Cinemorphosis

Tag: life

  • Thou Shalt Remember That Unsolicited Advice Is a Sacred Path to Humiliation

    Thou Shalt Remember That Unsolicited Advice Is a Sacred Path to Humiliation

    It was junior year, and I was inspecting the high school football team’s weight room—a dank temple of testosterone and tobacco spit. As a self-anointed expert (and Junior Olympic Weightlifting champion, lest anyone forget), I felt entitled to critique everything: the dumbbell selection, the ergonomics, the hygiene, the very air of the place. The floor looked like it had been carpeted with sunflower shells and Copenhagen runoff.

    I had just begun my sermon on the spiritual poverty of their equipment when the team’s starting linebacker, Erik Simonson—a slab of muscle with the conversational subtlety of a freight train—paused mid–military press. His gray-blue eyes locked on me like radar.

    “Is someone paying you to be an asshole,” he said evenly, “or are you doing volunteer work?”

    The weight room erupted. Even I laughed, because the line was perfect—surgical in its cruelty, poetic in its timing. But laughter has an aftertaste, and when I got home that night, the sting of public mockery still clung to me. I turned to my spiritual advisor, Master Po.

    “Master Po,” I said, “why did I invite that kind of humiliation? My criticisms were valid.”

    “Grasshopper,” he said, sipping tea with an aggravating serenity, “you must not go through life believing people crave your opinions. You are not a paid social commentator, though I know your heart yearns to be one.”

    “But weren’t my criticisms legitimate?” I persisted.

    “Legitimacy,” said Po, “is irrelevant. The truth is like chili powder—best applied sparingly. Even those who beg for feedback rarely mean it. They desire flattery dressed as honesty. Therefore, you must learn the art of selective silence. Speak briefly, and when possible, not at all.”

    I sighed. “But I love the sound of my own voice.”

    Po smiled the smile of a man who’s been disappointed by many students before me. “Yes,” he said, “but what sounds like sweet music to your ears may strike others as the shriek of ignorance, emotional poverty, and uninvited arrogance.”

    The next day, I returned to the weight room and said nothing. The linebackers grunted and lifted. I stood in silence, spiritually enlightened and socially intact—a monk in a monastery of iron plates.

  • Thou Shalt Not Confuse Self-Knowledge with Self-Flattery

    Thou Shalt Not Confuse Self-Knowledge with Self-Flattery

    When I was sixteen, my parents divorced—an event I took in stride only because I was too busy staring at my biceps in the mirror. My father moved into an apartment about thirty minutes away, and once a month he’d pick me up, grill a couple of ribeyes, and try to civilize me. It was his way of maintaining paternal authority through meat.

    One evening on his patio, with the smell of charcoal and masculinity wafting in the air, he asked me what I wanted to do with my life after high school. At the time, I was an aspiring bodybuilder with zero interest in college. I wanted a job that paid decently, had steady hours, and left me free to chase the holy trinity of youth: muscle, mirrors, and admiration.

    I told him I was thinking about becoming a sanitation engineer. A few guys at my gym drove garbage trucks and claimed it was honest work with great benefits.

    My father nearly choked on his steak.
    “You can’t be a garbage man,” he said, wiping his mouth with the precision of a surgeon preparing to deliver bad news.

    “Why not?”

    “Because you’re too vain.”

    That line hit like a barbell to the skull.
    “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

    He leaned back and launched into his Socratic cross-examination. “Picture this: You’re at a cocktail party. Everyone’s introducing themselves—doctor, lawyer, software engineer, business executive. Then they get to you. What do you say? ‘Hi, I’m Jeff, and I pick up your trash’? I should think not.”

    “Oh my God, Dad, you’re right.”

    “Of course I’m right,” he said, stabbing the last piece of steak like a punctuation mark. “I’m your father. Now finish your meat and start planning for college.”

    That night I turned to Master Po, my invisible philosopher-therapist, for guidance.

    “Master Po,” I asked, “why did my father insult me by calling me vain?”

