a brief lesson in not sucking

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a brief lesson in not sucking Monday June 27

My flight from La Guardia to Chicago left 30 minutes late today, and a woman sitting across from me at the gate became very irritable. The equipment was delayed; she checked out the window every minute and a half to see if it had arrived yet. Clearly, when it did arrive, it was so obvious that no one needed to check, but at least it gave her something to do.

Something, that is, other than complain in her cell phone about the lousy airport that La Guardia is. O'Hare, she told her unknown conversation partner, is such a more smoothly-run operation. How DARE these New Yorkers be proud of their city when they can't run a tight-ship operation like Chicago can. Sheesh.

Anyhow, I smiled at her consistently hoping that she would see me. There's nothing more annoying to a scowling middle-aged overweight Illinois woman than to see a 22-year-old sport smiling directly at her right after she lost her cell call to a series of "Hello? Hello? .... Can you hear me now? Hello?"

I'm not doing it to needle her; well, no, yes I am. But my intentions are good: I want to, possibly, remind her that she doesn't need to be such a stink, and that life isn't that bad when you take a limo to the airport and end up waiting an extra 30 minutes because the limo got you there so quickly.

I pulled out a piece of paper and started writing guidelines. Guidelines on how not to act like this woman. In Boston, I had just experienced "married life" as it is for Nathan and Ashley; while it is not significantly different than one would expect, it also had me thinking about my future. What I would someday want?

Nightmares danced in front of my eyes as I watched this woman. I wanted to ask her: "What were you like when you were my age? Were you cool? What went wrong? Is there some sort of early detection scheme I can follow to avoid marrying someone that will end up like you?". Of course these are all terrible questions, that I wouldn't ask unless I was very, very rude, or very, very drunk. I was in neither form at the gate, so I kept my mouth shut and my thoughts running.

Mark's Current Manifesto on How Not To Totally Suck At Life

• 1. Smile more. This one is so, so, so easy and so many people ignore it. I'm not going to feed you that line about how many muscles it takes to frown and how many it takes to smile -- because well, I honestly think that smiling takes effort to remember. But it's worth it.
• 2. Take lemons well. Lemons make lemonade. Don't sit around and bitch because someone's handing out free fruit and you wanted a kiwi. If you don't want your lemon, I'll take it, and then I'll throw it at you.
• 3. Never stop learning. Challenge yourself to learn new skills until you die. A pragmatist might say, "why study Swahili at age 89?", but what's a life worth having if you can't love it and live it? I find something new to love about life every time I learn something from it. That'll keep you going longer than anything else. Side note: bonus points if you challenge yourself to learn things you think you might not like, or things that are totally foreign to you. Remember, it's only foreign because you don't do it yet.
• 4. Don't ignore elders. And don't you dare write off your juniors. Do not take anyone with a grain of salt until they prove their own uselessness. While at age 50 you may have already 'been there' at age 23, you may have been staring at some puppy or out a plane window, and you totally missed something.
• 5. Stop trying so hard. Don't try to be someone you're not. If you don't know who you are that you're having a hard time telling if you're being yourself or not, you have bigger fish to fry first. Equally important: Don't try too hard to be someone someone else thinks you are. Surprise people; while stability is desireable, adding in a dash of unpredictability is downright sexy.
• 6. Be well-spoken. All of these thoughts, emotions, and ideas we have are all chemical reaction sequences. Amazing we can make sense out of it ourselves; even more amazing anyone else can make sense out of what we're experiencing. Don't make it harder than it already is; use language to its fullest. Communicate. Sometimes that means you have to use a naughty word, even. That's why they exist.
• 7. Sunglasses are for outdoors. The New York City Subway is not an acceptable location to wear your oversized aviation sunglasses. I understand that you may have just "forgotten", but there are four of you over there, and I find it VERY hard to believe that all of you are continually forgetting as you look at each other and how ridiculous you look. C'mon, someone be the bigger person and say to the other three, "Guys, maybe it's time we show the world our cooler-than-cool faces?"
• 8. Never make a scene in public. No matter how upset you are, no one else cares, and you look stupid. Also, it's hard to follow guideline [6] when you're breaking [8].
• 9. Don't fear change. Instead, fear the resistance to change; the resistance to accept.
• 10. When societally acceptable, meet new people. When not, consider trying anyway. There is no such thing as normal: "normal" is defined by what everyone does. You, as a person, contribute to what constitutes society, and society's rules. These rules change. See guideline [9]. Act how you think the world should work, and help make it so. Guidelines [1-8] are also instrumental in this process.

Good luck, and remember that these are just guidelines. Also, per [9], they are subject to change.