The Tease of Things I Don't Need

Tethers, Counterweights
and the Masque of Life

I was starting to give a summary response to many of the much-appreciated comments in the previous thread, as I try to put it all in perspective for myself. The capping comment started to grow a little long, so I thought it best just to make a post of it. Apologies in advance if it reads in a stilted, awkward way, but this is a Monday morning just before the start of a new and unwelcome work week and there's simply not the time.

Part of me just expects me to roll with it, and in the end that's almost certain to happen. I can't do anything about what has happened, so it'll retreat into personal and local history and fade from my immediate consciousness.

Still, I'm trying to extract something good or at least useful from the experience.

There are the obvious lessons -- realizing this didn't come about overnight and that Mike Deeds, whatever his motivations, was likely on a long slide towards Saturday morning's tragedy, for instance. Knowing that if one were able to go back in time there was some point at which the actions he eventually took that morning would have been both alien and absurd to him. Whether that point was less than a day before or weeks or even months or more in his past I'll never know. The lesson's a Taoist one of regularly examining the path one's on. Like most worthwhile things that's far easier said than done, but it's necessary and this past Saturday's an extreme reminder of why.

The more ambiguous lessons involve engagement.

While the local chatter is that he was not just asocial, the way I tend to be - feeling awkward and being more likely to die 1000 deaths as I replay the stupid things I said and the things I stupidly didn't say, and so opt to just keep to myself - but antisocial, there's some point of connection available in anyone. Moreover, most people seem to be worthless in picking up someone's true character at any distance, so who knows what the man was really like. The neighbors physically closest report only hearing his voice raised in anger, and since his wife was such a pleasant person, well, the light he's cast in is understandable.

One more tether, however much even just at the level of a friendly acquaintance with a shared hobby, might have made a stabilizing difference. Of course, it's just as likely that he drank heavily when he hit the weekend, his worst nature emerging, and we simply wouldn't have been able to connect - not that anyone's mentioned alcohol. All of that I simply don't know and I never will.

Dwelling deeper on that it becomes a question of whether or not there's a moral compulsion for engagement. Is it a moral imperative to make connections with people as both a way of enriching our own lives and helping to validate those of others? Is it simply a wise course of action? Time and again we see how small kindnesses can loom so large in someone's life, making them feel special in a way that at least sustains them and can, ideally, spur them to do the same in turn for someone else. Thoughts like that are the beautiful side of the philosophy behind Christianity, before it becomes muddled with dogma and the hateful, primitive, absolutist, often Old Testament messages of fearful obeisance under pain of death, and justifications for exclusions, hatred and killing.

At the risk of waxing pop-psych, these kindnesses validate a person's existence. I can't help but wonder how often the presence or absence of one intangible tether might be what separates senseless tragedies from the normal days where such things don't happen.

On the other hand, don't we owe ourselves more than to fill up our lives with unpleasant people we'd spend most of our time defusing? Taking engagement as a hard and fast rule, the quality of life would plummet as we embrace the role of Jesus Christ: Unpaid Social Worker. Talk about a wearying, thankless, never-ending battle.

Absolutes are generally a really bad idea, of course, and the moral answer has to lie on a more moderate, sensible path. The aim should be to enrich our own lives while enriching those of others, and to recognize that most of this is done most successfully in small ways. Minimizing the contact with people we find we don't want in our lives... well, that's one of those basic social skills I'm supposed to have but which was left out of my instruction pack. Can this old dog learn someone else's old trick?

I don't know that I'm up to it.

While I'll spill my guts in some places about all manner of things, I'm in most other ways a private, insulated person. I'm a blinds and shutters kinda guy, and home is viewed as a refuge. I'm not a guy who hears "party" and immediately has positive associations. I'm a quiet New Year's Eve sort who would rather pass into the new year solo than in some noisy place, raising a glass.

I'm much better about people than I once was, but there's still something of the Rain Man in me when it comes to most people in my space; it puts me on edge and part of me is just waiting for it to be over. Obviously there are people who are exceptions to this, and whose company I welcome, but those folks are very few. I'm the kind of person who could live in the same neighborhood for 15 years and not know the names of most of my immediate neighbors. Strike that could -- that's exactly what I have done most of my life.

I comically contrast that with one extremely bright, capable, gregarious woman I've known for several years who will go to some school- or work-related event, mix with complete strangers and be networked enough with several of them that she'll be having lunch with them and talking as if they're friends from way back. A dinner invitation before the day's end isn't out of the question. Part of me is envious of her, while part is aghast at the thought of doing anything like that and living with the consequences. It's difficult to imagine doing that in any way that wouldn't be, for me, almost pure artifice.

But... what I've been doing hasn't really been working for me, so it seems reasonable that I should give something else a try while there's still time and opportunity.