the stars are brighter

A certain degree of flexibility is required to negotiate life's twists and turns. A stone obvious statement, yes, but one whose message isn't heeded nearly as often as it ought to be.

In my younger years, I knew a surprising number of people between the ages of 16 and 21 who were convinced that they had sorted out the rules of the game. I'm not talking about the standard adolescent delusions of grandeur ("I'm going walk into Paramount's offices and show them my alterna-soundtracked off-brand Catcher in the Rye and become an Oscar-winning screenwriter!") or the methodically plotted ambitions of the Type A set ("AP Biology, then an undergrad degree from Tufts, then med school, then a vacation home in Tahoe."). Nor am I talking about those enviable individuals (such as my college buddy Southie Dave or Kevin Church) with a knack for navigating life's various currents so as to best reach their stated objectives, large or small.

The folks I'm referring to are the ones who have codified their (inherently myopic) worldviews right down to most minute details. More often than not, they've given their creed a cute nickname ("Jessie's Theory" or "Jack's Manifesto") and make frequent use of jargonistic terms like "axiomatic" when expounding their philosophies to their peers. And expound they do, evangelizing with a zeal born of absolute certitude and casting a jaundiced eye upon those who aren't convinced by their obvious wisdom.

The details of the platform vary from person to person, but it tends to be a mix of received pop philosophy and pat assumptions made in the safety of a sheltered environment and lacking in real world empiricism. Favorite subjects include relationships and career aspirations, which provide opportunities to stress off-the-rack individualist views in opposition to the unenlightened lumpenmundane herd. Marriage and cubicle life can be problematic? The devil, you say!

Back then, the utter confidence of these people gave me pause, especially in light of my own adolescent lack of clarity, which was roundly criticized...

"Fine. Enroll at UMass Boston [I did], stay at your grandmother's house [again, yes], and live in Woburn for the rest of your life [my current plan] -- I'm going to join an artists' commune in Prague and reject the bourgeoisie lifestyle."

It might have stung at the time, but I eventually ran into this individual at the Burlington Mall a few years later. She was the assistant manager at a shoe store. There were no lofty speeches about French poetry or free love, only a litany of workplace gossip delivered to the tune of the Overpriced Shoe Company's employee handbook. "None of my co-workers appreciate the seriousness of our vocation," she told me, sans irony, at one point of the painful conversation.

I've seen the same scenario repeat itself over and over again in the time since. Last I heard, Little Miss Career and Relationship Advice was single and busing tables at an Olive Garden in Burbank. Our brief reunion via email ended abruptly when she asked if I was still dating Maura and I responded that we were married and had bought a house...in Woburn. The gay aspiring psychic ended up repudiating himself and joining the Catholic priesthood. The Queen of the Soapbox, who had made many public pronouncements against 9-to-5 work and marriage, engaged in all sorts of semantic contortions in order to explain her engagement and taking a white collar office job. A veritable feast of schadenfreude, if I was a more petty-minded soul.

No plan survives contact with the enemy. The problem with rigid systems, political or personal, is that they assume that vagaries of life can be definitively quantified when even the slightest empirical experience shows that chaos is an endemic aspect of day-to-day living. Water pumps fail, cavities rot through to the nerve, pink slips are handed out -- shit happens, in other words, and half-assed philosophies forged in the callowness of youth are a poor substitute for being able to think on one's feet and come to grips with the inevitable crises life is going to blindside you with.

This line of reasoning often gets lumped in with the "you'll understand when you're older" argument, but there are clear differences. It's not about defensive post-facto excuses or justifications (or begrudging the younger generation its idealism). It is possible to maintain one's core principles over a span of years, but creating, then attempting to adhere to a comprehensive worldview based on shallow assumptions with no basis in reality simply establishes the groundwork for an inevitable crisis of faith, in which hotswapping one self-serving ideology for another becomes a tempting solution.

The Auteurs - How Could I Be Wrong (from New Wave, 1993) - What you could have been listening to back in '93, but were too busy trying fool yourself into thinking that Stone Temple Pilots were a decent band. Do you feel ashamed now? You ought to.