I'm back on the porch tonight, later than I might have expected to be, the light gone yet the true dark not fully in from the edges. Cigar in one hand, a small Jameson in the other, neither of which I particularly feel like getting rid of. The cicadas are doing their usual drone, as they always have been, rising and falling in their chant, never truly breaking, merely fading a touch at the edges.
Nine things I know, things I've worn as a second skin for long enough that the edges have fray. And this evening, I find myself thinking them over in turn, turning them over in my mind slowly rather than simply recalling. Recalling and knowing are not the same, I've found, the longer we live the more we find that the two rarely coincide. We get used to the sound of our own voice, to the words we've worn so often that they cease to feel like words at all, when in truth every one of them has as much potential to be another.
Never ask what you don't want to hear.
This is one of those things that wasn't meant to be a lesson, but which we nevertheless find ourselves learning from our days. I used to think that asking was a brave thing to do, and that to refrain was cowardice, that there was a certain virtue in swallowing the word that threatened to come out. I wasn’t ever right to believe that, and I what we find ourselves learning with age is that bravery takes on different shapes. We don't ask questions for answers, for the truth, because we know the answers are rarely the things that hurt, but rather the questions we weren't prepared for, the ones that demand them, which we nevertheless find ourselves asking. There is bravery in understanding, and I think there is bravery in knowing, and I for one find myself knowing far too much for comfort, having asked questions I didn't need the answers to and been given things I could barely live with.I understood what it meant to be brave when I didn't ask, when I thought it was safer not to know, and I understood it better when I did the same for the questions I knew, the ones that made me feel the smallest.
Never allow anyone to treat you badly.
This has been an evolving lesson, one which has seen shifting shapes as I've gotten older, and the reason why it hasn't been abandoned is because I've found myself having to evolve with it. It used to be something I had to fight for as a younger man, to stand and say that it would not happen again, as if I had the power to dictate such things. I don't think it's something I can fight for any longer, and that is why it is one of these things that continues to be difficult for me to live by. I should be angry, angry at the unfairness of it all, the pettiness of it all, as I used to be in my youth, but I know I've found myself learning something different with age. I've learned to not be consumed by it, to not let it swallow me whole in ways that made me smaller than I already was, because I no longer have the power to fight what made it happen in the first place. That is a different kind of self-respect, and it is one that is even more difficult to hold onto in the end.
Take responsibility. Never make excuses.
I've been taught this lesson in different manners, depending on who was teaching it, but it is one that has always been difficult for me to truly embrace, no matter how hard I found myself trying. I used to think this applied to what we said to others rather than what we said to ourselves, and it has always been the latter that was the most difficult to learn. The most insidious lies are the ones we tell ourselves, and it has been part of learning to live that I've had to stop doing that, to stop telling myself unkind things in order to make myself feel better for just a moment. I once ran into a fence line by accident, by laziness more than anything else, and it took me an unbearably long time to stop talking about the conditions before admitting that the only thing that had gotten me in trouble was my carelessness. We can tell others the most wonderful things, and we all find ourselves far too willing to lie to ourselves when it comes to the most important things, the only things in the end that truly matter.We all do it, and we all recognize the lie when we hear it, no matter how far we find ourselves willing to stretch it in the first place. It helps, in the end, that we all recognize the difference between an excuse and an accounting, and we all find that we are willing to speak the one in far greater detail when it comes to the other.
When you're ready to fight,fight. Don't talk.
It is important that I be careful here, because I think it is easy to mistake this for the opposite of what it means. It doesn't have much to do with making words an excuse to prolong the inevitable cost, but rather the ways in which we find ourselves making reasons not to pay that price when we know we should. It has to do with the long negotiations men find themselves having with one another when it is clear to all that they are making reasons not to accept what they know is coming, because the longer they do so the less likely either one of them is to have to pay that price when the time comes. It has to do with the difference between a man who isn't entirely prepared to pay when the moment comes, when he knows it will come but is making reasons not to, and the man who knows with certainty that he will have to pay and is making reasons not to. It has to do with the ways in which neither of these conversations are particularly meaningful, and it has to do with the fact that men are far better served understanding that, because It has to do with the ways in which the worst negotiations rarely have to do with them at all. It has to do with the ways in which we stall ourselves most, the negotiations we have with ourselves, and is important that men understand that they are happening.
Don't make a fool of yourself. Act like you've been around before.
