To thine own self be true.

Occasionally there will be a scene in a tv show, movie or book that’ll really blow my emotions right out of their safety zone. Two of the more recent ones have been able to induce tears just trying to explain them to others.

I. The first is from the HBO series, “High Maintenance.” A seemingly innocuous premise, a guy, “The Guy,” delivers weed to New Yorkers and along his travels the viewer gets a glimpse into their inner lives, if only momentarily. It has the quality of a good, “humans of New York” posting, with more depth. Each vignette brings the viewer into the middle or sometimes even the end of a story that is someone’s life. At its funniest, the plot is absurd and/or madcap, while at its best there’s an existential poignancy that undergirds what’s visually unfolding. As an example, the first episode of the second season opens on the day after Trump was elected –day one of America’s new reality as Trumptopia. Neither the date nor his name are ever mentioned; the event stands alone as an awful day for most that “The Guy” encounters. Amongst the glimpses into the neoliberal yuppie reactions to how “totally freaking out” they are while deciding whether or not to:  update their social media with personal achievements on such a dark day, cycling, brunching and partying, the voiceless underclass that surrounds them is already suffering. Within their current Obama-progressive America,life isn’t as grand and carefree as so many people wanted to believe. The periphery was already marginalized and will continue to endure worse treatment under the new, impending administration.

The final scenes of this episode zero in on a Latino immigrant who is working two jobs. After his second shift of the day at a bar, he goes into the night to ride a subway to pick up his child at his sister’s home, presumably far away from his current location at work. The episode closes out on him and his young son riding the subway in the early morning hours, playing happily with a balloon, shifting in and out of Spanish and English. The other riders, though seemingly disinterested at first, perhaps even annoyed by the giggling and talking, join in, laughing and lightening the mood of the entire episode. Even watching it as second time, knowing fully well what I’d see, I cried. I cried at the injustice of a country that promotes the ideology of scarcity. Scarcity of what? Surely not material wealth.  No, the only scarcity is that of empathy. How can we, as a country, deny anyone who’s willing to take great sacrifices upon themselves and their families the right to be here? For the people who are here, working daily to make their lives or their children’s futures safer and more open to the opportunities that are supposedly available in this country over the ones they left. My Romantic (capital R Romantic) side still wells up with emotion over the possibilities that dwell within the founding documents of this country. As someone who has taught American history in some form or another for the past 13 years, my cynical side has deepened to think we will never escape the pettiness that prevents those universal freedoms from ever being a reality.

The disappointment I feel in regards to the current situation in this country is exemplified by the type of party politics that exist today. This weekend I read an editorial that questioned whether or not MacKenzie Bezos should use her potential divorce settlement money to continue to influence progressive policymakers, as she and Jeff did when they were still together. The article also touched up on the conflict Democrats seem to come up against so often –wealthy donors and influencers funding a party that supposedly better represents the voiceless. Well, duh. The conflict is, and will continue to be, the mass accumulation of wealth by anyone, Democrat or otherwise. In all cases, it’s problematic and flies in the face of most real attempts at progressive reform in this country. For the ultrarich who have publicly called for more taxation or who have promised to bequeath their millions/billions to the people, there is still a disconnect. The system is the problem. The fact that they were able to accumulate such vast wealth will never be rectified by philanthropy or a new tax code. The entire system is corrupt and must be torn down. If Warren Buffet and his ilk were truly concerned about the future of this nation and in truth, the world, they would use their money to support policy that would render them an extinct breed of person. As long as there is the possibility of becoming a Buffet or a Bezos, there will be inequality and injustice.

II. The second and more spiritual of the two pieces that has left me in pieces as of late is a scene in a graphic novel. it served as a reminder of the indifference of the universe to any of our existences. Toward the end of Volume Seven of the series Saga, a minor character (and his entire family) perishes in a flood. The totally preventable death occurs because he is a member of a very religious family that believed their destiny was to be fulfilled on their home planet. No amount of coaxing from other characters could change their minds. In the final pages of the book, we see the youngest member of the family pleading for his life through prayer, appealing to the higher power to save him, as he is a true believer. What follows are a series of entirely black pages. As an atheist, I am not sure why this encouraged me to burst into tears - perhaps the finality of the entire scene coupled with the realization that we lie to ourselves and to others so often about our own mortality. Furthermore, the narrator, a friend to the dying boy, thinks about the potential energies of the people around us that are lost all of the time, whether through a missed connection or bad timing, etc. It’s an emotional miscarriage.

As someone who has been troubled by the loss of deeply loved friends and relatives both to death and time, this really hit me hard. Although I read this  over a year ago, the memory of it was reawakened by dreams I had about a former friend. Through the inevitable drifting that occurs over time and space, I haven’t spoken to someone that I considered my best friend for years now. And then within the space of only a few days, I had two dreams about him. One pleasant, one accusatory. As I tried to unpack my emotions, I was unsure of whether I should let sleeping dogs lie or reach out. Throughout this process, I also began to consider reaching out to others who I have lost contact with either intentionally or otherwise. With the ease of online communication, it would not be difficult to try to forge a reconnection, but would it be worth it emotionally? If they haven’t contacted me, do they want to hear from me? Would fear of rejection or ignorance keep me from even trying?

III. How do these seemingly disparate topics align? Am I grieving for loss national and personal, past and anticipated? Formerly, I steeled myself against feeling much of anything; spent years being as stoic as possible. And though that tendency still remains, to play my emotions close to the vest, I have come to value my outpourings in whatever form they come. There is an understanding that can be had from letting yourself experience externally whatever it is that you are feeling internally. Although I often joke about how repressed Americans seem to be, I truly think it is a national trait. The messiness of life is diverted into our cultural obsession with reality shows. In the dramatic ones, everyone seems absolutely over the top because we’re all so afraid of expressing our truths to each other and ourselves. But even in programs like Tidying Up and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, viewers watch someone else clean up and straighten out their own lives without having to actually go through the difficult experience themselves. Of course we can take cues from others’ transformations, but each of our lives is unique and the catharsis would take time, energy and commitment. As someone who has mulled over and written about the importance of the "actual over the virtual" in many different posts, my full-circle moment for this post returns to that theme. As a species, we must remember that our day-to-day interactions are of value. Everything we are cannot be sublimated into our cultivated image. What are you left with, stripped down? What will your legacy be? What will you leave behind in the physical world?c Will anyone really have known you?