Mr Winthrop! Hard To Port! Aye! Aye Sir!

Cathy, I'm lost, I said, though I knew she was sleeping.
I'm empty and I'm aching and I don't know why.
Countin' the cars on the New Jersey turnpike
They've all come to look for America, all come to look for America

 

America

 

Paul Simon.

America. Supposedly at one time it was where you could flee to escape the serfdom of Europe. Or at least, from whatever your background. You had chance to shrug off your old life and “make it here.” There was no guarantee that you would, but the chance was there. Now the only freedom offered is to become rich enough where the day to day realities of surviving don’t bother you. You purchase it today.

If you’re a boomer or at least a child of the 70’s, you’re probably into self actualization. If you aren’t, you are; because it surrounds everyone of this country. Big business has turned a rather singular, personal quest for improvement into a cash cow.

Losing weight, exercising, tweaking your mind, mental issues, marriage/relationship problems, self help books, PBS tv shows with the newest Depak Chopra offering the a DVD that’ll show you how to improve your life. It’s all out there. Everywhere.

I was born this self help era into without even knowing it. I think my realization hit me when I saw a book on my mother’s table called, Your Erroneous Zones by Wayne Dwyer. I read it and barely understood it at twelve. But there it was, a guide on how to “get what you want out of life.” I thought my mom had everything she wanted, what would she be lacking? Well, chalk that up to an immature kid who hadn’t really lived life yet.

There have been, for lack of a better phrase, episodes in my life where I wanted to change course. The impetus for that was an acknowledgment, that came late of course, that what I was doing, who I was with; was headed no where.

One such episode I call the “Horton’s Lot” part of my life. I grew up with an odd mix of middle/blue collar class kids who were proto-criminals. Sprouting punks if you will. Defiant little pricks who acted out just to be free, or more likely, to expend a reservoir of anger that was created by god knows what in their pasts.

Horton’s lot was a parking lot next to a sprawling chemical complex called Teknor Apex that made just about anything out of poly vinyl chloride. We’d all gather there on most nights, more so nearer the weekend to hang out. The weekends it was a party spot where we all could drink and have fun. For some reason, the Pawtucket Police never bothered us. Till one night.

The lot of us just engaged in typical adolescent misdemeanor behavior. Drinking, smoking pot and driving drunk when it wasn’t the crime that it was today. But a select few of us, seemed to be gunning for something more exciting and dangerous.

One night, the police and a few detectives were spying on our group without our awareness. Then, like you see on cop shows, a bunch of police appeared out of nowhere and swarmed through our crowd. They blew past most of us and gunned for John Z. and threw him up against a car and slapped the cuffs on him.

After that commotion, I had to ask why they wanted him as I was clueless. Stacey said he had been involved in a armed robbery of a liquor store earlier that week. He was the ripe age of 17. Dumb shit he was. Up until that point, I had thought of John Z as an overactive, wanna-be tough guy looking for a lot of attention.

After that, I reevaluated why I was hanging around that crowd. I immediately stopped going there, to the consternation of everyone. Where is he? Why doesn’t he come down here? Have you seen him? To quote another criminal, Charley Manson, I had X’ed them out of my life.

Since then, I have X’ed others, jobs, attitudes and behaviors out of my life.

You can make course correction after course correction to what you think is better, and most of the time you’re right, at least 60% so. But it never satiates you does it? There is always a push for something “better.” Something else is lacking or there is something else you want.

Now that I think of it, Self Actualization isn’t just a phenomenon of the 70’s, it’s always been here. I’m sure there was some poor hard scrabble farmer a thousand years ago who wished his ears of corn could be fatter and tried something to make them so.

HA! All we did to the “I want MORE out of life” was to codify it from a movement to a quasi religion and finally a business venture.

Will I stop wanting more out of life? Hell no, I’m human.  We're all "looking for America" still.