What I've learned since I was twenty was that it works both ways, that it has to do not only with the ways we fail but with the ways we win as well. It has to do with the ways we carry both of those things, really, and the ways in which we rarely seem prepared to do so. The same men who take their grief out in public displays that no one seems particularly surprised by, rarely if ever save those emotions for the most private displays, and the same could be said of victories I've seen, that they are no less likely to be announced with similar levels of openness. It has to do with the ways we allow ourselves to be surprised, and it has to do with the ways we've made peace with either, really, before either one of them has arrived. It has to do with the ways we carry ourselves most, the ways we live in preparation as if we are ready to live with either, and it has to do with the ways we live as if we are prepared to live with either in turn.
Know your limitations.
This is one of the lessons I've always liked best, for reasons I can barely explain. A man's limitations are the only things that he will ever truly know, and it has something to do with the fact that they are the only things that can't be taught. You can't be shown, really, you have to learn them at some point, and pay the price for knowing them once you do, and I think I've paid that price far more than most, having pushed things long after they should have stopped for far too long. Every time I've done it, it seems, it was someone else who was paying for my ignorance and that is always the price for not knowing our limitations, the ones only we can accept. There is vanity in not knowing those things, perhaps, because we are essentially extending our youth in some strange manner by insisting that we haven't reached the end of it, and it has to do with knowing that we're mortal, another thing we tend to avoid until it is far too late to do anything about it.
Don't be a big shot.
This is one of those sayings that have real meaning, but that most of us find ourselves misunderstanding it, perhaps because we rarely think of them in the ways we should. Generosity is something that is often mistaken for abundance, and that it is really performed out of a sense of fear rather than anything else, that we tend to do these things because we think no one will remember us once they've gone. It has to do with the ways we're willing to let those things be known, to reach as far as possible with them so that they might be remembered, and it has to do with the ways we perform at the tables where we eat so that something might be taken from them. Ithas to do with the men I've known who have always done that, the ones who have always seemed to operate with charity at the center of it all, never allowing a man to go without if they thought it might reflect poorly on them, loudly proclaiming their good intentions so that no one could possibly fail to notice them. It has to do with the ways such men tend to be far more remembered for the manner of their performance than the contents of it, the charity they were performing as often as the need they were supposedly trying to address. It has to do with the ways we allow ourselves to do that, really, because It is something we far too often find ourselves doing. I don't think we're generous men, not really, and those few who are rarely realize it until it is far too late to change.
Treat everybody the same until they prove you wrong.
It is one of those sayings that has expectations we are rarely willing to meet, and that is why most of us find that we don't treat people the way we should. Prejudice has always been far simpler and it always required far less faith to do the things we believed we were asked to, and it has to do with the ways I've hired men I thought were trustworthy based on little more than appearances, only for those men to outwork far more reliable men who had been recommended for the job. It has to do with the ways I've been fooled by voices that rang the most sincere, and found myself disappointed in far more trustworthy ones, those that promised to deliver rather than asking if they could. It has to do with the ways I've made enemies of those I thought I could trust and found friendships in the people who made me angry, and it has to do with the ways I've paid for everything I've done in turn. It has to do with the ways we make choices that require faith when we are least expected to, when we have to treat men as if they might be something greater than they proved, and it is important to be that man who pays for the faith we give, the same as we receive it.
And finally, if someone doesn't want to be around you, let them go.
It has always been one of the more difficult sayings for me, and it is the things I've had to learn the most from the lesson. I used to try and convince people that they should stay, that they should want to be around me when in the end it was never something I could control. You can't convince someone to want to be around you, really, just as you can't convince them not to be, and I used to feel the pressure to perform, to make people want me to stay, to make myself more valuable in their eyes than I ever thought myself to be. I think it has to do with the big shot at the table who tells everyone everything, the man who talks loudly and makes the most noise about everything he does, and I think it is the knowledge that has made things so much simpler in the end. I used to feel this tremendous pressure to make people like being around me, but I've learned the ways in which I can be around people without making them feel as if they needed to stay, and I think it is something that has made a great deal of difference. I've learned how to create that space, to be in it while I exist for others but not for their benefit.
Nine things, pondered this evening, rather than simply recalled as the cigar burns slowly in my fingers and the Jameson goes away. I think it has made them no easier to share with others, and I think it has perhaps made them far more difficult to do so, but it has made them something I carry with me for this evening at least, and I suspect it has made them something I will remember. It is important that I am the man who understands them when I need to, and for that this night will always be worth remembering if only the ghosts of others are willing to listen.
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