    “Grasshopper,” he said, “your father did not insult you. He simply named your disease. Truthful words are not beautiful; they bruise. Flattering words are lovely but poisonous. Your father loves you enough to deliver the ugly truth—that you are a creature driven by vanity and status.”

    “But this means I have to go to college,” I said. “I’ve spent all my high school years pumping iron and admiring my reflection. I’m too dumb for college.”

    “Fear not, Grasshopper,” said Master Po. “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

    “My steps are small,” I said.

    “That is fine,” said Master Po. “An ant on the move does more than a sleeping ox.”

    And so it was: my path to higher learning began not in inspiration but in insult—proof that sometimes enlightenment arrives medium-rare, served with a side of humility.

  • Confessions of a Nine-O’Clock Man

    Confessions of a Nine-O’Clock Man

    Forgive me, but I’m still trying to figure out where I fit in this digitized circus we call life. I’ll be sixty-four in a few days, and you’d think by now I’d have achieved some level of ontological clarity—but no. I’m still ensnared by the shimmer of online browsing, the algorithmic promise that I might finally become “somebody” by curating a virtual persona. Mostly, the internet feels like a tease: a hall of mirrors where everyone’s reflection looks happier, thinner, and better lit.

    I tell myself I want to contribute, to engage, to share some original thought. But then I open the news and wonder what I could possibly add to the churning doomscroll—what fresh moral insight could come from a man who still double-checks whether he unplugged the toaster?

    It would be laughable for me to preach self-control. I can barely keep my own appetites in check. Apart from my morning kettlebell rituals—five days a week of grunting and penance—I’m an introverted “cozy boy.” I stay home, binge true crime docuseries on Netflix, and rotate my diver watches like a museum curator with OCD. I make my monkish meals: buckwheat groats, Japanese yams, steel-cut oats, tofu glazed in teriyaki and moral superiority. I am a herbivore surrounded by carnivores. My family mocks me gently while gnawing ribs.

    Sometimes, in a fit of ambition, I record a two-minute piano piece for my neglected YouTube channel. It receives twelve views, one of them mine, and a comment that reads, simply, “Lovely.” The algorithm yawns and moves on.

    I am obsessed with the rituals of minor luxury—fine organic whole-bean coffee that accompanies me in my morning writing jaunts, triple-milled soap redolent of rose and citrus, podcast playlists curated for insomniac philosophers. My life is the slow burn of scent and sound, a long intermission between existential crises.

    By nine o’clock, I’m done. My wife and daughters laugh as I shuffle off to bed, a middle-aged Sisyphus retiring his rock for the night. I read for twenty minutes, then fall asleep to the soothing drone of Andrew Sullivan or Sam Harris debating civilization’s decay. It’s my lullaby of reason and despair.

    Forgive me if this sounds paltry. I’m still trying to figure it all out—how to live, how to matter, how to grow up before the credits roll.

  • The Wise Man Must Polish His Soul Before Critiquing Someone Else’s Plumbing

    The Wise Man Must Polish His Soul Before Critiquing Someone Else’s Plumbing

    It was a Saturday afternoon, and I was trapped in my bedroom, waiting for the plumber to leave so I could sneak into the kitchen and make a protein shake. I could still hear him grunting and groaning under the sink like a walrus in a crawlspace. Through my bedroom window—across the little atrium separating me from the scene of domestic violation—I could see his open toolbox: a chrome battlefield of wrenches, pipes, and filthy rags sprawled across the linoleum like the aftermath of a plumbing apocalypse.

    My mother tiptoed into my room and whispered, “It’s so nice of him to do this.”
    I frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “He’s not charging me,” she said with the glee of someone who’d just gamed capitalism.
    “Of course he’s charging you.”
    She shook her head. “He’s a friend.”
    “You just met him.”
    “His name is Paul Bergdorf. One of my girlfriends introduced me.”
    “Mom,” I said, “this isn’t going to end well.”
    “Keep your voice down,” she hissed, which is parental shorthand for I know you’re right but don’t ruin it.

