A local veteran made the news recently for claiming a heroic military history that may be a fabrication. As far as this being “news” goes, I’m inclined to think it’s a “dog bites man” story and not news at all. It’s just some guy pumping hot air into an ordinary life to make it seem extraordinary and more important than it is.
If there’s a real story here it’s about how we, as a people and as a culture, collaborate in the same sort of conflation of the ordinary. Everything is “amazing” and “awesome” and no one has an ordinary lunch, an ordinary job, or a flat-out ordinary life. Every person wearing a uniform today – military, cops, firefighters, “first responders” of all kinds – is suddenly deemed courageous and “amazing” heroes. How do I balance my own inconsequential and frequently inept military service – followed by 50 years of mostly inconsequential and frequently inept day-to-day ordinariness – against all of this precipitous “awesomeness?”
Mostly by feeling grateful for that ordinariness, and for (mostly) avoiding what Thoreau called a life of quiet desperation and an “unconscious despair concealed under the games and amusements of mankind.”
What are these games? For the valor stealing veteran, it was trading his real life for a movie life that, like all movies, is functionally devoid of genuine relationships, authentic feelings, and true self-acceptance. We’re indignant about his theft, but what I chiefly feel is pity and sadness for him.
More broadly, we’re a society that’s turned organized religion and politics into divisions of the entertainment industry, with audiences tuned into electric jug bands torturing the hell out of perfectly decent old hymns, and a White House Reality Show starring a barely rational game show host. Indignation is exhausted. Pity and sadness remain.
The plethora of amusements disguising our societal despair grows exponentially. People follow “passions” now, and say “my life is a journey.” Me? I have a hobby and drink coffee. The Fox News guy says “My country, right or wrong!” and red-blooded patriots proudly thump their chests. That’s like saying, “My mother, drunk or sober!”
An ordinary life is a blessing. No participation trophies are required.
Wow. Great column. I think you hit the American Achilles squarely on the heel. Now we need to follow these thoughts by watching, “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
I have a friend who has two Silver Stars and three purple hearts. He was once angered by the pretenders, but now only feels pity for them.
Methinks you downplay your “ordinariness.” It depends on who knows you, for how long, and in what ways. Should we know who you are referring to who boasts an “awesome life”? In my view, you are extraordinary. So glad our paths crossed.