How's that workin out for ya?
I never really know how pop culture references work their way into my lexicon, but they do, more often than I'd like to admit. The above sarcastic rhetorical inquiry comes by way of "Fight Club," which I watched again for the first time in years and years. The movie is a cinematic effort based on a great novel by Chuck Palahniuk, with a central theme to the book (and movie) about the meaningless of a life based on consumption, especially of material possessions. One of the quotes from the movie, uttered by Tyler Durden (played by Brad Pitt) stuck with me this afternoon:
(Edited) You are not your job. You are not the amount of money in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You are not your fucking khakis. Just before this dialogue, Joe/Jack (played by Edward Norton) observes that Tyler has successfully been able to "let that which does not matter truly slide."
While the novel is incredibly violent, and too often in both book and movie I found my eyes rolling at both the males' animalistic cavorting and their whining about what the culture has done to them collectively as males, I do think Chuck (the author) and David Fincher (the director) offer the reader/viewer some fabulous nuggets of culture observation and condemnation, all of which I concur with heartily. Anyone out there who's creating themselves based on the clothes they wear, the cars they drive, the zip codes in which they live ... well, that's just stupid, because none of that means anything about the skin or the essence within said clothes, cars and zip codes.
But the part that lingers with me into the falling of dusk today is Joe/Jack's comment about letting things that don't matter slide. I am no expert at this; in fact, I find my feelings smarting this evening from something that is largely inconsequential, but the fact that I've been hurt by someone's behaviour is indicative of a state of mind I should heed.
And heed it I have. I ask myself "How's that working out for me?" and I find ... not that great. Something I've been doing hasn't worked out. I expected dividends. Not bupkis.
So I realize -- I really AM too available. I'm too quick to play Cruise DIrector, I'm too easily drawn into the care and nurture of those who are Not Me. And as such, those collective Not Me folks don't really deserve the efforts and lengths to which I go to include them, think of them, nurture them.
Time to let that -- and those -- that do not matter ... slide.