Nasty, Brutish, and Short

There are so many people getting on my nerves these days. I drive to get groceries, and I get cut off in the parking lot and in the store aisles. I plant flowers, and people throw their beer bottles and candy wrappers on them. I walk around my neighborhood and step in dog shit that some diva was too lazy to pick up. I wear a skirt, and some middle-aged man in a pick-up truck has to whistle at me.

I edge closer to being a misanthrope every day.

But, to be honest, people get on my nerves the most when I am least satisfied with myself. In other words, I project feelings of inadequacy and self-loathing onto the population at large, which then makes me feel superior to them (and therefore, less inadequate and self-loathing). I can squint in angry disbelief at the world, shake my head in moral indignation, and think, in my curmudgeon-esque fashion, "I might suck, but at least I don't let my Chihuahua shit on the sidewalk. Oh, and at least I don't have a Chihuahua."

This allows my own faults to pale in comparison. So, for instance, I can compare my worsening shopping addiction to the shitting Chihuahua and feel like I'm still coming out on top.

But, after employing this strategy for nearly twenty-seven years now, I'm on to myself, and that makes the whole process a lot less effective. Recently, I have become painfully aware of the fact that elitist misanthropy is merely a quick fix for self-doubt, and furthermore, ultimately becomes very self-defeating. If humans suck, and I'm a human, then that leaves very little hope for personal improvement. If life is nasty, brutish, and short for everyone else, it will be for me, too--perhaps more so because I hate everyone, including myself.

So what can I do? Besides going shopping? Besides overeating?

Well, I guess try to be more Jesus-y. Jesus loved everybody, but this didn't mean he was a pansy. He was always telling people what's what. To broadly paraphrase, Jesus said: your faith is inadequate, you don't have much self-knowledge, you are painfully shallow, you reward all the wrong people in your society, and you don't really understand God, even though you think you do. Oh, and, you are so simple-minded that you don't understand anything I'm saying to you right now.

I like to think Jesus was a bit curmudgeonly himself. But he wasn't a misanthrope. All of this was somehow said in love. Although I don't claim to understand that kind of love, I tend to think that love is action, and these statements Jesus made were all active. He didn't sit at home in his carpenter shop and grumble about how stupid and unspiritual everyone was and how he was so much better than them. He actually went and told people about their inadequacies, often through parables that his bumbling followers didn't get. But he told them, and then he did things like save them from blindness, lameness, even death. Of yeah, and then there's the whole dying for all of mankind thing, probably the antithesis of misanthropy.

My interpretation: I can still complain about Chihuahua shit. But the next time I catch some coed letting their horrid little dog go at it, I should tell her off (heheh). Or maybe, if she's already split, I should clean it up myself (grumble, grumble).

Free time?

The first (academic) year of my Ph D is over. The spring semester has dumped me over its edge, and now I am left to my own devices. The problem is, I'm not really sure what those "devices" are. I have a laundry list of things to do, school-related and no. But I can't get motivated. Instead, I wake up at 6 am to a mind coursing with plans. When actually get up, though, these plans vanish, and I manage to waste my day on facebook, or reading random novels at Joseph-Beth. Oh, and drinking. There's been plenty of that!

I did manage to work in the garden. The spring flowers--tulips, daffodils, hyacinths, crocus--have faded now, and I've planted some annuals around the perennials that have returned with vigor. I'm also raising some seedlings: "Green Envy" zinnias for the ornamental garden; purple and green basil for the herb garden (which has also become quite ornamental, I must admit). This gives me a sense of accomplishment, and the illusion that my time has not been wasted.

Meanwhile, the rest of my time has definitely been wasted. I've been attending the horrifying "Learning Communities Institute" (you may remember me ranting about this last year) to prepare for fall teaching. This time, I'm in a different community, one run by competent colleagues for a change. So things have been easier, and I've been able to enjoy the free lunches. Although I still need to swallow quite a bit of vomit and fight hard to maintain a neutral facial expression for much of the time.

And afterwards: novels and drinking. So unproductive and self-indulgent. So GREAT.