Rick Bayan
(March 1999) I was disturbed last week by a strange and inexplicable feeling that settled over me in my cubicle. I became aware, as one becomes aware of rosy-fingered dawn or a dead woodchuck on the front steps, that I no longer resented my job.
What made it all the more disturbing was that I was writing, under brutal deadline pressure, a promotional brochure for our company's new line of Chicken Soup for the Soul(R) personal organizers. A year ago the idea of creating such a brochure would have made my facial muscles twitch. But here I was, eagerly piling benefit on top of benefit, genuinely hoping that these friendly products would take flight with unchickenlike wings and soar to unchickenlike heights.
Why did my positive attitude disturb me? After all, I had long been a conscientious practitioner of my craft; I always took time to fine-tune my prose and infuse it with the industry's most highly sanctioned motivational words and phrases. I often stayed after hours to ferret out inaccuracies of fact and syntax. I took pride, if not joy, in my work.
But there you have the nub of the problem: no joy. Like most writers who prostitute their skills to earn a grown-up salary, I lived perpetually in a state of low-key rebellion against the confines of my job. I was a Grand Prix driver forced to tool around town in a 1966 Dodge Dart. Not to rebel was to surrender... to die the inner death... to take a headlong plunge into the vast casserole of mediocrity.
Now, suddenly, I could smell the lima beans. Was I already simmering in the covered dish from which no talent ever escapes? Was I finished as a writer, cooked to an unappetizing mush by all those years of hawking personal organizer systems for a living? Maybe my soul had turned to chicken soup.
But I didn't seem to care. And it was beginning to DISTURB me that I didn't care.
Those of us who set out to be singular individuals use up prodigious amounts of energy in the cultivation and maintenance of our singularity. We read singular books, travel to singular places, search for singular mates, grow singular houseplants, think singular thoughts, develop singular neuroses.
We're obligated to resist the bland and lethal enticements of mental stability. Like masochistic oysters, we actually WELCOME the irritating grains of sand that work their way into our shells; we're confident we can grow pearls around them.
It's not an easy or salubrious way to live. The irritations don't always produce pearls; most of the time they're just irritating. Singular people are often singularly miserable. But they tend to be perversely happy in their misery. Most of them are convinced they've followed the arduous path reserved for warriors of the spirit. From their lofty trail high above suburbia, they look haughtily upon the rows of mass-produced homes with their fake Palladian windows and neat little lawns. They're inclined to scoff at the sport utility vehicles parked in every driveway, at the backyard grills and tacky swing sets, at the transplanted twigs that pass for trees. They reason that surely no great mind could ever emerge from a setting so depressingly dull, so monumentally mundane, so clearly wanting in SINGULARITY.
I'm ashamed to admit I used to be one of them. But I've been taking another look at the landscape. And I have to tell you that it's starting to look greener and more congenial all the time. Tired of marching on the rocky trail with only my singularity for company, I'm beginning to appreciate the allure of the ordinary.
The solid asphalt driveways and fertilized lawns beckon; it's useless to resist. Follow me, if you will, while I taste the life I might have enjoyed had I opted to be less singular.
Here I am at home, married to a well-bosomed, blithely extroverted customer service manager who owns 51 pairs of shoes and every album ever recorded by Barbra Streisand. Her brisk but engaging smile conveys mental competence and responsibility; not for her the rarefied atmospheres of the skyline trail. Note the refreshing brevity of our conversation: "Could you remove that squirrel nest from the roof gutter tonight, dear?" No intellectualized rhetoric here; no jockeying for power or getting in touch with our feelings. Just simple questions answered by simple actions. We keep each other satisfied yet neatly contained within the parameters of our neighborhood culture. We sleep in the same bed and wake up prepared for work. You're glimpsing domestic contentment at its most productive.
And what of our children? No need for me to teach them about dinosaurs, planets, or the role of the internal proletariat in the decline of the Roman Empire; their nimble minds are productively occupied by their Nintendo sets until bedtime. Meanwhile, I consume half a bag of Doritos while watching approximately 45 seconds of every show on cable. In my spare time I read an occasional bestseller about affluent white males with effective habits that enable them to write bestsellers about affluent white males with effective habits. When I'm finished, I slide it back onto the shelf with the 19 other books I've accumulated during my lifetime.
