There once was a man in
his early twenties. Socially awkward, especially around women, he had never
even been on a date. Instead, he withdrew into his college studies, found
companionship in books, and grew an unruly beard. Untouched by human warmth,
his demeanor was a bit crazed and unsettling. His eyes were cavernous and
penetrating.
One day this young man was
on Pier Avenue in Hermosa Beach and he passed a popular hangout, Patrick
Malloy’s. It was crowded inside. The young man pressed his bearded face against
the glass and looked with longing at the attractive people. They looked so
life-affirming and at ease with self-abandonment, laughing, slapping each
other’s backs, kissing one another, and sloshing their beers over their
glasses’ rims.
In contrast, the young man
was a tightly-wound ball of repressed emotions, in turns angry and melancholy.
He felt like a man of 85 trapped in the body of a 21-year old.
Watching the attractive
people enjoying themselves and embracing life with an admirable, insatiable
appetite, the young man was convinced he would remain on life’s sidelines, a
depressed witness to a life passing him by.
Convinced of his own
futility and fated to a life of loneliness, he went home, curled up into a ball
and cried himself to sleep.
We now travel 25 years
into the future and focus on this same man, now in his mid-forties. He has a
good job. He has developed social skills, he is well groomed, insouciant, and
can conceal his cynicism behind a veil of witty repartee. He’s been married,
divorced, remarried. He sits in Patrick Malloy’s with his lovely wife and her
lovely friends. Beer is sloshing all around him. He doesn’t drink, save a diet
Coke since he’s the designated driver. The music is loud and people are
shouting over the music. His ears can’t take much more of this. Worse, an
unrelenting boredom has set in and he is no longer listening to any of the
several conversations blaring around him.
He feels it both strange
and cruel that earlier in his life he felt excluded from this club of beautiful
people and now he is inside its very center, its most inner core, and rather
than bathing in the warmth of belonging and popularity he stares at his watch.
While squirming in his
seat with utter boredom, he sees a young man outside the club. The man is
bearded with the same cavernous eyes and the same look of despair the
middle-aged man remembers seeing in his reflection. The young man, a mirror
image of the middle-aged one, presses his face against the window and looks
into the eyes of his older doppelgänger.
Feeling helpless to give
wisdom to the misguided youth, the older aspiring mentor shakes his head as if
to say: "The dividing line between your world and my world is all in your
head, little brother. It's all in your head."
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