The Naked Jumper – Pt. 5

“Mirror, mirror on the wall…”

Are you sure that’s “Me”?

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In the half-darkness of twilight we all hide our crimes and misdemeanours carefully underneath a hard shell of well-worn words; words chanted hypnotically to convince and remind everyone  and ourselves of our “goodness”, “grace”, “kindness” and “caring”. This “virtue” chant conveniently conceals the deliberate and intentional mismanagement of ourselves and is traditionally accompanied by our eternal litany of excuses for this, that and the other. Counting virtues and flaws is the preoccupation of those who like to kick up a fuss over their misbegotten mediocrity and have nothing to talk of apart from their misgivings; either of themselves or others. Few, if any, can hold a candle to this “circus of self” paraded by the “better than, worse than” crusaders and we all, to a lesser or greater degree, come under this circus tent; we love to moan, rant, whinge, bitch and complain.

There is no real reason for it but it’s kinda understandable; it’s difficult to swim against the tide of what’s “expected” of you, whatever that is, be it positive or negative. No matter how much we might like to kid ourselves with our efforts of “fitting in” the irony is that nobody really “fits in”, everybody is a peculiarity unto themselves and everybody secretly knows it too. It’s a most public secret because if everyone did “fit in”, everything was the way it was supposed to be and everything always worked out there’d be a lot of smiling but instead, you see sad eyes trapped in miserable faces.  “Fitting in” has a cost, both to ourselves and others. It breeds an insidious and vicious cycle of hidden apathy; a culture of “settling” for things we “didn’t particularly want” that we “make do with” because we “can’t” see any other option or choice. Why? Because “that’s the way things are” and “that’s the way of the world”; we never question, nevermind challenge, such assumptions. It breeds a culture of fake contentment, deep insecurity and savage bitterness. We’ll go to extremes to “fit in”, we’ll willingly carve away huge parts of ourselves and others to achieve a “good” fit.

The non-smilers come in all shapes, sizes and colours, mostly garbed in the ego-centric trappings of conceit that belies a deep personal insecurity. The majority of non-smilers, will look up from their misery and then blurt “I’m just so unlucky” and the bitter non-smilers will just completely and utterly bathe in denial