Catastrophism

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I touched her shoulder and her back a lot. My connection to her, and our comfort with each other,  was evident to anyone who cared to pay attention to us in the crowded bar. Her husband definitely noticed. We had recently traveled together, she and I, and her husband’s mind was swirling with anger, jealousy, and questions.

It was the late 90s. We were all in our 20s, and we were all drinking. Alcohol is often referred to as a social lubricant, a disinhibiter. None of my touching was inappropriate, but without the alcohol, I would surely have demonstrated more respect for her husband, also a good friend. Alcohol is also known to pour fuel on the fire of jealousy. Without the alcohol, he would have recognized a bond between the two sales representatives who, together, handled the company’s biggest customer.

I have always connected with appropriate touch, especially with people I respect and value. Without the haze of alcohol, I never wake up in the morning worried that I might have overdone it.

But something has shifted.

I need the physical contact more than ever. It feels desperate. Hugs held a second or two longer. Handshakes with a left-hand shoulder pat. I keep cupping people’s elbow while I am talking to them. What’s that about? An elbow cup with a squeeze of approval when they say something I endorse? These aren’t street randos. They are people who love me. But still. My reach for the elbow or my extra hug squeeze is completely subconscious. And needy.

It feels like we are transmitting something important through touch. It is like we are telling each other that it’s going to be OK, and even if it’s not, we are going down together. I wonder if there are a lot of cupped elbows when a plane loses an engine?

There I go, catastrophizing. Or am I?

I have spent time recently with people I enjoy and respect, but who seem unfazed by the events that have me uber-fazed. Am I making more of this than I should? Do I recognize the behaviors and consequences of power addiction because I am an addiction expert, or am I an echo-chamber rube?

Are my elbow cups paranoid exaggerations?

Did the Super Bowl feel like completely wasted oxygen to anyone else? For five decades, whether I cared about the competitors or not, the Super Bowl has been an escape – a family-and-friends-centric excuse to eat gluttonously and rate the cleverness of the country’s biggest consumer products brands. Sunday, watching the Super Bowl felt like worrying about the water bill while my house was on fire.

Who the fuck has the energy to care about the halftime show? If I ever have so little going on in my life that I consider a Super Bowl performance to be a controversy worth my consideration I pray that my family will hit me in the face with the shovel they use to dig my shallow grave. I admit that it was entertaining to hear how many people don’t know Puerto Ricans are Americans. It reminded me of the elementary school civics lesson where I first heard the term, “melting pot,” and swelled with pride to learn that the United States is one of the only countries without a national language. The only difference for me between watching Bad Bunny and Shakira a few years ago was that I didn’t get aroused watching Bad Bunny. When has understanding the lyrics ever mattered? Pearl Jam is one of my all-time favorite bands and I’m still trying to figure out what language Eddie Vedder is mumbling.

In the days leading up to Sunday, I asked a lot of people who they were rooting for. Not one single person seemed to care. About the competitors. About the event. About the musical performers. About our home-town Broncos not making it. About the end of the season for our nation’s most popular sport.

Entertainment is the luxury of the safe and secure. It would feel inappropriate to care. Or am I just catastrophizing?

In the western half of the U.S., where all the big ski hills live, there’s no snow. At church Sunday, a friend wore flip-flops so she could enjoy the nail color from her pedicure. One of the classrooms where my wife teaches had two window air conditioners going. I heard a radio news report about a February grass fire southeast of Denver. Yet, climate change feels like an issue for a species that’s going to make it out of this century. The future survivability of the planet feels less important than the Super Bowl.

Am I a catastrophist? Have the people who sleep restfully through the night achieved some form of inner piece for which I should strive? Or is it ignorance?

Or is elbow cupping a sign of my ignorance?

Enrollment in our programs is down. Donations to our nonprofit are down. I don’t think it’s because my generation is drinking less or providing more emotional safety for their families. Mental health and emotional stability don’t seem the driving forces of this particular chapter in history. Is it because we suck at what we do, or is this the ripple of grocery-store prices and tariff-spiked interest rates? Calling the strength of the stock market an indication of the strength of the economy sounds as stupid to the educated middle class as asking Bad Bunny about his immigration status.

The economy goes through cycles. Inflation, GDP stagnation, innovation in new sectors, recession, tax-incentivized investment, etc. In my lifetime, the economy has ebbed and flowed within a largely sustainable range. I know how crass and uniformed that sounds to people suppressed in chronic poverty, but the fact is that our country has prospered since the second world war. Is that ending? Is 38 trillion dollars too many? If not, how much debt is actually alarming for the non-catastrophists? I’m way beyond alarmed right now. When do the people who think to change the channel to watch Kid Rock get worried?

The history books about this era will be written in my lifetime, if humans still bother reading history, that is. Will Trump be like Taft or Coolidge or Garfield – you know the name, but for the life of you, you can’t think of anything he did? Or will the actions and the cruelty of an end-stage power addict classify his presidency as cataclysmic? Am I catastrophizing? Or is this bad?

Try this little exercise–something I do often to try to remain objective in a world almost entirely devoid of unbiased sources of information. Clear your mind of your political opinion, your level of patriotism, your state’s color on the election-night map, your family conditioning, your economic-policy orientation, your love or disdain for a good rally, and how you feel about fast food, ice cream, jelly beans or peanuts.

Now, answer these related questions:

Does pedophelia disqualify a person from leading the free world? What if it’s just alleged pedophelia? What if it’s alleged a bunch of times?

Those feel like questions around which America, the America I knew, could find consensus.

As I’ve defensively said often lately, this is not a political essay. My fear and terror has nothing to do with politics and policy.

When I was a young sales representative back in the late 90s, I submitted huge expense reports classifying a shit-ton of alcohol as “dinner” with customers. All of my sales-team mentors taught me how to do it. Sometimes when I was on the production floor watching a factory worker bust his ass making products I sold, I wondered if he knew how much of our company’s profits I was drinking. I wondered if he would be pissed. What I was doing was wrong, but I did it anyway. I did it because everyone else did it, and I did it because if it was a big deal someone else should have stopped me.

This feels like that, only the stakes are a bagillion times higher. Yet, some people around me just keep plugging along, unfazed, watching the Super Bowl, reading about billionaire pedophiles with subtle head shakes, commenting about the strength of the stock market, ranting that everyone should speak the national language (that doesn’t exist). I feel like a brontosaurus munching on a tree branch wondering if anyone else can see the ten-mile wide rock that’s blocking out the sun.

Am I just catastrophizing, or is this bad? Elbow-cupping bad?

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