    Bergdorf shouted from the kitchen that he was finished. My mother floated toward the sound of her rescuer while I picked up my barbell and started doing reverse curls—the exercise of choice for sons on the verge of moral intervention.

    From my vantage point through the sliding glass door, I saw the man emerge from under the sink. Paul Bergdorf was a specimen of middle-aged decay: a big gut pressing against his jeans like bread dough rising from its pan, grease-slick hair combed over his scalp in defiance of reality, and a face red and puffy as if carved from boiled ham. His eyes were glazed, his nose bulbous, his stubble crawling toward his ears. The man radiated cologne, sweat, and failure.

    He wiped his hands on a rag, tested the faucet, and said proudly, “All fixed. Now before I go, I may not be the best-looking man in town, but I can make a hell of a steak. I’m talking big, thick, juicy steaks—barbecue the way it’s meant to be done.”
    “That’s nice,” my mother said, “but no thanks.”

    I continued curling, the barbell becoming heavier with every syllable of his pitch. My forearms burned, but my fury was burning hotter.

    “I’ll get the best cuts,” he said, grinning. “You’ve never had steak like mine.”
    “That’s very kind, but I’m busy.”
    “Just pick a weekend. I’ll do the rest.”

    That did it. I charged down the hallway, forearms pumped, veins bulging, looking like an interventionist deity of adolescent righteousness.

    “How many times,” I asked, “does she have to say no?”

    Bergdorf stepped back, rag in hand, suddenly less swaggering. “Hey, let’s cool it, kid. I just wanted to ask your mom out. I’ve been working on this sink all day—it’s the least you could let me do.”

    “If you want to fix sinks for free, that’s your business,” I said, “but you’re entitled to nothing—not steak, not gratitude, not my mother.”

    “I just wanted to barbecue,” he mumbled.
    “Congratulations,” I said. “You’ve told everyone within a five-mile radius that you’re a steak virtuoso. Now leave.”

    Bergdorf, perspiring and wounded, gathered his tools, slammed the toolbox shut, and stomped out to his truck. The engine roared, the tires squealed, and the house filled with the lingering scent of sweat, smoke, and Stetson cologne.

    My mother stood in the kitchen, arms crossed. “You scared him away.”
    “Damn right.”
    “The neighbors say you’re getting too big and too scary. Maybe you should cool it for a while.”
    “I’m not cooling anything.”
    “Sal Tedesco says his son sees you working out with some crazy football player.”
    “His name is John Matuszak,” I said. “And he’s not crazy.”

    I could still smell Bergdorf’s presence hanging in the air like a curse. “God, he stinks,” I said. “That smell’s never leaving this house. Just hire a plumber next time, okay?”

    I retreated to my room, slammed the door, and sat on the bed. My forearms throbbed. My conscience twitched. I turned to Master Po, my invisible therapist and ancient Chinese philosopher in exile.

    “Was I wrong to drive that man away?” I asked.
    “Your mother was managing the situation,” said Po, his voice calm as incense smoke. “You intervened because you lack patience—and because control soothes your fear.”
    “But he wouldn’t leave.”
    “Everything leaves in time,” said Po. “You must learn the difference between protecting and meddling. The sage does not seize control of others’ lives; he tidies his own.”

    He glanced around my room: dirty gym clothes strewn across the floor, cracked tiles, a broken window patched with a Cap’n Crunch cereal box.

    “Grasshopper,” he said, “before you become your mother’s moral custodian, try cleaning your own temple. It is written: the wise man polishes his soul before critiquing someone else’s plumbing.”

  • Thou Shalt Honor the Monster Who Shows Mercy

    Thou Shalt Honor the Monster Who Shows Mercy

    At sixteen, I thought I knew what a monster was. Then I met one—an authentic, breathing specimen of mythic proportions: John Matuszak, defensive lineman for the Oakland Raiders, the kind of man who made other men rethink their species.

