Things that happen to us – bendingtheneedle

Middle-Aged Joe

Today, at 55 years old, Joe realizes the rest of his tomorrows will never be as good as most of his yesterdays. That epiphany catches him off guard. The immediacy of it throws him off kilter.

It wasn’t long ago that Joe felt relevant, steady, and somewhat optimistic about life, the world, and his place in it.

Now he flounders.

He’s a floundering Joe.

A man-fish swimming against the steady current of uncertainty.

“How did I not see this coming?” he mutters.

Moderately well-off, Joe is considered successful — especially in America, where success is measured by the home you own, the car you drive, and the stuff you have. In America, materialism and success are practically inseparable.

So, why does middle age feel like an existential threat to Joe? Why (with all his success) is he suddenly riddled with insecurities?

Joe’s crisis set up shop in his head when he started to understand (subconsciously) that success, as defined by society, is different from success as defined by biology and (more specifically) virility.

Virility’s relationship with success is forged by millions of years of evolution, so that shit is hardwired into the male brain. And at 55, Joe’s virility is in decline. It’s not that Joe feels less virile or even that he sees a noticeable decline. It’s more about an awareness of how others perceive him — or how others barely notice him at all.

Gone are the days of side glances from attractive strangers. Joe feels like he’s disappearing – like he’s being involuntarily airbrushed into the landscape – a crooked aging tree at the base of a mountain – a depressing reminder of his waning biological relevance.

In the face of this revelation, Joe leans into what he’s been conditioned to believe, that success is the stuff you own, the way you look, and the things you can afford. He knows he can’t un-tic the clock, but Joe has access to cash — lots and lots of cash.

So, Joe heads to the Chevy dealership downtown and purchases a shiny new sportscar. At first, he feels pretty good about himself. But the ego-boost is fleeting. Over time, squeezing in and out of his little red Corvette doesn’t turn back the clock; it just reminds Joe of the uncomfortable logistics of aging. A new car doesn’t equate to a younger you, especially if you audibly struggle when getting in and out of it. “Umph!”

Joe parks the car in his garage and rarely takes it out.

“Maybe it’s my style? Maybe I don’t have any style?” Joe says to himself in the mirror.

Joe treks off to the mall, platinum card in hand, and treats himself to a hip new wardrobe of skinny jeans and UNTUCKit shirts, somehow disregarding the obvious — that clothes always look better on the mannequin and catalog model (because neither have pot bellies or man-boobs). Joe’s clothes no longer hang on him in a fashionable way. Instead, they bring unwanted attention to what he’s desperately trying to hide. And what makes Joe think he can pull off the skinny jeans thing, like he’s Mick Jagger?

The audacity!

The one thing that makes Joe feel a little better is hitting the gym and changing his diet. He knows he isn’t turning any heads huffing and puffing on the Stairmaster, but he’s lost a little weight, and his mood is lighter. Even though he considers this a minor victory, he knows there’s no stopping father time from fucking with him.

Life is a conveyor belt.

As Joe begins to age-out of middle age, he decides that acceptance is the only play when it comes to aging. Acceptance leads to tranquility, which leads to confidence.

And confidence ages well.

Tuesday, 6:45 AM

She’s been staring at him intently for 20 minutes, when finally, he awakes to her panting. He raises his head from the pillow and, with half-opened eyes, pats the bed gently. She thumps the mattress with her tail, yawns, and wriggles up to him.

Good morning, friend.

They begin their final day together with a loving scratch behind the ear.

He scoops her into his arms and feels her heart’s clunky and irregular beat against his chest. He lowers her carefully to the floor; her hips wobble, her back legs fold, and she collapses. This has been their morning routine for the last several weeks. She looks at him apologetically. He whispers, “It’s okay, girl” and helps her to her feet.

She walks gingerly to her water bowl, takes a few sips, looks up at him, and wags her tail. For a decade, they’ve inhabited each other’s world. A life wrapped in routine and the warmth of deep companionship.

Age has slowly crept up on her – from the floating blue cataract cloud in her eyes to the rounded and tanned teeth in her mouth. Then, with resignation, the man mutters, “From pearly whites to tiger’s eye, they tell the tale of you and I” and gives her a pat.

He slips a frayed collar decorated with dog bones and frisbees over her head, clips the leash to it, and together they walk out the door.

Even in her declining state, she relishes the ritual, nose to the ground, intently sniffing clover, dirt, thistle, and weed. A complex puzzle of smells awakens a flood of memories; momentarily, she becomes infused with a youthful spirit. A stiffened gate and spritelier walk return, bringing a slow smile to the man’s face.

She raises her head towards a gentle gust of wind, wistfully smiling at the gift-bearing breeze. But by the time they return home she’s laboring. He carries her into the house.

