Of the 10,297 or so days I’ve known Marg—and I really should be careful with my math in deference to Joel—I don’t think more than one has passed during which she and I weren’t in touch in some way. That’s always felt like a priority, and I find it wholly reassuring to know that when we don’t communicate, something integral feels off-kilter, easily setting itself right with even a text.

We’ve gone on many literal voyages together—some as distant as Scotland, others as nearby as the library. Many nights have found us taking long, meditative drives up the Pacific Coast Highway, listening to Jethro Tull and Pink Floyd as we meticulously analyzed the state of our lives and measured our dreams against reality.

And many days have found us taking walks to the neighborhood park or UCLA’s sculpture garden as we made jokes, talked about such favorite books as Anne of Green Gables or those by Madeleine L’Engle, and quoted movies like Kill Bill and Spaceballs, often discussing these things with the same degree of gravity and attention we did our plans for our presents and futures.

But far more frequent have been the trips we’ve taken into our pooled imaginations. As kids, we played elaborate games that used our bunk-bed to pretend we rode a 19th c. train cabin escaping the unwanted attentions of the irritating Prince Harold. We narrated voice-overs to the pictures we drew side-by-side, creating complicated storylines in our made-up worlds. We wrote strange little stories about princesses, aliens, and stowaways and songs about dogs and foxes, and our parents, with whom we are incredibly close and could probably not be closer, amusedly looked at us as if we were speaking Martian. “Demnuevo con los bube maintzes?” “Again with the bube maintzes?” my mom would say, using the Yiddish term for Old Wive’s Tale. But we’d be rapt in our very serious discussion about this fictional character or that aspect of our daily existence and could be neither interrupted nor bothered to emerge from our conversational stupor.

And though we’re grown up now, very little has changed. Yes she’s a lawyer with poise and a home of her own, but she’s still the girl who danced to “Aqualung” and “Still Loving You” with wild abandon, the gifted painter so intrigued by Carol Lombard, and the multi-dimensional companion who balances sharp wit and profound insight with sweet dreaminess. And she’s still my dearest friend.

So, for a long time, I wondered, who would be the person for her? What form would he take? I’ve always been excited by the prospect of seeing her meet her match, while apprehensive about a few things as well. Would she be blessed enough to find someone deserving, who would challenge and nurture her as she would challenge and nurture him? Would she have to change or compromise parts of herself to be with this person? Would I get along with him, or would I have to lose my sister?

Marg has always been very open with me. So little has she held back that when she told me she’d met a mathematician named Joel but refused to divulge much else, I felt…ahso. He must be different. He must be special. And she must find him so. I figured she didn’t want to jinx things by talking about him, and I was right. So I waited anxiously, fervently hoping that this time, she had met The One.

I couldn’t be happier that person is Joel. I felt relief then happiness as Marg eventually told me about him and how happy he was making her. When I finally got to meet him, as three of us got omelettes one Sunday, it felt even better to like him from the get-go.

I felt comfortable, seeing how comfortable they were around each other, that neither one seemed to be changing or trying too hard, that they both just seemed glad to be there, to be having a good time and listening to what the other had to say and considering it with attention. I love knowing they go on adventures and both comprehend and learn from each other every day. I was thrilled to see my sister with someone so intelligent and deep, talented and cultured, cool and funny. And it gladdened me to see that each had finally met his or her loving match.

I can’t really put to words the sense of gratitude and satisfaction I feel or the wonderful things I wish for them, but whatever I hoped to feel about the marriage of my cherished sister and this special person is, believe it or not, less than what I feel right now at witnessing and being part of Marg and Joel’s wedding–and that’s saying quite a bit.

How hackneyed to say I don’t lose a sister but gain a brother and friend, but…it’s true.

So: I wish you bliss and good health, understanding and humor, optimism and patience, and most importantly, fulfillment. I toast your love and the beginning of what I hope is a joyful, harmonious, and meaningful life together.

When we compare our life-spans to the World’s and the pace at which It goes about a great degree of Its business, our time here is pitifully, perhaps mercifully, brief. This is a fact. So it stands to reason, then, that people should contemplate this concept at some point during that brief moment. We are all going to die. We all know this. And anyone who doesn’t think about this is lying to himself. So how could we not pause at some point to ask ourselves about our functions on this earth, wonder about the point to our lives, and grapple with the question regarding whether there is, indeed, a point, and if there is not, how we could go about finding one.