    I’d seen him on TV—hulking, bearded, snarling—but television flattened him into two dimensions. In person, at The Weight Room in Hayward, California, Matuszak looked like evolution had taken a brief detour toward the gods. Nearly seven feet tall, close to 300 pounds, he was a paradox of mass and grace—slender by geometry, enormous by gravity. His hair was a feral snarl, his beard an ecosystem, and his eyes had the predatory focus of a hawk scanning for something foolish enough to move.

    One afternoon, the gym speakers played England Dan and John Ford Coley’s “Love Is the Answer”—a ballad so syrupy it could give insulin shock to a diabetic. Matuszak’s lips curled. “Bullshit,” he muttered, then grabbed the barbell loaded with 400 pounds and began to press, growling his blasphemy with each rep as if the song itself had personally insulted his testosterone.

    Between sets, he asked if I played football.
    “No,” I said, “I’m a bodybuilder—sort of.”
    He raised an eyebrow. “How old are you?”
    “Sixteen.”
    “Good for you,” he said, clapping a hand on my shoulder that felt like a catcher’s mitt made of stone. “Keep training, my brother.”

    Then he disappeared into the locker room, leaving me with the distinct impression that Zeus himself had just offered career advice.

    The kindness startled me. I’d heard the legends—Matuszak the maniac, Matuszak the ungovernable animal who devoured offensive linemen and bar fights with equal ferocity. Yet here he was, treating me, a lost, self-conscious teenager, with decency and warmth. The other pros at the gym wouldn’t even glance at me, but Matuszak talked to me like I mattered. He looked me in the eye. He saw me.

    When he emerged from the locker room later, showered and reborn as a gentleman—a sports coat, slacks, mirrored sunglasses—he’d point at me and say, “See you later, kid.” Then he’d vanish, as if returning to Mount Olympus by way of Interstate 880.

    I couldn’t reconcile it: this colossal madman known as The Tooz, destroyer of quarterbacks, showing kindness to a scrawny sixteen-year-old who barely knew what he was doing in life, much less the gym. That night, puzzled, I asked Master Po what it meant.

    “Grasshopper,” he said, “the Tooz is drawn to you for two reasons. First, your innocence. You want nothing from him. Everyone else approaches him with hidden motives—flattery, exploitation, self-interest. You are too young to be calculating, and he finds that purity refreshing. Second, you remind him of himself before he was devoured by fame and its demons. When he looks into your eyes, he sees the ghost of his younger self, a version unspoiled by appetite. The innocent, Grasshopper, give the fallen hope. They are proof that a life before corruption still exists.”

    “But Master Po,” I said, “I’m not innocent. I’m corrupt. I feel it.”

    He smiled that maddening, merciful smile. “Perhaps. But corruption is relative, Grasshopper. What feels like depravity to you may seem like mere dust on the soul to others. Never forget: even the fallen recognize light, and sometimes, they bow before it.”

  • Today I Gave My Students a Lesson on Real and Fake Engagement

    Today I Gave My Students a Lesson on Real and Fake Engagement

    I teach the student athletes at my college, and right now we’re exploring a question that cuts to the bone of modern life: Why are we so morally apathetic toward companies that feed our addictions, glamorize eating disorders, and employ CEOs who behave like cult leaders or predators?

    We’ve watched three documentaries to anchor our research: Brandy Hellville and the Cult of Fast Fashion (Max), Trainwreck: The Cult of American Apparel (Max), and White Hot: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch (Netflix). Each one dissects a different brand, but the pathology beneath them is the same—companies built not on fabric, but fantasy. For four weeks, I lectured about this moral rot. My students listened politely. Eyes glazed. Interest flatlined. It was clear: they didn’t care about fashion.

    So today, I tried something different. I told them to forget about the clothes. The essay, I explained, isn’t really about fashion—it’s about selling illusion. These brands were never peddling T-shirts or jeans; they were peddling a fantasy of beauty, popularity, and belonging. And they did it through something I called fake engagement—a kind of fever swamp where people mistake addiction for connection, and attention for meaning.