Weekends, I work on my golf game, romp with our golden retriever (the canine equivalent of a sport utility vehicle), prune the shrubs and enjoy regular trips to Kmart, comparing garden hoses and weed trimmers, gripping them in my hands and experiencing the palpable pleasures of home ownership.
I labor diligently as an advertising copy chief, which I'll continue to do until I retire or keel over from a massive heart attack, whichever comes first. And when it's my appointed time to meet the local mortician, at least I'd be able to look back on a fleshed-out life of peace and property, regular doses of fortifying sex, sundecks built, weeds trimmed, roof gutters cleaned out, children raised and unleashed upon the world.
I'd be eulogized as an exemplary husband and father, a model of community spirit, an all-around good citizen in the ancient tradition of Jimmy Stewart. An ordinary man, yes -- but hardly a mediocre one. I'd have been SINGULARLY ordinary.
It's not such a bad life, this cultivation of the ordinary. Why, then, do we still have to suppress a chuckle as we contemplate the mild felicities of suburban domesticity? Have we no sense of decency? And why is it so hard for us self-described singular types to let go of our singular ambitions -- those wanton deceivers, those robbers of time and energy, those dubious substitutes for a life of honest warmth and texture? Why persist in our costly aspirations when our singularity fails to deliver, like a slot machine that refuses to pay out after 40 or 50 thrusts of the handle?
On the other hand, what happens to us when we finally abandon our singularity -- along with all the accumulated hopes and whims, the years of assiduous cultivation, the finely honed skills, the arcane knowledge lovingly stockpiled in our minds like tropical butterfly specimens at a natural history museum?
What happens when Mozart's piano concertos, Monet's landscapes and Melville's dark prose are driven out of our memory and into permanent exile -- by small talk about school districts, property taxes and the current crop of NFL rookies? What happens when our souls relocate to suburbia once and for all?
What becomes of the formerly singular?
I can speak only for myself. The hard truth is that I'd probably make a depressingly second-rate ordinary person -- certainly below average by the standards of first-rate ordinary people. I don't know about you, but the obligatory soccer games and excursions to Toys "R" Us would fray me at the edges. I don't want to hear about sundecks and Super Bowl parties. I'd never get the hang of expanding the laundry room or installing shelves in the linen closet. I can't tell you what spackling putty is; I'm not even sure if I can conjugate the verb "to spackle." Don't ask me to calculate the advantages of a 20-year versus a 30-year mortgage. The last time I tried to balance a checkbook was during the first Reagan administration.
After a lifetime of singular aspirations, it takes courage to admit it was all a noble flop. It takes as much courage to embrace the ordinary, especially if we have no aptitude for it. Do we dare to eat Velveeta?
If we wait long enough, we might not even have to make the decision ourselves. Time, that silent cat-burglar, tends to steal our talents eventually -- especially if we've been careless with them. And once we're left without talent -- without SINGULARITY -- we don't need quite as much courage to be ordinary. It's just a matter of stoical resignation followed by a furtive sigh of relief.
Maybe I was relieved to enjoy writing about our new "Chicken Soup" organizers. Nursing a grudge against your livelihood is no way to live. And now that my claim to singularity is fading with every brochure I write, it won't be such a difficult adjustment.
Part of me has always craved the ordinary, after all. I always did like meat loaf and marigolds. I'm fond of beagles and blue jays. As I see it, polyester-blend shirts have their virtues and Donna Reed was the ideal wife. I'd rather hear "By the Light of the Silvery Moon" than anything by Stravinsky. I enjoy the crack of a baseball bat making contact with horsehide. The glint of late-afternoon sunlight on a patch of suburban lawn has always filled me with immoderate pleasure. I can even overlook the tacky swing set.
Yes, and bring me another helping of chicken soup while I still have an appetite.
