Games we play

Not good enough!

There were a 19 and 17 years gap between my siblings and I.

At times, I wanted to scream: ” So you just want me to measure up and end up in the grave with you?”

Not a death wish or ill will, but the logic held. I could never “win”. Not with that wide a gap, different circumstances and rules of engagement..

Then arrived the spouses, who immediately and intuitively leverage their differences/strengths e.g. cooking or closer-knit family (as oppose to mine) to always have the final say. Happy wife, happy life. Never win an argument, so far.

All men live in quiet desperation. Or like Blake :” A mark in every face I meet, Marks of weakness, Marks of woe”.

At the Amusement Park, I noticed the “rejects” per lack of height or age – accident at birth- or had failed at inflating their age with a straight face.

Remarque, in Shadows in Paradise, had one of his German-Jew characters using forged papers (like Jason Bourne) first in France, then in NYC and finally out West (Hollywood), with anglicized names, like Theodore, Henry etc…

Most notably and ironically was when one of his friends (Jewish) ended up with a role of a Nazis. It’s just a movie. Viet Thanh Nguyen also mentioned similar irony in his “the Sympathizer” ( the likes of Apocalypse Now, using extras hired from the refugee camp, to play the other side).

Actors cannot irreversibly hide their eyes shadows and bags. First, everyone wanted to be older to get on rides, then younger to get the part ( Mr. Saturday Night).

I have lived with older family members most of my life. Hence, I associate strength with charming and charismatic role-models with a tat of machismo to beat back the bullies, or to drive a tank in war.

Christopher Plummer, Gene Hackman and Tommy Lee Jones came to mind. (The Package or The French Connection, where that bearded cunning antagonist with an umbrella in one hand, and the other, waving to his pursuers from inside a moving subway train.)

We’re living at a time when “Not good enough” has also aged ( along with its faithful subscribers). Netflix is expanding overseas, Cinema focuses on specialty, and Spotify is raising its rates. Decades of “planned obsolescence” has come due ( over-production of goods and services e.g. cosmetic surgery and Nike’s sportswear.)

Florida used to be known for sandy beaches and a slightly older population but genteel (snowbirds from CANADA?).

Sun-bathed second-home owners now push for monolithic and homogenous community. Why not consider Amish country to go all the way? or year-round cruise-ship?

Not good enough. Never good enough. 300,000 dollars for beach sand to protect property. Then, puff! half gone.

Nature has its last say by sifting ( no pun), and extracting pearls.

Yet we live on, practicing variations of the game: I am better than you: with less cholesterol, and more cotton. The power players themselves , once on the receiving end, got a lifetime worth of abuse. Then the DNA, the script, the code and the embedded information seek formation and new expression.

You connect the dots. It could be anywhere: from spelling bee contest to Senior Beauty Contest. From clothes to car, zip code to zip loc (preferably Trader Joe’s tote bags).

This morning, appeared on the View was Stormy, who no longer associated with her former lawyer ( the only one who stepped up and charged a nominal $100 fee for a high-profile case).

We are living in a different time, when “not good enough” now applied to lawyering and higher courts. In short, the pissing contest in school yards has morphed with “gentrified” grievances. ( I suffer more than you, albeit a higher income level).

In this zero-sum contest, one might as well throw in the towel ( as oppose to stay and hope someday, the pie will expand so everyone will get a bigger piece). Ask your Uber driver, or the Airbnb homeowner.

That kind of game ( zero sum) only ends in one way: a duel in High Noon, and not everyone is a Gary Cooper.

Next life, I wish, dog plays with dog, lion lies beside the lamb, and music is in the air spotifying-ly, like another Woodstock, with Walt Disney grown-ups and measured ups (you’re in, no cover charge). Where every night is New Year’s Eve, when people are anticipating and accepting. Like a human family, with no need for a psychologist. Just musicologists and gynecologists (since it’s too positive not to have more children).

And the only game that is absent is “Not good enough” (no need for greed to grease the wheel). That’s when we wake up and shred the role of an apologist (for all the wrong done to one another). Spell check? the machine now does that. That left nuances, empathy and compassion, say, for the most recent wounded in Moscow, Israel, Gaza, Ukraine, Syria, Nigeria and Haiti (where Barbecue’s gun is bigger than yours)

Not having good credits? don’t worry. Some high-interests agency will lend you (btw, that’s how future pie is shrinking). There is no need to validate yourself with FICO scores, Facebook likes, or football scores. Or pay DMV for a name change, since there will be no shadows in Paradise.

You are good enough, just because you are intrinsically and inherently valuable, with eyes, ears, hands, feet, nose and mouth. Recent Massachusetts General operation ( pig’s kidney transplant) was cheered, and rightly so.

But back to us, human being, we are an occasion for cheering as well, if not just for our extractable kidneys (tell this to the families of abducted schoolgirls in Nigeria, held captive for ransom, and just now released).

Game people play. To cut the line, to zigzag through traffic, to win (at football) per Vincent Lombardo. Yew! How did we buy so easily into that spirit of warring, only to kick ourselves waking up lonelier than when first started.

He/she who dies with the most stuff and spent cases wins.

Sounds like a showroom logo. Not what you need, but always what (somebody else wants) you to want to belong. The Culture Industry and its worn-out propaganda (a season ahead of current trend) with Social Media on steroid (ironically, there were competing lessons on mediation and zen, almost out loud saying ‘the other guys lesson is not good enough”).

Hang on to your purse, your dignity and time here on Earth, before embarking with me (not to sell you the dream) someday, to where people are people, always measured up, and accepted/accepting. I know, I know. It only happens in dreams, and not in life (not since Western society attached a number to everything, like force ranking and marketing data set acquired through a series of incongruent questions.

And I am not the only one. I hope someday, you’ll join us.

I will leave you to “measuring up” to whatever has been nagging at you and demanding your devotion: spell-check, smell check, security check. No wonder how you cut it, it’s always a bit short, no slacks (btw an author, on Amanpour and Company, mentioned in his book entitled “Fluke”, that at some point in time, (the tipping point), we are to say what’s enough is enough).

That’s his book. Meanwhile, you are good enough, in my book. No games.

And you are not ” Mr. Saturday Night”, dying to get in front of an audience to rehash for the nth tie those rehearsed lines ” Oh, that man looks like New Jersey in pants?”

That man, c’est moi. C’es tu. All of us, at some point. Can’t hide our age, not with those Tommy Lee Jones’ eyes bags.