    Fake engagement is the psychological engine of our times. It’s the dopamine loop of social media and the endless scroll. People feed their insecurities into it and get rewarded with the mirage of significance: likes, follows, attention. It’s an addictive system built on FOMO and self-erasure. Fake engagement is a demon. The more you feed it, the hungrier it gets. You buy things, post things, watch things, all to feel visible—and yet every click deepens the void.

    This pathology is not confined to consumer brands. The entire economy now depends on it. Influencers sell fake authenticity. YouTubers stage “relatable” chaos. Politicians farm outrage to harvest donations. Every sphere of life—from entertainment to governance—has been infected by the logic of the algorithm: engagement above truth, virality above virtue.

    I told my students they weren’t hearing anything new. The technologist Jaron Lanier has been warning us for over a decade that digital platforms are rewiring our brains, turning us into unpaid content providers for an economy of distraction. But then I reminded them that as athletes, they actually hold a kind of immunity to this epidemic.

    Athletes can’t survive on fake engagement. They can’t pretend to win a game. They can’t filter a sprint or Photoshop a jump shot. Their work depends on real engagement—trust, discipline, and honest feedback. Their coaches demand evidence, not illusion. That’s what separates a competitor from a content creator. One lives in the real world; the other edits it out.

    In sports, there’s no algorithm to flatter you. Reality is merciless and fair. You either make the shot or you don’t. You either train or you coast. You either improve or you plateau. The scoreboard has no patience for your self-image.

    I contrasted this grounded reality with the digital circus we’ve come to call culture. Mukbang YouTubers stuff themselves with 10,000 calories on camera for likes. Watch obsessives blow through their savings chasing luxury dopamine. Influencers curate their “personal brand” as if selfhood were a marketing campaign. They call this engagement. I call it pathology. They’re chasing the same empty high that the fast-fashion industry monetized years ago: the belief that buying something—or becoming something online—can fill the hole of disconnection.

    This is the epistemic crisis of our time: a collective break from reality. People no longer ask whether something is true or good; they ask whether it’s viral. We’re a civilization medicated by attention, high on engagement, and bankrupt in meaning.

    That’s why I tell my athletes their essay isn’t about fashion—it’s about truth. About how human beings become spiritually and mentally sick when they lose their relationship to reality. You can’t heal what you refuse to see. And you can’t see anything clearly when your mind is hijacked by dopamine economics.

    The world doesn’t need more influencers. It needs coaches—people who ground others in trust, expertise, and evidence. Coaches model a form of mentorship that Silicon Valley can’t replicate. They give feedback that isn’t gamified. They remind players that mastery requires patience, and that progress is measured in skill, not clicks.

    When you think about it, the word coach itself has moral weight. It implies guidance, not manipulation. Accountability, not performance. A coach is the opposite of an influencer: they aren’t trying to be adored; they’re trying to make you better. They aren’t feeding your addiction to attention; they’re training your focus on reality.

    I told my students that if society is going to survive this digital delirium, we’ll need millions of new coaches—mentors, teachers, parents, and friends who can anchor us in truth when everything around us is optimized for illusion. The fast-fashion brands we study are just one symptom of a larger disease: the worship of surface.

    But reality, like sport, eventually wins. The body knows when it’s neglected. The mind knows when it’s being used. Truth has a way of breaking through even the loudest feed.

    The good news is that after four weeks of blank stares, something finally broke through. When I reframed the essay—not as a takedown of fashion, but as a diagnosis of fake engagement—the room changed. My athletes sat up straighter. They started nodding. Their eyes lit up. For the first time all semester, they were engaged.

    The irony wasn’t lost on me. The essay about fake engagement had just produced the real kind.