He decided last year to take a leave from work when he noticed a change in her health. On a fast track for promotion and highly regarded throughout the company, he sometimes heard whispers in the halls, “For a dog—a DOG?“

Their appointment with the veterinarian is an hour away. He sits with her on the kitchen floor and cries. She looks at him forgivingly, then places her head on his lap and closes her eyes.

An Untapped Opportunity?

When it comes to AI, It’s not a matter of if but when.

When AI becomes smarter and when companies begin replacing employees with AI tools and applications.

Corporations are throwing money (see Microsoft’s multi-billion-dollar investment in OpenAI) and resources at AI technologies that can lower costs and improve outcomes for them and their customers.

AI will be a disruptor and a differentiator for businesses across all sectors, from retail and manufacturing to research and transportation, to software and content development.

The latest AI technologies will touch everything and everyone. They’ll affect the world’s economic food chain in ways we’ve never experienced. And while companies scramble to beat their competitors to the punch when applying AI to their processes and applications, our society fidgets and nervously awaits the next brave new world.

Creating corporate-sponsored programs and government policies to train workers in AI might work in the short term. Still, the more advanced AI becomes, the less reliant on humans it will be. Of course, small numbers of people with specialized and advanced AI skills will find complementary roles in this new work paradigm, but many others will not. For the worker, jobs will disappear, and wages will drop. For corporations, profits will soar.

We (especially Americans) measure personal success in terms of our work and compensation because most of what we value — the house we own, the car we drive, the family vacations we take, and the sense of safety and security we provide our children is inherently tied to our work and compensation. And thus, our definition of success and how we value ourselves are all balled up in what we do for a living, what we can afford, and how well we can provide.

When automation began replacing workers in manufacturing, those workers lost more than their jobs. People (who just a few years before had a valued and specialized skillset) became obsolete. Unable to pay their mortgages, afford their car, take a family vacation, or provide security for their children, they lost their sense of self-worth. And because the skills they brought to their workplace could now be replicated by a machine, they also lost hope. To survive and be successful again, they’d need to start over – learn new skills, and claw their way back to relevance. For many, that challenge was too great, and they gave up on life. Research shows a causal link between investment in automation and rising mortality levels, “with this rise largely due to so-called deaths of despair, such as drug overdoses and suicides. This was especially so for men and women aged between 45 and 54.“

So, how do we avoid future deaths of despair when the new AI takes hold across industries?

What will our societal response be to millions of jobs disappearing in the wake of AI-driven software and automation?

What happens when the magnitude of job replacement from AI exceeds what we experienced when automation in manufacturing became the norm?

AI is not inherently bad. Its impact on society will largely depend on our reaction to it. We need outside-the-box thinkers in economics, business, the social sciences, and government to begin planning for the consequences of success when it comes to AI, because the effect on humans will be broad, deep, and potentially devastating.

If AI and automation become the benchmark for productivity and success within a corporation, then perhaps AI presents us with an opportunity to reshape what it means to be a productive and successful human.

What if AI allows people to focus on a higher purpose? If AI kills more jobs than it creates (and I think it will), we might consider implementing universal basic income (UBI) to help people find purpose in this brave new world, without fear of losing the roof over their heads.

With the right social and economic safety nets in place, AI can give people the space and the time to become better humans, where instead of defining success by work and compensation, we define it by how we treat others, by volunteerism, and through our capacity to love and care for one another — you know, the things that machines and AI can’t do.

Dark Day Afternoon

Doomsday Clock https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/

Doomsday just inched a bit closer

So says the clock on the wall

Amused, nihilistic humans

just waiting for mankind to fall!

We know the problem’s we’re facing

We know what needs to be done

We know that the weapon is loaded

but we like the taste of the gun

We’re ninety seconds from doomsday

So says that guy on the news

“It’s the end of the world as we know it”

A theme song to give us the blues

Doomsday just inched a bit closer

it nuzzles up to the fear in our head

The tick of the clock getting louder

It thickens our fear into dread

Religious to the point of destruction

Tribal to our own self-defeat

Chained to a blood-violent nature

Man and doomsday were destined to meet

The Cleaner and His Cat

He caught himself staring blankly at his coffee, wondering how long he’d been sitting, cup in hand. The last sip must have been hot. He could still feel the blister on the tip of his tongue.

Like a Picasso, a dark sadness hung on his face. He hated the look. “Definitely his blue period,” he mused, half smirking at his reflection in the bathroom mirror.

He mostly avoided reflective surfaces. Feeling depressed was terrible enough; he didn’t need to see it. He didn’t need to be reminded of it.

His cat circled impatiently, rubbing against his calf. “Time to eat,” he purred . . . . “Snap out of it!” he meowed.

On days like today, he was grateful for his cat. The cat’s well-timed reminders kept the man from the doorknob and belt, and the dark thoughts that tied everything together.

