider. But that doesn’t mean getting married is really something everyone should do, or that having kids is a great thing, or moving to LA is a good idea. It doesn’t mean they’re not, it just means that most advice people give and most things people say are really as much about them as they are about you. We’re all self-interested beings and that’s not bad or good, it’s just human. So take everything with a grain of salt be tenacious with your questioning of all things. Listen to others but at the end of the day trust yourself and the choices you make. Your opinion is the only one that matters.

3.) You can’t compare yourself to others
When I was in high school there were few things I loved more than “Everyone’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)”. You know, the graduation speech full of little bits of advice that Baz Luhrmann set to music? It might, on an subjective level, seem cheesy, but still to this day rarely a week passes that one of its truisms doesn’t enter my thinking. (Lately “live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard” has really been resonating with me)

Anyway, since my high school days the part that I’ve liked the most has been “don’t waste your time on jealousy / sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind / but the race is long and in the end it’s only with yourself.” I could have just saved myself about 200 words and simply said that since I think that’s the essence of what Mr. Kriedler is saying. But I think the other two points I’ve mentioned are also relevant. It’s all one.

It’s too easy now to get caught up in wondering about other people’s journeys, but we’ll never enjoy our own lives if we don’t enjoy our own paths. (Look at me auditioning for the next Baz Luhrmann scored advice “song”…)

As this year is winding down I’ve been really reflecting on the lessons that it has taught and what I’ll take away from it. And then something like "The Referendum" comes along and really speaks to the heart of what this year has been about for me. So thanks for indulging me in this little slice of self-seriousness. I’ll get back to trivial bullshit again next.

But until then - don’t forget to wear sunscreen.