Forgive Me For Whimpering So Loudly

“How are you?” is perhaps the most common sentence we humans utter, although I understand that the equivalent in China is, “Have you eaten today?” Be that as it may, whether we enquire as to each other’s health or stomach contents as a salutation, we are only being polite. We don’t really want to know. “How am I? I’ll tell you how I am!” is the exact opposite of what we really want to hear.

And yet as I fast approach the age of sixty, I am made more and more aware of something, a natural phenomenon that may well have been with us since the beginning of our time on this planet. On the other hand perhaps it’s just my own age, diminishing hormonal levels, hemorrhaging savings and the growing sense of dread and pessimism as world financial institutions collapse that makes me currently sensitive and aware of this something – this invisible choir, this silent whimpering on the part of many of my friends and the people of approximately my age.

This silent whimpering is just that. No one is yet voicing their personal unease out loud. No one wants to be known for their sudden and uncharacteristic lamenting and gnashing of teeth. No one wants to be thought of as a whiner. No one wants to be thought of as vulnerable and thus pathetic. No one wants to be pitied.
Well, damn it – I do!

I want and need sympathy and I’ll bet most of you reading this do, too – at least on some level.

Remember the story of the Grasshopper and the Ant? I think it may have been an Aesop’s fable. Anyway, the first time I ever came across this story of the frolicking and carefree grasshopper who preferred to dance and play while mocking the ants for their ceaseless hard work – it was in a Hollywood cartoon made for children. And naturally the cartoon had a syrupy Hollywood ending. The ants took pity on the grasshopper and let him stay in their colony and fed him warm and bracing soup all through the harsh winter. (Aesop was merely content to let him starve and freeze to death, as nature herself always will.)

It occurred to me some time ago that I am a grasshopper. And I’m not alone. I would need ten hands and their fingers to count the number of friends and acquaintances who currently stumble around in a state of shock, wondering what in the hell happened. Hey, wasn’t I supposed to have been a guitar hero? A cultural icon? At the very least the conscience of my generation? What happened to success???
(And don’t tell me there are many ways to measure success. Hitler and Mussolini got their girlfriends to commit suicide with them. I can’t even get a woman to go bowling with me! “I’m not putting my feet in those shoes.. eeeck!” Yeah, that’s what a he-man wants to listen to time and again from the overfilled tube-topped tyrant in chartreuse toenail polish who rations out listless sex like the sullen gas station attendant relinquishing the key to the restroom.)

But back to the point: We members of, or of near the Woodstock Generation, whether we were actual hippies or even conservative hardworking schlubs, are now turning ashen and jittery. Is the end near, we wonder? And does it have to be so dismal and humiliating an end? Did we miss something? When did we thrive?
Okay. Sure. We frolicked briefly. Intermittingly. In short spurts. Like the furtive and clumsy sexual encounters that were par for the course. We had some nice vacations. Our mantles are covered with plastic and balsa bric-a-brac from Bali and Cabo San Lucas. Souvenirs as predictable and dreary as most of the vacations themselves. Sure, we had our fun. We skipped and gamboled and inhaled. We let our freak flags fly, however self-consciously. We also procreated, the results, most of us would admit only to ourselves, being somewhat less than optimal. At least in the gratitude department.

Yeah, I know. Our kids are karma’s revenge for the way we treated our own parents. But didn’t we consciously endeavor to avoid the sins, superstitions and prejudices of our parents? Didn’t we strive to make sure our kids grew up in a racially, religiously and sexually prejudiced-free home? Didn’t we? So why then, in Buddha’s name did they turn into such snotty little bastards anyway?? (Luckily revenge is at hand. Spoil and forever ruin your children’s children with indiscriminate materialism. And if your own children have been particularly nasty and ungrateful, give their kids a set of drums.)

But again, back to the current malaise. As I and many of my friends approach our sixties and our once happy world seems about to sink into a cesspool of pollution, unexpected poverty and panic, will we predictably tackle the next decade of misery? Will we keep our trembling mouths shut, our stiff upper lips clamped shut for fear of ostracism? Or will some generous and enlightened leader inspire us with a new path?

The new path: Bitch, moan and complain. It’s good exercise. When it takes you ten minutes to get out of bean bag chair you’re not going to be going for any jogs on a regular basis, no matter how solemnly you increasingly infrequently promise you’re going to begin “after the holidays.”

Give up your illusions. Illusions of success, of beauty, of popularity. Of sexual prowess and the resulting gratitude.

Yes, I know. Churchill cautioned us to “Never, never give up.” But Hitler, too, never gave up. And look where it got him.

Homer Simpson, a wiser man, pointed out, “Children, you have tried and failed. The lesson is: never try.”

At the moment the only luxury left to us curmudgeons on the cusp of codgerdom is the pleasure of bitching, moaning and complaining. And a half hour of grumbling will burn off more calories than a half hour of sex – at least at our age.