He whispered, “My demise will have to wait; there’s a cat to feed and a litterbox to clean.”

His apartment was a shambles. It mirrored the cluttered chaos in his head. Based on experience, he knew a good house cleaning would lift his spirits.

He often wondered how external feng shui works its magic on the mind. “I’ll have to google that,” he says in the direction of his full-bellied cat, who bathes contently in a patch of sun on the kitchen floor.

The sink is full. There’s half-eaten food caked on dishes, the remnants of last week’s menu. Why not just clean up after each meal? Especially knowing that cleanliness and order helps quell his anxiety.

“Why do I let things pile up?

What keeps me from staying on top of things?

Will I ever grow out of this?

That last question bounces around the inside of his skull like an unselected lottery ping-pong ball.

Will I ever grow out of this?

Of course, he didn’t know the answer to that question. He remembers a bright era of pre-affliction, which gives him hope. He thinks “if I magically went from being happy to being depressed, why can’t I miraculously go from depressed to happy?”

Unfortunately, there’s a history – a consistent footprint on the ladder of his family’s DNA. In a sense, he’s been branded, and sometimes that feels so fatalistic, he just wants to give up.

But he doesn’t.

He continues to clean.

An Ugly Lust for Power

Floating in his own orbit

absent from the ethos of ethics

he was driven by an ugly lust for power

fueled by an insatiable desire for attention

bootlicked and buttressed by a sycophantic public

and buoyed by yes men

The man was wholly unhinged from truth

divorced from morality

and devoid of integrity

Gripped by insecurity

and the crippling fear of being labeled a loser

he cultivated lies and deceit

Like a Shakespearean witch

hunched over a cauldron

of poisonous misinformation

he hatched his plan

to cling to the reins of power

just long enough to topple the republic

For a few hours that day

our democracy flickered and dimmed

teetering on the dark edge of an authoritarian abyss

and if not for the courage of a few

and the rationality of the rest

We’d have lost our democracy

and the hope and freedom it brings to us

It would be a fatal mistake to think

the bullet we dodged cannot be reloaded

The confederacy of cowards

who defended the snake

and helped perpetuate the crime

still walk the halls of congress

and just beneath the ashes

of the failed attempt

are the smoldering embers

of the next

At Sixty

“I know I could do this if things would just slow-the-fuck down,” he muttered. Head bowed, sitting at a dimly lit kitchen table, teetering on the edge of a midlife meltdown.

With more than 30 years in the industry, you think he’d be brimming with confidence. For most, that kind of experience leads naturally to calm assuredness. But with experience comes expectations, and those expectations smother him like a blanket of boulders.

He feels incapacitated by his experience, not buoyed by it.

He fixates momentarily on his wife’s furrowed brow and imagines himself tiny, wandering through those deep valleys of disappointment.

At work, he’s surrounded by the young and hungry. Buzzing with ambition, their bright voices float on currents of frenetic energy.

Was he ever that exuberant (about anything)? He struggles to remember his younger self, but it’s like painting with numbers without the numbers.

In his cubicle, yellow sticky notes pop off the edge of his monitor. A sleek uninviting flower, daring him to delve in – begging him to fail. Tossed to the corner of the desk, a coffee-stained and panic-scrawled legal pad.

His “to-do list.”

After a full day’s work, that list somehow gets longer, not shorter.

Early in his career, he’d slide into a work groove and rip through his “to-dos” effortlessly, like a sickle through the wheat. But nowadays, he’s easily and willingly distracted. His ability to focus comes in short bursts only, and the mental elasticity of youth is frustratingly absent.

His focus is hampered further by a barrage of instant messages and multiple meetings a day. As a result, he always feels two steps behind in a mad dash to a deadline.

He wears his age like an ill-fitting suit, and he struggles to keep pace with his profession.

He lifts his head and speaks again.

“Honestly, I don’t think I can do it anymore. I’m sorry, because I know that puts us behind the eight-ball financially, but every day’s a struggle, and I’m barely keeping my head above water.”

He wasn’t being lazy. He was being honest.

He remembers when success was all the motivation he needed. He remembers plowing through whatever work stress he encountered, because on the backside of that stress were people who depended on him. For 25-plus years, that was all the motivation needed to keep at a job he never truly enjoyed.

Now that his kids are grown and on their own, he faces an increasingly stark scenario. Deadlines approach, the work pace quickens, his ability to keep up wanes, and the desire and motivation needed to plow through it all has vanished.

He concludes that what’s required of him, and where he is philosophically (at sixty), have diverged irreconcilably. He feels this in his bones and in his gut every morning when he wakes.

