In which I attempt to chart a strategy for making the most of things as the ship sinks into the icy waters and the band plays on
Originally published March 2023
In 49 B.C., Julius Caesar led his army to the banks of a small river that marked the boundary between Italy and Gaul. Roman law forbade a general from leading his army outside of his own province. By crossing this river, he would be breaking the law, and he knew it. Caesar waded into the river and said, “The die is cast.”
This would be the beginning of a three-year civil war that would leave Julius Caesar the ruler of the Roman Empire. The name of the river was the Rubicon.
My father was 80 years old when he died this past October. He went in for a fairly routine surgery that he was expected to survive. He did not. Consequently, it might be taking us longer to deal with his passing than it might have otherwise. In what were to be his final years, I was often frustrated at his political philosophy and increased detachment from any sense of civic responsibility.
From his early days as a staunch conservative and proud Republican, he softened into a gentler, kinder man who simply believed it was all hopeless. His last hope had been to see Bernie Sanders elected, and when he couldn’t even garner the nomination, my father threw in the towel on humanity. He no longer believed it was possible to govern a country this size with representative democracy. Too much corruption.
His belief in Christianity, with the promise of an afterlife and the understanding that man was a mess by nature, overcame any compunction he might have once felt to try to fix anything. We were all lost souls just waiting to be reunited with our Father in Heaven. Why bother getting your tit in a ringer about the failings of man? There would be no redemption in this life. Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not unto your own understanding. To believe that man could rescue himself was sheer folly.
This is what he believed.
Crossing the Rubicon, as it has become known, is a metaphor for passing the point of no return, and the line Caesar spoke about “the die being cast,” a reminder that what is done is done. There is no turning back. I have begun to wonder if this isn’t something that happens to us as we age.
Maybe not all of us. There are those who fight on until their last dying breath. But if you’re deeply empathetic and horribly introverted, how much stamina do you genuinely have to keep fighting, long after you’ve deemed the battle to be unwinnable? At what point do you recognize the futility of it all and come up with a Plan B?
I feel I am nearing this threshold of experience, wisdom, and understanding. When you begin to recognize the futility of so much of human enterprise. Young people will continue to make progress, to be sure, but how much of it will I live to see the fruits of?
I learned recently that I need a new roof. I guess I didn’t really think I’d get out of having to replace the one I have, but I was more than willing to delusionally believe it would outlast me. Now I’m on the hook for $20-30k. This bothers me for illogical reasons.
I don’t want to pay for the next guy’s roof, and I doubt I’ll still be in this house when it needs another. In effect, I don’t want to plant and water the tree so that future generations can enjoy its shade. I’m not proud of my narcissism in this regard. It makes me sad.
Once you stop believing that we’re all in this together, the whole house of cards begins to fall apart. We are so far removed from national unity that I can no longer stand any symbol of nationalistic pride because it screams of evil intent. I don’t trust that my fellow man has any empathy for me at all. Not even the ones who are supposedly on my side.
Which is a problem all in itself. Who is on my side? I’m a white, straight, culturally Christian, middle-class man living in the wealthiest country on earth who just happens to believe that equality is a human right and that government should exist to make our lives better. There are plenty who would say they want me to be on their side, but who wants to be on mine? No one. Not even the other white, male liberals. It’s join or die—or, at the very least, be lumped in with the fascists and the Nazis.
Consequently, I find myself becoming increasingly isolated from a society in free fall. We are on a runaway train that has already smashed through the “bridge out” sign, racing toward the inevitable plunge to our deaths, and everyone is arguing about who should get to steer the train. We’re going full speed, and the brakes are gone. Blowing the whistle at this point is a little silly. But so is trying to warn the other passengers. Better to let them carry on with their fantasy.
Maybe I’m wrong about all of it. It’s possible that I’m overreacting and that history will prove me wrong. America might just be the exception so many believe it to be. The empire that never ends. The unsinkable ship. The society, too big to fail. We would undoubtedly be the first, but all that seems highly unlikely and a bit of wishful thinking.
You might be thinking this is a dark path to be taking, even just emotionally and intellectually. Possibly even defeatist or downright suicidal. Like Denathor in Lord of the Rings, ordering his servants to burn him on the pyre built for his beloved son, certain that this is the end and all hope is lost. But that’s not how I see it. I am simply considering a more enlightened approach whereby I relinquish my absurd sense of control over the world.
Anne Lamott writes, “I heard this old man speak when I was pregnant, someone who had been sober for fifty years, a very prominent doctor. He said that he’d finally figured out a few years ago that his profound sense of control, in the world and over his life, is another addiction and a total illusion. He said that when he sees little kids sitting in the backseat of cars, in those car seats that have steering wheels, with grim expressions of concentration on their faces, clearly convinced that their efforts are causing the car to do whatever it is doing, he thinks of himself and his relationship with God: God who drives along silently, gently amused, in the real driver’s seat.”
It’s not just that I have no real control, and neither do you. It’s that I’m not paying enough attention to the stuff that counts.
Again I turn to Anne Lamott, who says it’s like we’re at the circus, “In one ring is an amazing array of clowns and bears doing all this great stuff, and in the middle ring is a woman who does breathtaking tricks on horseback, and in the far ring are elephants or seals and maybe more clowns, and above us are trapeze artists, doing these death-defying precision feats, and we’re sitting in our seats looking around crabbily, going, ‘Where’s that damn peanut vendor? I want my goddamn peanuts!’”
My wish for the future is to pay more attention to the circus, circus though it may be. Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, and here I am, stuck in the middle with you. I might as well marvel at the spectacle of it all.
I am reminded once again about a Key & Peele sketch where a man sits in a diner booth near a window. A waitress brings him a cup of coffee, and he proceeds to grab a pack of artificial sweetener from the little dish. Suddenly, there is a bright light, and he looks out the window to see what is obviously the mushroom cloud from a not-too-distant nuclear weapon. He makes a subtle face of recognition, acknowledging that circumstances have changed. He calmly and neatly replaces the blue packet, back from whence it came, and begins to pour real sugar into his coffee.
If the die is truly cast and I’m gonna be here for the final show, I might as well enjoy the coffee. See you on the other side.