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mfinley.com: "Sometimes
I Wonder " I don’t know what it is. I should know by
this point in my life what is important and what's not worth getting upset
about. But I still get drawn in. This past weekend we held the big folk festival I have been annoying everyone about for the past six months. It was a roaring success. We almost broke even, which exceeded our wildest expectations. But
when it was all over, instead of relief and delight, my main emotion was
peevishness at the folks who told me they'd come but didn't. Like a pebble in
my shoe, I hobbled around worrying that minor pain into something major. This is an ancient theme with me. In college, I planned an elaborate anti-war protest for a visit to campus by national security adviser MacGeorge Bundy. I inserted a fake song ("Old MacBundy Had a Farm") in every chapel hymnal. When the moment came, I expected the 20 people I had coaxed into participating to join me in song. None did. I was left standing literally at the altar, singing, "With a boom-boom here, and a bang-bang there." Oh, how I hated my friends that day. I suppose it means I'm a lousy leader. No
argument there. I never saw myself as that; rather, as an enthusiast, an Ezra
Pound, someone who gets other people excited about stuff. The folk festival was
terrific fun, and I wanted these friends to join in. It being a free country (there are even
folk songs to that effect), they chose not to. Leaving me unfulfilled, like a dog at
the window, wimpering pointlessly at a teasing squirrel. Or you could compare it to sex; it's just
more fun with other people. So I've been thinking maybe I need
therapy. (Whenever I have voiced this possibility in the past, whoever I have
voiced it to has answered in the affirmative awfully quickly.) Find out what's
wrong with me that I have to drag people around with me through life, like a
green lieutenant calling out to his army to "Follow me! Follow!" but
they can’t be stirred from their pup tents. But I'm afraid that wouldn’t work,
either. I can imagine looking up after my allotted 50 minutes and telling the
shrink, "So you’re not even going to ask me about my mother?" Always
"pushing the river," which we are all plainly instructed not to do. Writing itself is an extension of this
principle. Every week I take this initiative, which I am helpless to resist,
but which the world feels much less helpless about. Every time I hit a key,
it's like standing in someone's yard and asking Billy's mom if Billy can come
out and play. Only in real life Billy and his mom are the same person. I have
to get past the parent to get to the child. And I never do. When I was a kid I was so bored that one
day I decided to start a college, using an old shed down by the monkeyball
trees as our Old Main. My family had lots of books about nature and history,
and I thought the gang and I could take turns looking at these books and making
charts from them -- the phyla tree, a timeline from the Paleozoic to the
current era, the life cycle of the Nile crocodile. We could all be professors
--of geology, of biology, of the Civil War. Could anything be more fun? Well, you can imagine how far that idea
got. So I am forced to conclude that I have
spent 50 years of my life -- and doggone it, the best 50 years of my life -
annoying people. And even though I consider myself an avatar of change, and
have even written books about how to do it (books that, as you may have
guessed, no one bought), I'm no good at it. I once wrote an entire book (unpublished,
naturally) about how expectant fathers lag behind their expectant partners
during pregnancy because, not having a baby growing inside them, and not
spending an hour every morning with their head in a toilet, they live in
inevitable denial. After I showed the book to about 20 publishers, my agent
took me aside laid the harsh news upon me. "Michael, people don’t buy
books about denial. Think about it." So here's the killer. I know I can change
because I know the secret of change. Just change the behavior, the symptoms,
and forget the flawed underlying structure. This is how people lose weight,
overcome bad habits, become presidential candidates. But it's a chimera. Because what I really
want is to make the fluttering die down, the excitement that, if we just do
something interesting together, right now, things will be immediately less
boring. Say something. Bite into a lemon. Pretend we're eggs frying. And 50
years on, it doesn’t go away. You can change everything about yourself,
until you are pleasing and undemanding and a dullard to everyone who encounters
you. But inside, you will still be who you are. Follow me? To visit
Mike, go to http://mfinley.com, or write him at mfinley@mfinley.com |
mfinley.comCOPYRIGHT (c) 2000by MICHAEL FINLEY
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Why not bookmark Mike's columns for your weekly enjoyment?Comments on this column:OK, so here's a 10-second reaction to your peevishly provocative piece.Your problems are not necessarily because you're a bad leader; they're because you're a good friend. People like you, for whatever reasons, and they don't want to risk hurting you, so they consent to your suggestions, requests, demands, or whatever. And maybe at the time your spell over them is such that they actually believe that they'll do whatever you're suggesting, requesting, demanding. But then, away from you, they weaken or they return to reality -- which is essentially the same thing. Of course, you're probably objecting, if you were actually a good leader you would realize this about yourself, other people, and the personal dynamics at work but not working here and you would find other approaches. But often the other approaches would be too pushy for you, a child of the '60s. Unfortunately, the "let's go do it!" approach that usually worked for leaders back then were successful because we were all usually in the mood to take on the world or, at least, to enjoy the social aspects of the activity. (Why else was everything so "communal" then, a word rarely used anymore?) We were all ready to do whatever somebody might suggest: it was the age of experimentation not just because there were new things to try but because people were more open to trying things, new or old or even just a little different. So, you're somebody who wants to lead out of enthusiasm and a communal spirit stuck with the spirit of '00. Stop feeling like a failure -- because you don't know in what ways you may have succeeded. Because