your everyday insanity

My basic feeling is that inside we’re all crazy. At least, deep down, we all believe ourselves to be. We have strange thoughts in our heads all the time that say, “You can’t go to sleep with the DVD player on.” So you drag miserable self out from under the comforter and trek into the living room, just to shut the damn thing off. Now that’s insanity. And just to make matter worse, you stub your toe on the door-jam on your way back to bed and your nervous habit of nail-biting kicks in.

This is irrational behavior. (At least the getting-out-of-bed-just-to-shut-off-the-VCR bit. The stubbed toe is just dumb luck.) And you look around on the streets at the other drivers on their way to work and you ask yourself, “Can everybody else sleep knowing that they left their DVD on? Am I the only lunatic in the world.”

Sure, there’s the Squeegee Guy at the filling station who doubles his window wash spray-bottle as a spritzer of breath freshener. Now that guy’s an animal; hardly any rational thought at all. He’s operating on primitive instinct… basic survival skills. But you’re a man of the 21st Century; the archetype of modernity. You have a bachelor’s degree, a hybrid car, and an iPod. You are a rational thinker and apparently a normal, upright citizen and consumer in this store we call Earth. You can nod at the other pumpers with an air of superiority as they gas up their guzzling SUVs. You laugh and are profoundly satisfied when Squeegee Guy chooses the guy who drove up alone in a massive H2. “God, I love Karma,” you think, then consider that maybe you’re not crazy. You’re just the only one who gets it. The pump spits out your Visa receipt and you eye everyone. They’re all suspect, so you tear the sales slip into shreds and sprinkle it into not one, but two garbage bins. You even drop bits into hanging squeegee bucket and decide it best to keep a couple pieces in your pocket. The gas attendant looks at you as if you must be crazy. Has Habib figured you out? Has this grease monkey been the first to see your true self?

“Identity theft,” you remark coolly, then shuffle back into your car. You stub your toe on your tire, try to play it off like you meant it, and retreat into the safety of your auto, where your XM radio broadcasts whatever world music you’re into this week. French-Madagascar tribal beat fusion. You drive to work, chewing your nails up the whole way.

Identity theft, it should be noted, is the least of your worries. You’re so tweaked, you don’t even know who you are at this point. So if someone stole that, then at least perhaps you might be able to recognize the part of you that would be missing. Your identity is like a blindfold – you can’t see it until you remove it. Of course, other people can see it just fine. We all have the ability to see it in each other… but none of us do. That’s because we all hide ourselves – our true selves – from one another. We put up barriers and walls and defense mechanisms that are poised to launch full-guns-blazing if someone dares to peek under our skins.

With one exception, this is true… sort of. For those of us who are fortunate enough to pick a mate – whether for a short time or a lifetime – can experience some level of trust and comfortableness. We are inclined to lower our defenses. And it’s not so much that we let our mates in as much as we let ourselves out – our true selves. I think on the microcosmic level, this is Friendship but on the grand scale this is Love. Love is letting someone else see more closely who you are and – with all due respect – caring enough to reciprocate the gesture of kinship.

Sure, there still are the peccadilloes that we keep to ourselves. These are the things that we even hide from the ones we love most; the things too perverse to explain…

It would just be too complicated to explain why it bothers me, but it just does. I can’t see it and it’s not making any noise at all. The blue and amber LCD display isn’t even emitting any light detectable from my bedroom. The electricity that it could be consuming is so minimal that it won’t even register in my monthly bill. But it’s on. I know it. I would have remembered shutting it off and I don’t. That’s it. This is crazy. I’m turning it off.

“@#$%! Door-jam!”