I found out yesterday that another one of my brothers passed away. (Not a brother by blood, but in every way that matters.) I’m at that point in life where I’m no longer sure whether more of my friends are alive or dead. Of the really close-knit ones, the lost boys of Neverland with whom I daily idled away the majority of my adolescence, it is the latter. Only a small handful of us still remain. The last time I talked to Paul was a few months ago on the telephone. He was inside of a crowded and noisy bar and we could barely hear one another, so he stepped outside where it was possibly even more crowded and noisy since people aren’t allowed to smoke inside anymore. We shared a laugh at the inability to communicate over the ruckus. I told him I would just see him and talk to him the next time I visited, and hung up. And so the last thing I ever said to him was actually a lie. I’ve inadvertently told this same lie to at least a dozen others. That’s the hardest part of living a million miles away from home, especially for someone like me who pays no attention to the passage of time; you always assume it will still always be there waiting, but instead it gradually and relentlessly changes, and people abruptly disappear. The very first time I met Paul, I was forewarned by a third party acquaintance that he was a stubborn bastard who could not admit when he was wrong (which actually would have made him no different from most people). This was not true, however. In reality, he was a stubborn bastard who could not admit he was wrong when he was actually right. If he was wrong, and you proved that to him dispassionately with logic and reason, then he would easily admit to it and actually change his original opinion, which is an astonishingly rare trait in the human species. Paul did some bad things in life, same as everyone else. He never did anything truly evil though, never did bad solely for the sake of doing bad, which is the reasoning of genuine malevolence. The bad things he did were only ever the by-product of self-interest or short-sightedness. And if he inadvertently hurt someone else, and you brought his attention to the fact, he would experience remorse and guilt for it. Although he was certainly not perfect, as no one is, in the balance of things, he was unquestionably one of the good guys. Now that he is gone, of course no one will say anything bad about him, but while he was still alive there were numerous times where I found myself defending him when I’d been drawn into some insipid gossip-fueled conversation… Some people would define him as a “loser”. Interestingly, the people who chose to define him in this way were almost invariably the same people who are currently trapped in a 9-5 job that they detest, in a marriage they consider unhappy, with 2.4 kids that they don’t particularly like, and the white-picket fence surrounding a dilapidated house whose upkeep ruins all of their weekends and whose mortgage keeps them awake worrying most nights. Rather miserable people. In contrast, Paul never had kids, and so never tied himself to a responsibility that he either didn’t want or couldn’t handle. And he was usually pretty damned happy about that. Those who didn’t approve of him; their arguments never really seemed to amount to much more than jealousy, and proof of the adage that misery loves company. Paul didn’t adhere to the socially acceptable norm of what he was ‘supposed’ to be doing with his life, and yet he was not miserable. How dare he? Seems like more a matter of debate over the definition of the word “loser”. Some people define “winning” as fitting into a mold, accumulating as much wealth as possible, becoming a cog in the machine, following the expectations of society in order to be indistinguishable from everyone else, not being original, or unique, or daring… Other people define winning as appreciating and enjoying life. By my definition, Paul was a winner. I just wish he stuck around a little longer.
Posted on: Mon, 12 Jan 2015 03:11:15 +0000
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