of your articles about the festival, I notified two friends in Eden Prairie and encouraged them to go to the festival. I don't know whether they attended or not. (I won't ask them, because I don't them or me to feel bad if, for whatever reasons, they didn't make it. Yes, I lived the '60s, but I've also got a calendar.) But my point is still valid, that your written words may have led others of us to recommend the festival to friends in the area and some of us fortunate enough to live closer to the Mini Apple may have been able to attend. As for your conclusion -- "You can change everything about yourself, until you are pleasing and undemanding and a dullard to everyone who encounters you. But inside, you will still be who you are." Of course! So get used to who you are -- your friends have done that already. If you try to change your behavior, you'll just end up surrounded by people who dive the insides of you crazy or who kill you slowly. Even you don't want to pay that high a price just to satisfy your social needs. Bob M. You are too hard on yourself! Maybe the problem is the friends who can't say no when they want to say no. It's hard to say no to a leader or a friend, so you say, "Ya I think I can go," or, "Sure, sounds like fun." It just may not be their thing to do. I'm an introvert, so lots of things sound great to do, but when the time comes my introvert voice keeps me home. Conversation over a cup of coffee, lunch at the neighborhood cafe, great....singing a protest song in front of church, I don't think so. My rambling point is, put it back on the people who didn't go. You don't need therapy. You're just an outgoing guy who likes to invite his friends to the things he enjoys. It's not a leadership issue. Keep inviting. I bet if you tally it up, more people have joined you than not shown up. Remember that birthday party? Keep up the good work! Linda M. I liked this column quite a bit and am proud we've been able to maintain a pretty good friendship despite the fact that I am the kind of person who mostly likes to do things spontaneously, on the spot, and never wants to be held to any sort of commitment to do something fun. If it makes sense, sometimes I'm not in the mood to do something fun; or "fun" is not what I have in mind. Which is all to say that I don't think I was one of the ones who said they would be coming to the folk festival but you (unless you know me well) had every reason to think I'd be there. But I quite simply didn't feel like it at the time and it has long been one of my central tenets that when it comes to entertainment--or even friendship--I trust people to understand my laissez faire philosophy. Anyone who has been good, close friends with me for more than 15 years (or since I moved to Mpls) has gone through a period of at least a full year without hearing from me--no cards, calls, birthday remembrances. Yet I fully expect to pick up with these people right where I left off--they will always be my friends and I, perhaps unrealistically, believe I will always be their's. At my wedding, I had my father as best man and then my three best friends up at the altar. One was a regular friend I saw a lot because I happened to live in the same city he did. The other two I hadn't spoken with (until letting them know about the wedding) for many months (one) and many years (another). So I am the opposite of you in some respect. I don't want to follow, but I do like to do things when the spirit moves me and inwardly resent feeling pressure by the mere fact of friendship to do something I don't at the time want to do. I believe if someone really is my friend, they'll afford me that leeway. You always have, despite your nature to the contrary, and I really appreciate that understanding. B. R. You wrote: You can change everything about yourself, until you are pleasing and undemanding and a dullard to everyone who encounters you. But inside, you will still be who you are. And THAT, my friend, is the beauty of it all. There are far fewer of us demanding, annoying pricks in the world than there are boring dullards who have nothing but their jobs and/or some New Age philosophy to sustain them. Or, the only way they get outside themselves is through their children. I've been there and, given the option, would not choose it again. I'm having much more fun being an irascible old fart who pushes others to do things I just KNOW will be good for them! As for the friends who didn't show, I had a buddy from high school put that into perspective for me. I was complaining to him that none of my old friends who encouraged me to record my songs and congratulated me along the way EVEN BOUGHT A COPY OF THE CD! He said, "We have an investment in YOU as a person, but not so much in your music or you as a musician." Well, I'm sure he felt vidicated by that rationalization; however, I wondered what ever happened to the curiousity factor we children of the 60s are supposed to be famous for? So I say: LET THEM BE DULLARDS. Leave them to their spiritless floating through life, to be directed by whatever societal whimsey blows them toward another trend. Leave them and be content to be who and what you are; and in doing so, enjoy the hell out of yourself! -Wayne H. Yes indeed Mike I do follow you... The problem is very creative poets like yourself are living in the wrong century. Today in one 24 hr. period more words,thoughts and ideas are born than took place in all the preceeding centuries prior to 1900. In earlier times you would have been glorified or burned at the stake. You have a brilliant questioning mind. It's not your fault that others don't always share your enthusiasm, Fuck em! Go ahead and enjoy . I consider it a privilege to have known you if only for the few moments that we have shared during the past 50 years.... I Love you Michael (Uncle) Jack Finley "Lots of us find it a very helpful, human, sometimes humorous, always interesting, often surprising column that has no peer on the freelance market, And, yes, you can use that as a testimonial if it helps." -- Bill Dowd, Albany Times Union "No one talks about the ups and downs of technology like Michael Finley. See his columns online at www.mfinley.com/. -- James S. Derk, Evansville (IN) Courier "Editors want everything to fall into a neat little box, and your stuff doesn't do that. You don't write merely about technology, you write about what technology means to us and how it has changed us. I like it." -- John Boxmeyer, St. Paul
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