About ten years ago, I turned 30. My life hadn’t gone in the direction that I had wanted and I was adrift, lonely, unsatisfied. So I gave up. I stopped looking for better work (I had a mind-numbing home-based job that gave me a modest income). I stopped trying to get a date. I ordered takeout every night. I started gambling online a lot. I rarely left the house. Essentially, I quit. If life wasn’t going to be the way I dreamed it would be, it wasn’t worth the effort.
It was the easiest decision I ever made. It was nothing. I didn’t even have to say it out loud. I just had to think: “fuck it”.
I lived this shit life for a couple of years. Finally, the emptiness of my existence became too much and I was roused into taking some action to improve my lot.
I’d like to report that my new-found can-do spirit brought me love and happiness immediately, but it wasn’t the case. I was worse off. I’d alienated my family and caused great distress to my poor parents. I’d permanently lost friends who I hadn’t bothered to call back. Going on dates—if I managed to get one—was exponentially more awkward than before. Explaining away my stagnant employment history to prospective employers was a challenge that I wasn’t up to. Financially, I lost a lot of ground (ground that I will likely never make up).
I eventually dragged myself out of the muck, but it was way harder than it would have been, had I just stayed in the game and redoubled my efforts two years earlier. I’d gained nothing from my “fuck the world” decision—no wisdom, no money, no skills, nothing. I just wasted two precious years. It was only when I started taking little victories where I could get them—a pleasant exchange with a stranger, a healthy meal, a slightly better job opportunity—that things started to slowly go my way.
As I watched the Convention last night, angrily cursing the small group of delegates trying to their best to undermine the proceedings, I felt a flash of recognition. These people weren't locking themselves in their houses and physically shutting themselves off from the world. But make no mistake—the fact that they are loud and “involved” does not hide their complete disengagement from the process. They’re making the same easy decision I made ten years ago. “Fuck it”.
American politics is a lot like most of our lives—a grind. It’s a system that was built to move like molasses down a driveway. It rewards realists, and punishes the flighty. The stickiness of the process means the only way to effect lasting change is to be persistent and strategic. You lost a battle? Take your lumps, accept your fate and go find other battles to fight. This is why the Republicans have been so successful at the local and statewide level despite the fact that their brand is lizard piss and almost everybody hates them. They are relentless and realistic. Their 30% vote and vote often, always for the best viable option. THEY SHOW UP.
There was a candidate in Louisiana last year who was nobody’s idea of centrist, much less a liberal. But he was the best viable option on the ballot. And what do you know, he won, and the Democrats now control a governorship in the deep south, and hundreds of thousands of people now have health care who didn’t have it before. And we are another couple of inches closer to universal coverage than we were before. Engagement, pragmatism, persistence.
The more time you spend waiting for everything to be perfect, the harder it gets to accomplish anything at all. My life is not exactly what I dreamed it would be when I was 18. But it is damned, damned good (a lovely wife, three great kids), and that’s only because I decided to finally show up, stop taking the easy way out, and take wins where I could get them, no matter how small. It’s funny how those little victories start to pile up, and you end with something pretty close to what you envisioned in the first place.