  • Thou Shalt Not Cram Thine Enormous Head into Symbols of Conformity

    Thou Shalt Not Cram Thine Enormous Head into Symbols of Conformity

    The Canyon High locker room smelled like a crime scene of adolescence—dirty socks fermenting in old sneakers, wet towels decaying in piles, and the sour musk of Old Spice cologne trying to mask failure. I sat on a cold bench, wearing my junior varsity football uniform—pants, cleats, pads, and a white jersey that clung to me like a bad decision. On the bench beside me gleamed a red helmet, polished to an evil shine. It looked less like protective gear and more like an executioner’s hood with a face mask.

    Greg Migliore and Gil Gutierrez—two teammates with all the empathy of drill sergeants—were looming over me.
    “Put on the helmet,” Migliore said. “O-line drills in five minutes.”
    “Don’t rush me,” I said. “This may take a minute.”
    Gutierrez folded his arms. “We’ve got to be on the field now.”
    “Look at that thing,” I said, nodding toward the red dome. “It’s way too small.”
    “No, it isn’t,” said Gutierrez. “That’s the biggest one.”
    “But my head’s huge.”
    Migliore rolled his eyes. “My head’s bigger and it fits fine.”
    “It’s not just the size,” I said. “It’s the shape. Mine’s like a misshapen pumpkin.”
    “Put the damn thing on,” said Gutierrez, tired of my existential crisis.

    I obeyed, sort of. I placed the helmet on top of my head like a crown for a reluctant monarch. It perched there, refusing to descend.
    “I told you—it’s too small.”
    “Jesus, McMahon, are you crazy?” Gutierrez barked. “Pull it all the way down.”

    Before I could protest, Gutierrez grabbed the helmet and forced it onto my head. My skull shrieked in silence. My temples were in a vise, my ears screaming in protest, my lungs begging for oxygen.
    “Jesus, it’s tight!” I gasped. “I can’t breathe!”
    “You’ll get used to it,” Migliore said, clearly an optimist about cranial suffocation.

    I didn’t get used to it. I screamed—an unholy, primal shriek—and ripped the helmet off like it was on fire. My ears throbbed as if I’d peeled them off with the facemask.
    Gutierrez and Migliore collapsed in laughter.
    “It’s not funny!” I shouted, my face crimson. “I almost died!”
    They laughed harder, which only deepened my martyrdom.
    “You think this is funny? Great. Tell Coach Croswell I quit.”
    “Quit?” Migliore said. “You haven’t even started.”
    “Yeah, well not being able to wear the helmet kind of ruins the experience.”
    Migliore turned to Gutierrez. “The dude’s got claustrophobia.”
    “Stage three,” I said. “Can’t ride elevators. Tell the coach it’s over.”
    “You’re the biggest freshman in the school,” Gutierrez said. “He’s going to flip.”
    “Then tell him I’m a claustrophobic pacifist. I don’t even like football. I was doing this as a favor, but it’s not working out.”

    I changed back into my civilian clothes and went home, where Master Po awaited—my inner monk of bad timing.
    “Master Po,” I said, “should I feel guilty for quitting?”
    “Grasshopper,” he said, “you must know the difference between self-improvement and self-distortion. Even if you conquered your fear of closed spaces, you’d still hate football. Do not pursue what pleases others. The Way of Heaven does not strive—yet it overcomes.”
    “That’s nice,” I said. “But Coach Croswell’s going to want something more tangible than Zen paradoxes.”
    “You owe him no explanation,” Po said. “Reveal your true self. Your authentic life will speak for itself.”
    “Maybe,” I said. “But I’m pretty sure my authentic life is going to be running extra laps tomorrow in P.E.”

  • If You Spend Your Life Wanting Things, You Will be in a Constant Fever

    If You Spend Your Life Wanting Things, You Will be in a Constant Fever

    One evening, I was holed up in my room, devouring a muscle magazine like it was scripture. I’d just finished an article on “progressive resistance training,” a phrase that made my adolescent heart thump with moral clarity. The world, I decided, was divided into two kinds of people: those who were progressing—pushing, grinding, improving—and those who were stuck, rotting in the swamps of inertia. Naturally, I placed myself in the first camp, the self-anointed pilgrim of progress.

