Soul To Squeeze

"When I find my piece of mind, I'm gonna give you some of my good time."
- Red Hot Chili Peppers, Soul to Squeeze

I resent having developed a callus on my middle finger during grade school. I would hold my pens and pencils against that finger during the countless hours of writing, and the finger would swell and ache. I remembered picking at the irritated skin, complaining all the while. My teachers and my parents would explain that I was developing a callus, a resistance that would ultimately make me better equipped to hold the pen for the rest of my life without pain. Today, I resent having developed that callus because I can't remember the last time I held a pen. I wish I had spent those years learning to type instead.

My fingers are beginning to develop new calluses now that I am trying to learn how to play my bass guitar. Once again, I am faced with the pains of gaining resistances that would ultimately make me better equipped to face for the rest of my life with less pain. Once again, I am making myself uncomfortable in order to make the future better.

As my forming calluses ache, I ponder my philosophy about the role of pain in decision making. I believe that I should intentionally make choices that result in a balance of the most pleasure and the least pain. As my callusing fingers can attest, though, current pain for long-term pleasure is sometimes necessary and even the ideal.

I rub my middle finger where I had formed that callus back in grade school, and I ponder the concept of foresight. Sometimes, as my teachers and parents were, I will simply be wrong about the future. Foresight allows me to imagine how the future might go based on the evidence I have from past experiences. But, if you have ever done any investing at all, you know that past performance does not dictate future results. I am not able to accurately predict the future 100% of the time, and my mounting fears make it harder to be willing to invest at all.

The callus on my middle finger is useless today. The years I spent forming it didn't pay off the way they had predicted. In a way, I resent having been made to endure so much pain for such a useless reward. I sometimes wish I had just put a bandaid over that finger everyday to avoid the pain. In another way, though, I am glad I was made to form this useless callus.

The callus itself might not do anything today, but I did gain other benefits from the experience. Diligence, determination through difficulty, an ability to assess risk and reward, confidence in the face of challenges, and the audacity to face the frightening and sometimes painful ambiguity of the future, were just a few of the things reinforced by my experiences building this callus. I am thankful for the development of those lessons, as they do serve me well today, even if the callus does not.

Other examples of efforts that do not necessarily manifest themselves in predicted or hoped-for ways include high school athletes, musicians, actors, etc. In adulthood, they might find themselves working at a corporate cubicle and never using the talents they fostered in their youth. Nonetheless, their experiences from the past continue to influence and shape their current experiences and behaviors. Those investments did not pay off as expected, but they still paid off.

Developing the new calluses on the bass guitar, I play the Red Hot Chili Peppers' song, Soul To Squeeze. This song will always hold particularly personal significance to me because I learned it long before I ever heard the track. I first heard the chorus lyrics muttered by a shipmate in naval bootcamp. He would sing the tune to himself while he worked, and one day I asked him if he would teach the lyrics to me. So, only knowing what he taught me, I began to sing, "I got a bad disease. Up from my brain is where I bleed…"

Playing this song takes me back to bootcamp, where I had faced a new level of emotional pain, and had to form a few new calluses of sorts. I was so terrified in my first days. I would stand at attention and weep. My blood pressure was so high, my nose would just start bleeding at random times. Like a good little sailor, I maintained my military bearing while tears rolled down my cheeks and blood dripped off my upper lip.

A big black man, strong in body and chalked full of testicular fortitude, pulled me aside and patiently listened while I told him about my fears. He was a good man, and his encouragement helped me more than I ever knew how to articulate. However, as the weeks of bootcamp went on, I found my own strength to carry on, and I eventually became very arrogant and unfriendly. On one of our last days, I started a fight with that big black man. Why? Because I was an idiot. I have no other explanation. The fight was quick. He lifted me off my feet and flung me across the room. Then he stood over my crumpled frame and spat down at me, "Don't forget where your balls came from!"

As I play the bass tabs to Soul to Squeeze, I still remember where my balls came from. In some small way, I diligently form these calluses in his memory. I feel like I owe him that much.

Beyond the bass, I'm still forming physical, emotional and psychological calluses in my life. I am becoming stronger everyday. In an effort to give others some of this good time, I find myself parroting my grade school era teachers and parents, and that big black man who gave me my balls. When I relate with people who are covered in figurative bandaids or body armor they use to avoid the pain of learning, I try to help them understand the future value of the pain they face today. I invite them to peel off some of those bandaids, or remove some of that armor. Sure, it is going to hurt when they do, but I remind them why they were born with the ability to feel in the first place. I remind them that they will adapt if they stick with it. Calluses will form, and we can face the ambiguous future hoping together that they will not be decimated in the long term.

Some of these calluses won't pay off the way we hope or imagine. We will inevitably resent the forming of some of them. We will look back one day and wish that at least some of the choices we made had been different. However, we will also hopefully find ourselves stronger and braver than we had previously been. We will hopefully be able to see that even the most useless calluses remind us where our balls came from.

