My son’s mother and I talk every Saturday night to keep up on the boy–who is now 31 years old–and to talk to one another about our sad, sad lives. We discussed why we both seemed to enjoy our solitude a little too much when I said something unusally wise:
“We live the lives we have created for ourselves,” I said.
It was so brilliant, I had to stop and repeat it to myself so I wouldn’t forget it.
Every once in a while I will utter something astoundingly wise.
When I was 30, I once noted to my mother “At a certain point you’ve got to stop blaming your parents for who you are.”
Which sort of let her off the hook for the psychological mess I was at that time.
I have no idea where these things come from. I think it’s a bit like the old thought experiment about 100 monkeys at typewriters writing for 100 years. The randomness of what they would type is such that eventually they would type out, word for word, the works of Shakespeare.
I think my brain works like that. I scatter so many words in the course of a day that eventually some combination of them will not only make sense but will be something that sounds wise. Like I’m finally using my personal experience to give back to the world.
I was talking to a client about how hard it is to do family law because it brings out the worst in people.
“Everyone’s got that little asshole screaming to be released,” I said. Not exactly something that will be chiseled in stone, but truth nonetheless.
I think we’re all like this. Sooner or later we stumble onto an eternal truth that, if followed, could change one’s life forever.
Most of us, of course, take refuge instead in cliche. “Beauty is skin deep, ugly goes right to the bone,” I will sometimes mutter, knowing 1000 people have said this before me. “Marry in haste, repent–forever,” I will say when talking to the ex. She doesn’t much appreciate this.
I don’t know where the weird wisdom comes from. I am certainly not a monk on a mountain, cross-legged, whipped by the wind, meditating on the foibles of humanity.
I am, to put it bluntly, an idiot. I’ve said 10,000 stupid things in my life that have never failed to get me into trouble.
But sometimes that monkey at the typewriter in my head will bust out some Shakespeare.
Which begs the question: If it takes 100 monkeys 100 years to write Shakespeare, how long would it take them to get to Hemingway?
Mark Bruce, Writer 