I suppose, to be fair, it’s all Shane Koyczan’s fault.
Back in 2003, things were a little different. I was in my second year of university, back when the university was just a university-college. And while it was my second year in the ivory-adjacent tower, it was my first year away from home. It was my first year living in a dormitory. And it was my first year falling in love. I was studying philosophy and political ideologies. Pondering nature vs nurture, and capitalism vs communism. I was drinking beer for the first time in my life, and making submarine sandwiches part time. As a protected, privileged, and very pretentious young white man from a middle income family with a very loving mother and father, a safe childhood and a successful high-school navigation, it was the beginning of many eye openings.
Now, like so many in that category, eyes being opened didn’t mean I actually looked. Open eyes often squint when they are first brought to light. To open them entirely is a separate kind of courage, that takes effort and time. Looking back, most of my personal disappointments and failures after that point was precisely because I didn’t actually see what was before me. And because I didn’t have that courage. But nearly 20 years later, I can say honestly and earnestly say that that’s when I started.
I should clarify that when I say opening my eyes, it could be viewed under today’s lens to be talking about gender and race economic inequality, fundamental human rights (read: women’s right to their own body, sexuality and gender rights, and a myriad of others we seem to be walking back lately) and fundamentally entrenched mechanisms in our culture, government, and economic practice which protects the uneven distributions of access to those above rights and equalities. All the items which we now recognize (thankfully more and more universally) with words like Privilege.
And you wouldn’t be wrong – it was partially that for me. But cart before the horse: self discovery before world discovery. I was young in the poetic (and literal) sense. And so it was also opening my eyes to being my own person. A person separate from the expectations and burdens placed on me by myself and by others. Who. Was I? What moved me. Why was I so angry, always. What did love really mean. What was I meant to do. What was I even really capable of doing. It was before a time I recognized what imposter syndrome even was, let alone that everyone felt it.
Self discovery, and by extension, self actualization.
So there I was. In a campus pub, with a few friends and my girlfriend who had just gifted me a bracelet with my pet name, both things I hated but didn’t have the guts to say it, preparing to listen to some stupid show by some artist she liked. No idea who I was, clearly, and angry about it.
And then Shane arrived on the stage. And performed Help Wanted.
My god, did I see something.
I remember, even to this day, thinking two things.
1) I always want to feel the way this guy’s work makes me feel. It’s a goddamn mirror.
2) How in the hell am I supposed to follow this act with my girlfriend? Words were my thing, and he had me outclassed in every way. Damnit.
The second thing was temporary, as was the girlfriend, but the first lingered. I began to search out more things that made me feel that way – more art that reflected something to me, more electives in school that sparked something in me, more love that gave something of me, work that edified me, and more friends whom I cared about – or rather, fewer friends that I actually cared about. It was not a perfect process. There were times when I got angrier, not happier. Times when I was was a coward not a champion. Metaphoric mirrors were broken alongside literal hearts, and the prophesied bad luck manifested and was endured. But on balance, I benefited.
I began creating my own mirrors – I wrote. I wrote blogs with monikers like Confessions of a Closet Optimist, Rain and Republic, and AmusingMoralist. I embarked on collaborative artistic projects – co-creating a universe with friends that were and still are Family. Co-writing with my friend an experiment of cathartic art – of call and reply short stories. Later I would call for her hand in marriage, and she would reply with her whole heart.
Sokath, his eyes uncovered.
I did more than write, of course. But it is enough to say, I grew up. I grew up into someone I rather liked. I found myself.
I saw myself.
The pandemic was awful. Not to me so much. I am, now nearly 20 years grown from that previous boy in college, still privileged. Privileged and over the past 2.5 years, very lucky. So I cannot claim even remotely the same impact it had for others. The pandemic was awful. It was hard. And I am so very thankful that, for me, that’s all it was: a few pained words of acknowledgement far more than of reflection.
Covid still exists, and still wreaks havoc for many even now, but for me and many the mantra chanted like a collective prayer has almost been granted: a return to normal.
Except.
Except, I’m not sure a miracle has been granted so much as a curse. We have returned to normal work and normal wages, but standards of living cost more than ever. Normal people cannot afford homes, or even rent. We have returned to normal celebrations and outdoor events – normal parties, but thanks to “freedom” protesters, emboldened global fascism, and discovered residential school graves I have more respect for flags of yellow and blue and shirts of orange, than my own red maple leaf. We have a normal president to the south, but have slid backwards in women’s rights – human rights.
I could go on. Climate change – fires and droughts and floods. Education, student debt and school shootings. Medical costs skyrocketing – costs of wallet for the south, of line-ups and waiting lists for Canadians – and no end in sight for our poor medical professionals.
It feels like normal everywhere is wrapped in awful. An inescapable, stifling, unfashionable awful, that was slipped into the fine print of “returning to”. It is the over-valued mandatory price of admission for stale bread and reality TV circuses. Somehow, after all the tragedy of Covid, “normal” seemed to somehow include a slide backwards.
I am exhausted. And I have been for quite some time. While I said and will say again that I am extremely lucky that I have not been impacted in a worse way – no lost jobs or, god forbid, lost people – I have lost passion. My mirrors were put down so that I could keep calm and carry on. My lenses have been blurred with the sweat of marching forward, and my eyes have atrophied from watching mindless escapism rather than the world out there. I was a husk of my former self.
I could tell you, easily, that I was so. Emptiness and apathy are not particularly hard to diagnose. But they are a particularly challenging illness to prescribe a solution for. I did not know how long it had been gone – that feeling of self-perpetuating self. That passion of person. Just that it was.
And I can tell you when it started to return.
At work, I have returned to making client visits. Another normal, where after 2 years of barely leaving my home office, I’m now back to being an occasional road warrior. Not my favorite activity, but one I’m willing to make the best of. There’s very little beauty that compares to an early morning drive up and down the Okanagan Valley. So, I leave with a little extra time, grab a tea and bite for the road, and plug in some music. It’s a great way to spend a day and get paid.
My playlist includes an embarrassing number of old video game songs, inspirational music for D&D games, popular music from 10-20 years ago, and whatever’s on the radio that I currently like. I’m a nerd-meets-basic-bitch in my music tastes, and in the car with nothing but myself and sunrise is when I let those tunes shine.
Well, buried in that playlist was a few put-to-music spoken words by my favorite poet. Help Wanted. I wasn’t specifically looking for it – it kind of just found its way to me – a relic of a past. But it resonated with me, and so on one return trip I specifically made a playlist of all his works I had access to. While I drove down the highway with the beautiful Lake Okanagan at my back, I was transported back to that dingy little campus pub.
I wept when I got home.
It felt normal, and not at all awful.
Confessions of a Closet Optimist 