Cracks and Textures

I've sat in this asylum for longer than I can remember. The most I'd moved was the distinct rock forward and back, my shoulders swaying to a tune only I could hear. My forehead would come within centimeters of the white wall. Long ago I used to hit the wall with my head, but they put a stop to that quick enough. My eyes wide open, my nearsightedness has been an advantage. I can pick out the little cracks and textures of the wall. I've memorized them. They'd come into focus with each forward rock, and blur with each lean back. They were my cracks and textures. This was my wall. This was my little bit of this big world.

So, when the therapists came, and they showed me what the world looks like when you aren't just staring at the same wall all day, I was impressed by the colors and all the new things to see. Everything was a blur. I'd never needed glasses before, and I chose to give no indication I needed them now. I just enjoyed watching the blurs. I would giggle like a little school girl, and bounce up and down.

"I want that! I want that!" I would scream as I bounced.

"Thank you," I'd tell them. "I am so happy to finally see all this! There is so much here! I love it all."

I wish I had told them I could only see a few inches past my own nose. I wish they'd told me seeing all this, standing among it all day and being expected to remember the significance of all the little details, would be so exhausting.

It didn't take long before I missed my wall. I missed the familiar cracks and textures.

Then she stepped up close to me, and hooked her arms around my neck. I rocked forward and back, and she rocked with me. She pulled my face down close to hers, so her nose touched mine. Her blue eyes smiled up at me. I knew her. She came to visit all the time. I think she was my wife, but I couldn't remember exactly. All I knew from the way she looked at me was that she thought of me as fondly as I thought of my wall. She knew all my cracks and textures. She had memorized every one of them. I was her little bit of this big world. I was her wall.

I wondered if she wanted to be my wall, too.

Every Whisper of Every Waking Hour

I am listening to R.E.M.'s The One I Love.

For reasons I can't explain, this is probably the song most often stuck in my head.
It probably has the fewest lyrics of any song I know, and yet I also feel like I'm not remembering all of them.

Truth is, I forgot the one word chorus: Fire!

But it is this one line that sticks with me: "A simple prop to occupy my time."

I didn't remember 'prop'. I kept singing it to myself as 'pawn.'
I'm not sure that one is necessarily better than the other. A prop is a lifeless piece of the scene. It is used by the actor and its involvement inevitably points back to the character or plot. The prop itself is not the focus, and only has value insofar as it adds to the audience's experience of the scene, plot or characters. On the other hand, a pawn is a piece of the player's game. Easily sacrificed for the overall pursuit of victory. The most likely to be collateral damage. A thing that only has value insofar as it serves the greater good perceived by the player.

As that line echoes in my mind, I feel a great sadness for this prop, or pawn. If there is anyone whom I consider in that way, they are being used by me, and not truly being loved by me. This makes the song painfully ironic.

I change songs, but not artists. Now, Losing My Religion is playing.

As I stare into tear soaked eyes, and listen to whispers of fears that the future no longer looks quite as bright, I softly admit, "Tomorrow is not ruined by the choices we make today. The future is made all the more worthwhile."

Have you ever told anyone, "Life is bigger than you, and you are not me." Every time I've done it, the other person has heard it as an insult. That's not really a surprise, when I think about it.

I told someone once that I had just said too much, but hadn't said enough. Catching the reference, that person simply said, "Get out of the corner." Even now, that response makes me smile and snort a little.

"I thought that I heard you laughing. I thought that I heard you sing."

It is significant to me that he does not hear you, but only thought he did.

Have you ever wanted to not feel the way you do? It is not that you do not feel that way. You do feel it. But, you don't want to. You wish you didn't. You may even try to force it, or hide it, or deny it, but in the end, you simply can't. You feel that way.

"I think I thought I saw you try."

Here, he does not even think it. Not really. He only thinks he thought he saw.

"Consider this, the slip that brought me to my knees, failed. What if all these fantasies come flailing around?"

Bertrand Russell, in an essay about why he was not a Christian, explained that the religion would compare two people: On the one hand was an international relief worker, going around the world saving lives and making a profound impact on the world. This brave and heroic person also favored the company of sexual partners to whom she was not married. On the other hand was a person who never left home, never lifted a finger to help a neighbor, and never saw beyond her own nose, but also never 'sinned.' His issue was that the religion inevitably glorified the selfish for not sinning and demonized the hero as a sinner.

In my own life, I have found that I have been the go-nowhere hermit who sought never to sin. Only recently have I even considered stepping out, and my greatest fear is that I will fail. It is a needless fear, though, because I know that I will certainly fail at some point in some way. I will hurt to the point of being brought to my knees. But, there is a hope that pushes me out that door with confidence, and this song speaks to that confidence when Michael sings:

"Every whisper of every waking hour, I'm choosing my confessions."

I am choosing...