One of the best strategies of a defence lawyer, the Hollywood television shows teach us, is to put forward all of your bad feet. Tell the court all of your case’s worst parts – that way you can defend it best. If instead you hide them, that gives the prosecutor a chance to bring them up. And if they do, they’ll paint it as much, much worse.
I suppose that’s where the expression “the best offence is a good defence” comes from.
~
I have always believed in the power of transparency.
Be careful with the word “belief” there. It’s a rational belief, like the belief that gravity will continue to act as we have observed in the past. Like the belief that, once the door is properly unlocked and the handle is turned, the door will open. Like the belief that the sun will rise tomorrow, regardless of whether we can see it. All of these things may not be absolutely provable, but we believe them because consistency tells us they’re a really, really safe bet. So safe that our mind tells us it’s not a bet at all. Instead, it calls these beliefs “facts.”
That’s how I believe in transparency: as a fact. Because, for me, it’s always worked that way.
The part of transparency that I believe in is not that living it is always easy. It’s pretty rare to find someone who likes to hear the truth all the time, myself included. But truth tellers and livers alike share one comfort that equivocators and liars do not: they don’t need to remember their fiction. The part of transparency that’s worth believing is that, once it’s done and the truth is out there, the rest of your world can relax. Don’t live with your world on your sleeve because it’s easy, do it because after it’s done, the world is so much better.
(Perhaps I’m babbling. Though I do find that the more I look at our broken little world, the harder points are to find. Do homonyms classify as irony?)
Today I had the rare opportunity to share a cup of tea with an out of town friend of mine. Usually we converse over text messages from several cities away, not in person from across a coffee table. Though we live in an age of instant communication and social networking, there are still some moments whose value seems to exist best at snail-mail speeds. Our friendship had become one of those things.
And so, though our communication was regular, our in person meetings were as rare as lovers’ hand written letters, and our time together just as cherished.
But, from the moment I saw her today, something began eating away at me. For all of my comfort and joy at having this rare and temporary opportunity, I was terrified that she would ask me about myself. It was no difficult thing to manoeuvre around – there was much to discuss. I was consistently quick to offer new subject matter before she could. But with every lull in the conversation, I grew worried that she might squeeze in such a casual, well-meaning question as to my everyday happenstance.
She was not the exception to the rule, actually. This conversation-dodging had become a day-to-day occurrence with most everyone I knew, honestly. First it was because I did not have a job. But now, probably worse, it’s because I’m working at Subway.
It may sound like a strange reason to be afraid of your own shadow, but let me explain. It’s my own worst nightmare. I did not grow up worrying that I’d always be alone, or that I might be stuck to a hospital bed. Those things worry me from time to time, to be sure. But that I am stuck working in a fast food joint, at 26, being well adjusted and well educated but with no proper job skills to speak of... I hate the way that makes me sound. I’ve always feared being that guy.
Well, that and random nosebleeds. Hate those fucking things.
And, as absolutely shallow as it sounds, I’m terrified of what others must think of me for it. It’s certainly not a go-getter position. Everything about it suggests that I don’t have the world on a string. I don’t want much, but when my life’s record plays, I do want others to hear that old jazz standard. That they might, instead, only hear the song of a man who has no career ambition for anything and is a university wash-up who works for practically minimum wage serving food to people with real jobs... well, I don’t know how to handle that.
“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.” Sorry Dr. Seuss. You’re right, but that doesn’t seem to help. The people whose opinions really matter to me CAN wreck me if they do mind. I graduated alongside them. I was romantically attracted to them. I heard their parents tell me how many good things I was supposed to grow up and become. I shared beer and scoffed at the rest of the world with them. I’m invested in a certain kind of image with all of them, and whether it is intended or not, there’s pressure to keep it.
I met a man once, a couple of years ago. He was my age, working at the same customer service job as I was. But he was more handsome, had more money, attracted the girls I wanted, had entrance letters to prestigious law schools on his desk, and worked on the side for a few companies doing research that I did not understand. And he was witty.
All the usuals. I was (hopefully privately) envious. I wanted to build something like the mask he had on. Not a carbon copy, but a feeling that I could give off when I looked in a mirror, or when I thought others were looking at me. But that seems pretty impossible when your opener 2 years later is “I’m working at Subway.”
But something this friend and I spoke about over a cup of tea reminded me of my confidence. We were talking about single mothers, and how they didn’t deserve the stigma of pity that they are often given. We are all in charge of our own choices, and many single moms may at first glance receive pity when in fact they are beyond joyous for their child: their family. Their choices. They wouldn’t have it any other way.
I don’t want to get into a subject of parenting – but the logic expands universally, and is empowering. We have a choice – a choice to fuck, a choice to use birth control, a choice to keep the child, a choice to give it up for adoption. We have a choice – a choice to go to school or to work, to charge our credit card, a choice to party, a choice to go into debt. These are our choices, and we are not trapped by them.
At first, this sounds like an assignment of guilt – and it can be. But that’s not what caused it to bubble around in my head this afternoon. It’s how the subject of choice celebrates my (our) empowerment. We choose to be where we are.
I did not get “stuck” with Subway. I don’t have a great resume or $40/hr job skills, but I did choose to put other things before that – things that I felt were more important. I did choose to get a degree, and I did choose to study the things I wanted to rather than the things that would get me a job. And, as great practical planning, I also chose not to get into debt. As personal preference, I chose not to work towards a family, or pursuing a relationship for the sake of a relationship. I did not choose to be recommended for surgery, but I did choose to take extra time off afterwards, on my own dollar. I did choose to write the law school admissions tests, and then I chose not to study a career that I was qualified for but didn’t love. And now, I choose to motivate myself out of that post-firing, post-surgery lethargy by working a job that will pay my bills, have me on my feet, and that I already know and easily understand before moving on to other challenges: I choose Subway.
As an added bonus, some of the best people I’ve ever met have worked alongside me in that goofy green shirt.
I still couldn’t work up the courage to tell my friend to her face, but life is full of one-step-at-a-time choices. And every step that we realize is our own, is one that echoes with a sound of security and assurance. Let the people whose opinion I value hear that.
I’m working at Subway. Come on by – let me make you a sub. I won’t be there forever.
- Z
