A lazy, rainy day...

It's been a drizzly day outside all day, today...so the lawnmowing work was called off for the day...and it's been all cozy inside, watching the rain fall outside:)...

You ever loved someone, completely...and not really known what to do as they bullshit themselves and others...so they don't face themselves?...

I have this friend...that I love a lot...but who's been a real shit to me, lately...

And...to do this...this friend has had to totally bullshit himself...about himself...

It's been kind of amazing to watch the mental gymnastics on the whole thing...

I love him...a lot...he's like a brother to me...but definitely a younger brother...someone who still has a lot of growing up to do...

I have a younger brother, actually...who I also love a ton...who I've told this friend...who is so much like my real younger brother in so many ways...that he reminds me of my younger brother, Sam...and I think I've told Sam about this friend, as well, and how I feel about him...that's how close I've felt with this friend...

And...my friend...who I love...is trying to grow up...

Which I totally appreciate...and support...because I've known him for a long time...and it's great to watch him grow up...

But goddamn if sometimes he doesn't bulllshit himself...about just how mature he is or isn't...it's amazing to watch...I have to tell you...

And it's only because he began to handle a situtation poorly...that we've come to a head about this...

He won't take responsibility for it...and it's kind of a long circular discussion about it...because sometimes I'm not even sure if my friend realizes just how large a gap there is in his much less serious sense of responsibility...and my much more serious sense of it...

For anyone who's ever been in this situation in any capacity...you may have a sense of this...

You love people...you support them...you offer them constructive criticism (or in this case, you also call them an asshole...when they deserve it)...

But people who don't take responsibility as seriously...just don't see it, generally, as people who do see it about them...

Working in less-educated, lower-skill jobs has taught me a lot about this...watching people twice my age take half the responsibility...because they just never really grew up...it's really sad...and something that people who are more responsible just kind of learn to accept to some degree...and accept that they can trust such people only to a certain degree...

My friend is on the margin of that...

He wants more responsibility...but he has very little experience with it...and more importantly...he has a really serious problem honestly acknowledging to himself, as much if not more than with others, when he's fucking up...he is a master excuse-maker...

I suggested that he see this really brilliant movie, last night...he can't see it, he says...because he came up with the premise for it ten years ago...

And I'm thinking, "Do you want to grow up to be the wierd uncle that all the kids always have to wonder how much of what comes out of your mouth is bullshit and how much is honest?...Do you really think that people believe your bullshit as fully as you seem to believe it?...do you really think that this helps you in any way?"

The answer to all those questions is no, of course...

But my very good friend...who has so much potential to be so much more than he only half-hearted strives to be, much of the time...

Just keeps wallowing in his own bullshit, so much of the time...

We all have the folks in our family who bullshit themselves and others about why they didn't/don't chase their dreams...or do big things...whose constant story is about the one that got away...

I have more uncles and aunts like this (and a mom, to some degree...though we don't talk about it or much of anything else, these days, any more) than I have uncles and aunts who are more honest with themselves and others...

You have those few people in your family, you know...who seem to have it together...

And then the folks in your family whose whole life seems to revolve around dimishing the accomplishments of their brothers or sisters doing better...or bullshitting themselves that they are competing with those same brothers or sisters when they aren't...

The best family members are the ones who love themselves and one another, more, no matter how well or poorly each of them are doing...though it does seem like those family members who end up being the most successful, long term...

My dad was one of the more gracious and loving in his family...who after a long bankruptcy...is, by far, the most successful in his family...his brother, who runs the family business, is also one of the most gracious...and the other most successful member of the family...and his sister and definitely her husband do pretty well, also...

My mom has two younger sisters who are both very decent women...both of whom do fairly well in their lives in different capacities...one as a school paraprofessional...and the other as a successful real estate developer...as does her younger brother, who runs his own sign-making business...

But the less successful members of each of my extended families...are constantly grumbling about how shitty the little things in life are...and have petty little conflicts and rivalries with their more successful and generally elder siblings (though my mom might count in there, despite being the oldest in her family...maturity, I'm learning, is not at all, necessarily, based on age...it is more often based on how much people take responsibility for their lives...their successes...their failures...their futures...their dreams)...

And this friend has always kind of reminded me, often, of one of these more petty, grumbling relatives...

He's right on the cusp of being a more self-fulfilled, successful person...

But to get there...he's going to have to over this hump...to start to take responsibility for himself, more...or be forever condemned to making excuses for why he never made it...

Which is what that conversation about that brilliant movie that he doesn't want to see...not because he came up with it 10 years ago...but because it's brilliant...and he eats his heart out in such situations...is all about...

He has this one life...this one opportunity...to have a life that where he really earns his way through it on merit...and not on excuses...

And he's constantly sucker-punching himself...undermining his own aspirations...and generally...giving up on himself...

And the only way to move past it...

Is to acknowledge...that the person responsible for doing all of that...is him...

Not his teachers...not his friends...not his mom...or his sisters...or anyone...

Just him...

And as painful a recognition that will be about himself...

It is the only one that offers him a chance to start living a more honest life...where he earns his place in it...on his merit...and not by always dissing the referees...or the conditions...or the other myriad of imperfections in the world...

And on the other side of that pain...there is the freedom that he's been yearning for all his life...the freedom that comes with being judged on your merits...and being proud of that (and disappointed at times, to be sure)...and not just whining all the time about how the game is rigged against you...

I love my friend...but he is in something of a low-spot on this one, right now, I think...as are a couple other mutual friends of ours'...

And what they can't see...is that if they keep maintaining this bullshit...and all the shitty ways that it involves treating me...

Then I just have to wait...from afar...while he grows up...hoping that he will grow up...and feeling much sadder about the prospect that he just won't...that he'll make some kind of adolescent stand about not having to...no matter how old he gets...and no matter how little it's served him...the entire time he's done it...

Lots of people have this issue...we all probably have it to one degree or another...though some of us have it more, clearly, than do others...many of the efforts to get at President Clinton during his tenure had to do with this kind of pettiness...and envy...and otherwise destructiveness for no good reason...other than getting at those that don't confirm our own sad little self-pitying stories about ourselves...who demonstrate a capacity for success...or happiness...or all kinds of good things...that don't confirm our sense that our shitty lives result from forces that we aren't responsible for (which is true for everyone, of course...it's just that the most responsible people get a move on despite all of it...and don't get too bogged down in it)...

Why do people settle for that kind of bullshitting of themselves, I wonder?...it doesn't serve them...it doesn't make them feel better...it doesn't get them ahead...or any of even the petty things in life that they say that they want...

It's lack of courage, I think...a lack of confidence in themselves...and a lack of courage to pursue ones dreams fully that comes with that kind of confidence...and which involves taking that kind of responsibility...

And my very good friend...who I love like a brother...lacks that kind of confidence and courage...

And he bullshits me...and himself...and everyone else...to maintain it that way...

I do wish him luck...

But he owes me an apology...a sincere one...

And it's that kind of courage that he's going to need to show...that's going to get his life moving, more, in the direction that he really wants...down deep...when he's not bullshitting me, himself, and everyone else...

But I do wish him luck...

Have a great night, everyone:):)...

Love,
Ben