There are those who do not think about such things. You can call them the Simple Souls who take things at face value and do not cave to the curse of Knowing and Wondering. Or they are too busy. Or too pragmatic. I used to think them lucky and unburdened. But now, I neither envy nor disdain them; I simply comprehend that they are different from I and that Knowing is not a curse, per se, but a heavy mantle I willingly accept. The Simple Souls are Human, of course, but they live a life closer to that of a different class of animal. This sounds disparaging and/or intolerant, but that is not how I mean it. The truth is that if these wise or lucky or uncomplicated folk go about their days without stopping to think about those days in a meta-manner, they have reduced their existences to a series of needs, and if our needs govern our actions, that does not “lower” us to the level of animals, maybe, but it makes us analogous to them. There is nothing wrong with this; it just differentiates those making use of their reason from those who either choose not to use it or never had it in the first place.

You could say the Existential Crisis is a problem only the Bourgeoisie or the upper classes sustain, but someone without time and money can just as easily, perhaps more easily, begin to question his lot in life and whether he has a calling or a place here or if it is “‘all for naught”, and if it is, then attempt to figure out how he could remedy this situation, etc. So to claim those suffering Existential Crises are but the self-indulgent wealthy is as inaccurate as it is ignorant. Moreover, anyone who has taken a moment to notice the painful disparity in wealth between people and in the justice within the world’s many systems and in luck, and anyone who has seen the arbitrary temperament of Nature and Human Nature, has found himself facing an Existential Crisis and a Crisis of Conviction, one in which he has wondered Why? and either found a dearth of answers or has made the choice to wade through an outlook morose or apathetic by feeling gratitude, having perspective, and providing answers where none were supplied. This is not a diatribe against religion or those who are religious–far from it. Those who do not question the Truths of life because they subscribe to a series of principles laid out in an existing and extant religion, philosophy, ideology, or home-grown set of tenets that accounts for the questions such Truths must create, 1) are not necessarily Simple because of this, 2) may never even have considered a Crisis, 3) may have consciously rejected the need for a Crisis because they have answers, 4) may have arrived at comfort through a Crisis, 5) are still capable of doubt and Crisis, and 6) belong to a true and other camp of Human who displays its Humanity through its creation or following of a set of thoughts that describe life as containing something More–perhaps even an After-Life.

You could also argue those riddled with questions regarding Meaning and Meaning-as-it-relates-to-Life have found themselves in this “predicament” because they have “watched too many movies” or “read too many books” and so now, as a consequence, have unrealistic expectations about life and all-too-romantic dreams the unfulfillment of which yield days painfully mundane and ultimately meaningless. But that’s not the case, either. People have considered their Existences since they evolved from that animal, quadrupedal state. “Existentialism” simply names in Movement form what people have felt, even if in passing, for millennia. Movies and books have come into being because creative people sought to record such feelings and share them with others, and we treasure these records because they, too, give a name to something we have all felt since we could give names to feelings and not simply surrender to the visceral world of need.

“Suffering” an Existential Crisis, then, is a deeply Human thing. It may even be a rite of passage, one we must all go through at least once to make sense of what on a fundamental level lacks it. Of course, the Crisis may morph into something negative when you can little see the light or practical aspects behind and within life, and it becomes a true Crisis, rather than simply a series of questions the asking of which may still allow you to function (albeit groggily), when it leads to lethargy and despair and a Nihilism of the spirit. In its worst form, it could lead to anger, violence, and/or self-nullification. Those are the extreme cases, but the Crisis is and should be common, and ultimately, it does not have to be bad.

Crisis connotes a highly negative experience, but if it passes, it forms a cataclysmic event that may also act as a sort of catalyst. In its best form, it serves as an impetus to action. It forces the complacent out of our reveries (or forms of “dogmatic slumbers”, if you will) and reminds us of the ticking clock in our midsts. Without wondering about our purposes in life, we would simply sit here waiting for death. Without feeling Existential urgency, we would do very little during and with life. So the Crisis jogs our minds into finding a task and attempting to best make use of what time lies before us and abilities lie within.

Quite frankly, those who do not and choose not to experience some form of Existential Crisis are not and cannot be truly Human. If they have managed to avoid it, not through the use of numbing agents like substance or delusion but through a sort of compartmentalized, dogged, and efficient self-righteousness, they have become automatons. They have used their agency to shut off agency for good. Why question? To question is to lead to discontentment, they may think. So they choose comfort over catalyst. But think, rather, that the Existential Crisis reminds you not that you are “only Human”, but Wonderfully so.

I don’t know that I believe that anymore. Or, if I do, it is that I believe that we–you and I–are like prisms. We refract light differently depending on the angle at which you gaze upon us. Now, again, that is not to say that who we are depends, as would be so in the perverted version of the Heisenberg Principle, on who looks upon us–only that we are not always the same person or people and that the situation in which we find ourselves is the thing that governs which self emerges most clearly and dominantly at any given moment.