    When the article ended, I drifted into the ads—the sacred appendix of every muscle mag. Protein powders, chrome dumbbells, pulleys, powders, potions—alchemy for the ambitious. But one ad stopped me cold: the Bullworker. A gleaming, three-foot rod of plastic and steel with cables sprouting from its sides like mechanical tendons. When you pulled the cables, the thing bowed like a crossbow for Hercules. A shirtless bodybuilder—pecs like carved mahogany—was using it to crush air itself. Price tag: forty-five bucks. Steep, but wasn’t self-transformation always costly?

    I marched into the living room, magazine in hand. My father sat in his recliner, beer in one hand, football roaring from the TV like an angry god.
    “Dad, what do you think?” I said, pointing to the Bullworker.

    He barely glanced at it. Still had the infantryman haircut, the square jaw, the tattoo—MICHAEL, bold and blue—across his right bicep like a relic from some forgotten war.
    “You want big muscles?” he said. “Pull weeds. Mow the lawn. Clean the gutters. Chop some kindling. That should do it.”

    “Dad, come on, I’m serious. This would be great for my workouts.”

    He sighed, studied the ad, then set the magazine down.
    “Son, this is marketing dressed up as science. But if you want to waste your allowance, go ahead.”

    “I’m short on cash.”

    “Then save. But make sure you want it. Do your research. My guess? The more you learn, the less you’ll want it.”

    “Why do you say that?”

    He smirked. “You ever heard of Sturgeon’s Law?”

    “No.”

    “Ninety-nine percent of everything is bullshit. Including that. Remember that martial arts course you bought? The one that promised black-belt skills in six weeks? What did you get? Stick figures in a pamphlet. Bullshit. Perform your due diligence, son. It’ll save you money.”

    “What’s ‘due diligence’?”

    “It means don’t be a sucker. Look closely before you buy anything. Most things collapse under scrutiny. Always be eager to save your money and reluctant to spend it. You hear me?”

    “Yes, Dad.”

    I retreated to my room, unimpressed by football and existentially wounded by paternal pragmatism. I opened another magazine and, in a desperate act of spiritual outsourcing, asked Master Po—my imaginary monk mentor—what he thought.

    “Your father is right, Grasshopper,” he said, somewhere between my conscience and my guilt. “If you spend your life wanting things, you will stay forever busy saving for them—and it will not be a noble busyness. It will be the feverish pacing of a man hypnotized by catalogs. Simplify your life, Grasshopper, and do the work that needs to be done.”

    “And what work is that?” I asked.

    “To stop pretending the world owes you the front of the line,” he said. “Stand at the back. Wait your turn. While you wait, develop yourself. Earn your place.”

    “How long will that take?”

    “A lifetime, Grasshopper,” he said. “And when you think you’ve arrived, the journey will have only begun.”

  • Thou Shall Not Skip Gravity Day

    Thou Shall Not Skip Gravity Day

    When I was fourteen, I read in The San Francisco Chronicle that the future of humanity was apparently doomed to unfold inside a giant space terrarium. The article, steeped in optimism and mild insanity, described how overpopulation and resource depletion would eventually force us to evacuate Earth aboard lunar shuttles and live in “closed-ecology habitats in free orbit.” The prophet of this plan was Princeton physicist Gerard K. O’Neill, whose forthcoming book The High Frontier promised solar-powered utopias floating blissfully through the void.

    The paper ran lush illustrations by Don Davis: rolling green hills, placid lakes, couples in flowing white linen strolling past solar panels, all living in a pastel Garden of Eden. But something about those inhabitants unsettled me. They all looked frail—thin, pale, gravity-deprived stick figures with the musculature of boiled linguine. That’s when the horror struck me: in space, there would be no gyms. No dumbbells. No pumping up. No gravity—no gains. My future would be a floating hell of atrophied muscles and existential despair. The very thought made my biceps twitch in protest.

