I could dig through boxes of my assorted papers and notebooks and probably find about 20 different versions of autobiographical writing intended to lay the groundwork for a full novel. Some of these attempt a humorous slant, some the everyman story of my personal era, a couple take a more family saga slant; this one is a bit different.
I started this one about a year ago. I've never been able to resist the draw of a fresh stack of college rule notebooks. Even though the "theme" to this one will be readily apparent, I have to tell you it was written at a plateau not a valley, and is being posted at a plateau not a valley. I mention this so that if anyone who reads this has a personal concern for me, they can set that aside in their valuation of the writing itself.
Without further undue ado:
A Life Wasted: An Autobiography
Were my story more widely known, I believe I could be a serious contender for most despised person in America.
I'm not a bitch, at least not regularly. I've never killed nor broken the law, beyond speeding. I rarely lie or cheat, except myself, and therein lies the key to my potential notoriety.
I waste. And that, I believe, is what society must punish above all else and what people must most despise.
We are fascinated with evil. We have an unrelenting appetite for the most specific, horrifying, or gruesome details of murder, death, loss, suffering, and mayhem. We want to know what makes a serial killer or fascist possible. And we are titillated when sociology and psychology say we each of us hold that capacity to go too far, checked within.
We worship good. The purity of feeling, the hope and sheer rightness of figures like Martin Luther King, Jr. and the many others we teach our children in school and hold in our hearts as adults. We enforce concepts like passing, sharing, saying "please" and "thank you", doing what's right.
Most of all, in this country at least, we hold achievement as our gold standard, focus and success as our currency. To do so much with so little, to overcome adversity to accomplish greatness, to be the best one could possibly be. This is the contract we make with society and the hope in a parent's eye when they gaze at their newborn.
There is an argument to be made that it is this achievement standard that makes us so interested and, perhaps, "respect" the evil figures of history, and, less seriously, the back-stabbers and ass-holes of the world. Look, we can say, look how much they did before we were able to stop them. A trace of awe in our collective voice at the audacity of Enron or Bernie Madoff or all those others who view us as collateral damage in their pursuit of personal gain.
This argument extends to our martyrs and idols. When a child's death is described as senseless it is often followed with proclamations like "think how much s/he could have done with their life". It is not enough to be held with esteem to think good or feel good; one must also do good to be of value. The loss of a person is registered by society as the loss of someone who. Someone who donated time and money to charity, who developed better medicine, who helped teach our children to achieve their potential; someone who made an impact on the world.
I was 9 years old standing shakily in the empty and silent bleakness of a cattle car in the entry way of a small Dallas Holocaust museum. I knew that about 50 years before, there would have been people crammed into that cattle car and sent rumbling along to a horrible death. I knew also that I could have been one of them; that I had escaped that fate by a narrow miss of history. Leaving that place, my father took my hand and asked me to consider the organized, efficient, and relentless crush of the Nazis, of the Holocaust, of war. "Now imagine if they'd used all of that for something positive, what the world would be today."
It is not enough to live in this world but we must actively shape it.
So what then of those in society who had every opportunity and passed on it? The ones with potential that spoiled it; who didn't care enough to do? It is these people who are the forgotten, the unworthy, the unforgiven.
I am one of these.
I am a life wasted.
This is my story.
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