And there’s a nagging sense of entitlement, that at this phase of life he’s earned the right to slow down — to take his foot off the gas — to smell the roses. He romanticizes about a job that doesn’t follow him home every night. A job that ends when the day ends and doesn’t occupy his mind ceaselessly.

At sixty, he has no interest in climbing the corporate ladder. Instead, he wants to set it ablaze, sit cross-legged on his cubicle floor, and watch it burn to ash.

At sixty, he has no illusions about discovering job satisfaction. That boat has sailed, and there’s no sense lamenting he never got on it. Instead, he’s looking for balance.

He’s looking for “just enough.”

Just enough to pay his bills and free up some time.

Just enough to sip coffee in solitude, and not worry about work.

At sixty, he sits at a dimly lit kitchen table, looking for a way out.

What Shining City?

When did it become Ok

In America

for snickering governors

to play politics

with the lives of tired

and desperate human beings?

When did the light

from that shining city

on the hill

become a trick candle?

When did America

erect its Darwinian dome

of indifference towards

the tired and the suffering?

When did we drift from the

Give me your tired and poor

to a cold and callous

Let me show you the door?

When did we

start to fear and hate

the huddled masses

detesting them

while casting a cold

and stony shoulder?

When the humane

treatment of others

takes a backseat to

cheap political stunts

it’s time to look at

the soul of our nation

Tangled up in Black

In the alleys of your heart

In the backstreets of your brain

from the constant buzzing beltway

under rusted lock and chain

In the pain inside your sternum

the boiled marrow in your bones

lurks an ever-growing darkness

over jagged rocks and stones

In black valleys of depression

and the not so grand delusions

In a vice grip of obsession

In your manic-plagued illusions

With a never-ending stipend

of more than you can bear

an abundant over-ripened

softened fruit

of deep despair

An undefined sad solitude

that something is amiss

always on that taunting edge

of that welcoming abyss

an open-ended sadness

a journey never-ending

exhausted by the battle plan

of constantly pretending

You’re looking for an exit

a respite from the black

An offramp from the sadness

a train that jumps the track

“I can’t believe he did it

I can’t believe he’s gone

no one truly knew

the darkness of his dawn”

That Final Hug

She can still feel the imprint of that final hug.

She can still feel the weight of her son’s head on her chest and remembers how she cupped the back of his head and ran her fingers through his dark curls.

She still feels the final squeeze around her rib cage. She remembers her son loosening his embrace, his arms slipping from around her, before letting go and walking through the front doors of his elementary school.

She can still see that carefree smile as he looked over his shoulder back towards her before disappearing forever.

She can’t bear the thought of waking up one day and not feeling the remnants of that final hug.

She has not slept through the night since the incident and cannot forgive herself for letting her boy walk through those doors.

She just wants to close her eyes, stop feeling, and slip into eternal blackness.

Knowing that other mothers suffered before her, and still more mothers will suffer after her, with no substantial changes to gun laws, hollows her out.

Her son was murdered by an 18-year-old boy with an AR-15. His right to purchase that gun was protected by an antiquated and misused 233-year-old amendment to the constitution and a gun-loving governor.

Her son’s right live and grow up was not protected.

Over the last several days she has listened to cold intellectual and academic debates about that amendment and what it means. It doesn’t mean anything to her. It’s all just empty words and platitudes. After all is said and done, her boy is dead.

She walks into her bathroom, places two framed pictures of her son on the sink and runs a hot bath. She takes off her clothes and sits on the tub’s edge, staring at his smiling face.

She remembers the day these pictures were taken.

In one, her son is wearing his Houston Astros baseball cap and clutching his glove to his chest. His first baseball game with his father. His smile bursts through the glass picture frame and she feels a sudden pang in her heart.

Her husband took the other photo and gave it to her last Mother’s Day in a frame with brightly painted flowers. In it, her son is seen squatting in the flower bed on the side of the house, joyously pointing at a snail that he discovered. The sights and sounds of that day are still fresh in her memory. She can still see the mud from the freshly watered garden seeping from the holes in his spiderman crocks — and she still hears all of the questions about this newly discovered creature.

“Mama, does he live in that shell…. is that his home?”

“What happens if he gets too big for his shell? – where does he go then?”

She remembers telling him that the shell protects the snail and keeps him safe from harm. And that memory triggers a flood of emotions. She can’t stop thinking how vulnerable and scared he must have been in those final minutes, and how no one was able to protect him from harm.

She opens the medicine cabinet and takes out a razor blade. She picks up the framed pictures and kisses each one, tears running down her cheeks. Then she turns the pictures away from the tub to face the wall at the back of the sink.

She shuts off the water, slides into the tub, and carefully cuts open the veins running from her wrist up to her forearm. She does this on each arm. Then she drops the razor in the tub and feels it slide along the side of her hip before resting underneath her left buttock.

She takes a deep breath and then closes her eyes.