Johnny Boy Marketing

So much of this world is hard. By that, I don’t mean “difficult,” though yes, it is that, too. What I mean by “hard” is the opposite of “soft.” I’m talking about the kind of thing that, when you bump your shin or — God forbid — your pinkie toe against it, it fucking hurts.

Some hard stuff is obvious. For example, I have a silver dollar-sized scar on my forehead from a 2021 incident in which I became dizzy while power-washing the deck, took what I thought was a safe step to the ground and learned that thought was incorrect when I missed the forgotten bottom step and stumbled head-first into the concrete base of our house. That shit? Yeah, it’s hard.

Some hard stuff is less obvious and, I’ve learned, isn’t felt by everyone. To me, hearing about another mass shooting or seeing the struggles of a mentally ill homeless man isn’t merely felt emotionally. It feels the same as it does if I stumble headfirst into concrete.

Lately, I’ve been smashing into a lot of the hard stuff, and honestly, I’m bruised. Badly.

I see people who are certifiable optimists, who genuinely are happy and who don’t feel the hardness that seems to dog me. Part of me envies those people. Part of me thinks they are willfully ignorant or blindingly stupid.

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Monday evening after work, I went down to St. Louis to an area I know is frequented by those without a home right now. In my trunk were about 20 bags of supplies — things like warm socks, gloves, toothpaste, non-perishable food and bottles of water. We were expecting snow Tuesday night, and I wanted to get these bags — which I was able to assemble thanks to some generous donations by family, friends and acquaintances — out of my trunk and into the hands of people who can actually use what’s in them.

When I pulled up to this area, I saw a guy who dropped his jeans to his ankles and began urinating on a parking meter. He finished doing what was necessary, but then he just stood there, swaying almost imperceptibly back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. I watched for a good five minutes as cars drove by without stopping, pedestrians crossed to the other sidewalk and the world continued to spin as if there weren’t a man with his jeans around his ankles in the middle of what is supposedly one of Muricah’s great cities.

So I went over to him.

Yes, I was scared. As I’ve written about, I was raised to fear homeless people. Add nakedness to homelessness and yeah, there was fear.

I tapped him on the shoulder gently, and I could tell he wasn’t really with this world right then. I’m sure he was nodding off from some kind of drug. But when I tapped him and said, “Hey brother. Let’s make sure you don’t get arrested,” he smiled faintly and seemed to realize what was going on. Slowly, very unsteadily, he pulled up his jeans and, without a word, wandered away into the park.

It took me all of five minutes to give away the bags I had — as well as four garbage bags stuffed with clothes that were infinitely wearable but are a sign that I have a bad habit of collecting T-shirts, sweatshirts and shoes. I could have given out more if I had more to give.

Every single person whom I talked with was kind and appreciative. I told them all about the snow coming in. We take for granted that things like that are easily knowable, but if you don’t have a home, it’s not. Some showed genuine fear when I told them the range of expected snowfall — somewhere between 5 and 10 inches at the time.

That hurt. That’s the type of hardness I’m talking about.

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Not all hardness is external — things like the rampant mass shootings over the past few days (decades) and homelessness. Some are things of my own creation, things that are decidedly internal.

I’ve been through many wars in my life — from a challenging childhood in many ways to the death of my first son to a lifelong battle with brain illness. Not all the wars are that big, though. Over the past month or so, I’ve fought to continue a treatment program I’ve been in since the summer. Why? Because our HR department decided at the last minute to switch insurance carriers and there was no time before the year ended to get re-approved to continue treatment. Then, when I finally got my member ID in the second week in January, the insurance company denied the treatment and then denied the appeal. Why? Good question. It wasn’t because of anything medical. It was because insurance companies make up part of the hardness that is life. A month later, after numerous emails and phone calls and impassioned pleas, I finally found the right person willing to step up and advocate for me where I couldn’t.

On the day that whole issue was solved, my wife found it odd that I wasn’t excited that I’d be able to resume the treatment, that I’d won. Part of me was. But part of me was so incredibly bruised and battered from having to fight people with no medical training and who really aren’t people possessing free will but are merely the embodiment of a fucked-up process that seeks to deny people what those with medical degrees say is effective and necessary. That, my friends, is bullshit, and that is part of why I’m so tired right now.

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I have been blessed to have a few really amazing, really intimate, really powerful glimpses into what comes after this life. I know that makes me sound crazy. I’m fine if that’s the prevailing opinion of me. What I know is that something much, much better awaits, and I don’t believe that merely on faith.

That has made the hardness of this world even more bruising, because There? There isn’t like that. There is beautiful. There is contentment raised to a whole new level. There is rest. Nothing about There is hard. Which makes it very, very attractive when this place does its damage.

I’m told that my mission is to bring some of There to Here, and to a degree, I accept that. Everyone has a purpose in life, a mission of some sort, though many fail to find it and still fewer even begin the journey to accomplish it. I don’t blame them. It’s the hardness of this world that makes that purpose seem opaque at times. On top of that, knowing your purpose and acting upon that knowledge doesn’t spare you from the bruising. In fact, it often opens you up to more of it … like trying to navigate an unfamiliar hotel room to find the bathroom in the dead of night.

Yet knowing what my purpose is and being somewhat committed to living it out doesn’t mean I like it or even prefer it to what awaits. Yes, I can bring some of that amazing There to Here. But the world is still going to be a hard, hard place. Nothing I can do changes that.

So I think about the girl on the beach, patiently chucking starfish that have been washed ashore back into the ocean, one at a time. A man walks up to her and asks her why she’s wasting her time, that there’s no way she can make a difference in this situation before those starfish die.

“Yes, you’re right,” she says, holding up one starfish. “But I can make a difference for this one.”

That’s my hope. That’s why I keep going.

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I am 48 years old. If you take a look at health news articles and match up the things that are supposed to shorten your life to the things I’ve had, I should have been dead about 10 years ago. I’m not, so I continue.

There’s nothing heroic or admirable about that. Take suicide off the table and there aren’t really any other options. None of us chooses to breathe or have brain waves. We just … do. I thought of this often back when my son died. People would say, “I don’t know how you’re doing it. I know I couldn’t.” Yeah you could. It’s not hard to wake up in the morning. It just sorta happens, whether you’re ready to face another day or not.

I long for the same things today that I longed for then. I look for a safe, soft place to land after a tough day. I crave refuge from life’s storms. I long to be held and comforted like my soul seems to need. I soak in the bright spots that sometimes appear and marvel at the rainbows that are oh-so fleeting and oh-so elusive. I seek comfort and solace and to give comfort and solace to others wounded by the hardness of living.

All of this that I long for seems to be increasingly hard to find. What I once had is gone. What remains is sparse. Everyone is busy. Everyone has other things to do. Everyone is slammed by their jobs or their kids or their (insert bullshit excuse to not connect with fellow humans here). So few seem to be truly living, and of those who are, not many seem willing to invest much time in being my actual real-life friend.

I want to live. I’ve sought others to live alongside. I’ve made mistakes in the process and I’ve paid and am paying for them. Some broken things can’t be put back together, kinda like the leg lamp in A Christmas Story. All the glue is gone, and I’m pretty sure someone did that shit on purpose.

I think what I’m really feeling now is the cost of living in an increasingly hard world with so few people outside of my immediately family to travel with. I’m lonely. Painfully so. I try. I do. And I’m not giving up on those efforts. But I’m also not getting any younger and this place ain’t getting any softer.

I’m bruised. I’m tired. I don’t know how any of this actually changes.

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