    At the same time, a girl at school named Jennifer slipped me a birthday card with hearts on the envelope. Inside, she’d written that she liked me and wanted me to ask her out. But how could I ask her out when civilization was on the brink of being exiled to a zero-gravity tofu colony? What was the point of romance when dumbbells were about to become obsolete?

    I tore up the card, retreated to my room, and did what any hormonally charged doomsday philosopher would do: I consulted Master Po.
    “Master Po,” I said, “how can I go on living if bodybuilding dies in orbit?”
    “Grasshopper,” he said, “you live too much for yourself. You must empty yourself of self-interest.”
    “But I’m obsessed with myself.”
    “Exactly. And it shows in your quest to make your body beautiful.”
    “But bodybuilding is my life.”
    “And that,” he said, “is your curse. You train your body but let residue accumulate in your soul.”
    “So I should quit working out?”
    “Not quit. But see your body as not belonging to you. It is part of something larger.”
    “You mean, like the universe?”
    “Yes, Grasshopper. The body of the world.”
    “So, what—you want me to start picking up trash on the freeway? That’s your cosmic wisdom?”
    “Once again,” he sighed, “you are far from The Way.”

    I looked at my reflection in the mirror that night—fourteen years old, terrified of zero gravity—and realized that maybe Master Po was right. I wasn’t afraid of space. I was afraid of floating away from myself.

  • Your Tears Won’t Change the World

    Your Tears Won’t Change the World

    When I was thirteen, I decided the path to popularity ran straight through Soul Train. I spent months studying the dance troupe Captain Crunch and the Funky Bunch, who could pivot from the robotic precision of the Funky Robot to doing splits so fast you’d think they were animated. I practiced every night in front of my bedroom mirror until my limbs clicked like clockwork and my expression was as vacant as a mannequin’s. I was ready to unleash my Funky Robot at the Earl Warren Junior High dance.

    The playlist that night was pure chaos. Whoever the DJ was, he seemed to be drawing songs from a hat. “Free Bird” dragged like a eulogy, “Walk This Way” felt like cardiac arrest, and “Midnight at the Oasis” was exactly what it sounded like—a languid romp in the desert. But when Stevie Wonder’s “Living for the City” came on, I sprang into motion. My body jerked and popped with righteous purpose. I was a mechanical deity in Adidas, a human jukebox powered by insecurity.

    By some miracle of social physics, I ended up dancing all night with Cheryl Atkins—the prettiest girl there—because her boyfriend Rick hated to dance. While we funked and twirled under the mirrored ball, I noticed the misfits pressed against the gym walls like condemned prisoners. They’d ask for dances, get shot down, and limp back to their corner of despair. Watching them, I felt an unexpected pang—an ache sharper than any muscle burn.

    Meanwhile, the popular eighth-graders were perfecting a ritual called “getting wasted,” which apparently involved puking and maintaining high social standing at the same time. As a Junior Olympic weightlifter, I found this baffling. I could clean and jerk my body weight, but I couldn’t comprehend how vomiting could make you cool.

    By the end of the night, Cheryl and I won the dance contest. Vice Principal Gillis handed me a trophy, but instead of basking in my Funky Robot glory, I felt hollow. The faces of the wallflowers haunted me. That night, I dreamed of a beach where a giant elephant seal handed each lonely misfit a beautiful radio, and as they tuned it, they glowed and vanished into the horizon. I woke up certain of one thing: radios were holy.

    “Master Po,” I said, “the world is cruel. I can’t be happy knowing people like those misfits suffer.”
    “Spare me your tears, Grasshopper,” he said. “Sadness feels noble, but it’s an addiction. It comforts the ego while changing nothing.”
    “But what can I do?” I asked. “Darwin was right—the strong thrive, and the weak pay the price.”
    “Indeed,” he said. “And in case you haven’t noticed, you’re one of the weak. So tend your own garden, Grasshopper. The misfit must save himself before he can save the world.”