That is to say, it’s not that I’ve given in to the truth behind either the “nurture” side of the nature v. nurture debate or that of the “nature” side, which I guess is the one I may have semi-unwittingly supported before–only that in my more mature state, I have thought that both have a deep impact on who you are but also that where before I thought the self unchangeable, I think that the meaning within the worn-out cinematic phrase “you’ve changed”–said with an air of melancholy or heavy disappointment–is, indeed, possible, and if cliche, then it’s a cliche born from truth and not unnecessary grandiosity.

I say this because I have changed. As I’ve said before, I did not think it possible. I clung to the stubborn belief that the “I” beneath the other “I”s and all the crazy things I had gone through or that I had learned and ingested was the same, no matter the age or place. But that’s simply not true anymore. In fact, I can little recognize the “I” of two years ago as it compares to the perhaps more adult incarnation of the “I” I see every morning in the mirror (and the “I” of two years ago little compares to the “I” of two years before that, and so on), unclear as it is at such an early hour.

Perhaps I over-think things. Be that as it may, I still believe that we are prisms. When we go through new things, the light we contain at our greatest hour can manifest itself in various ways within us, and that, in turn, can see its release from us in various forms. The things I held dear before are those I hold dear now. But am I the same I? I’m not so sure anymore that I am. My priorities may, at their core, be the same, but the way I comport myself, the things that I think when I’m driving long stretches alone with the music only touching one part of my consciousness, are not the same. I think it’s a function of age and that experience. I think that it follows that when you learn new things, the things you will consider will change. But there you go. Maybe buried deep (or really not so deep) within this new self is that old one and that older one and that older one still, but the one you see, the one I feel, is different. And maybe that’s OK. Maybe I’ll revert back to a self I was before. Or I won’t. And that’s OK too.

I want no more of resentment. I want no more of self-doubt. I want no more of gossip. I care not what others think of me, insofar as it leads me to question my selfhood for the worse. I will relax and be myself and know and like who that self is. I will not cloak faltering insecurity in livid arrogance, and I will not fear what I do not know or understand or what differs from myself. I will be patient–with others as with myself. I accept that I am and will always be far from perfect and that I will fail and do so often, but I comprehend that that is an unavoidable part of being human and that even though it does not always feel like it, being human is a privilege and a gift–as is the life in which I find myself and that I must–want to–claim and make my own.

I will be dutiful but will not lose perspective. I will perform my actions with integrity and intention. I will strive for excellence and enjoy what I do. I will bring light to life and bask in the light that others bring forth as well. I will take pride in my accomplishments and savor those of others. I will not be selfish. I will not be selfless. I will just be and continue, forging a path that can only be my own.

I disavow petty vendettas and painful self-consciousness to embrace tranquility, hopeful exuberance, and ultimate gratitude. I am thankful for who and what I have and for who and what I am. I will make the most of these things and will give back to my world. I am Deborah Ilana Nijensohn Stokol, with the glorious weight of selfhood and history at my back and the promise of daytime and night time ahead of me, and I am happy to be alive.

I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I have synesthesia and see letters and numbers in color. But then again, so does she. And it’s not that I care more about this kind of thing than she does because I know out-and-out that’s just not true. Yet it’s become a point of pride with me and not necessarily with her.

I’ll recite these natal days to their owners at will, proving this feat with abandon and vigor, and sometimes even frightening them into thinking it shows some sort of not-so-latent obsession, like I set out to remember their birthday because it’s theirs, and whoa!..when really, once someone’s told me his or her  birthday, I’ll pretty much remember what the person said–even if it was a life time ago, we’re not friends, and/or we haven’t spoken in years.

But just because it doesn’t illustrate some freakish obsession I may have doesn’t mean I don’t care a great deal and don’t put great effort into trying to make birthdays special for those I love, either. I do, and I do.

Sometimes, though, much as I would like to, I can do nothing about those days but stew.

There are certain birthdays I hold sacred and during which I think about the person all day but can do little but keep it to myself because that person has passed away or we are no longer in touch.

So for those for whom that may apply, just because I haven’t sent a happy day missive doesn’t mean I have forgotten; it just means I’m celebrating in silence.

…That is what often happens. You go into an experience, live it to its fullest, immerse yourself in it until you’re almost tired of it but at the same time can little imagine any other reality but the one you’re in. You finish it, overwhelmed, exhausted, and satisfied. For awhile, nothing else seemed possible. Now, when you try to recall what took place in this colossal, certainly magical, time in your life, you cannot remember. You sometimes list details to yourself or to others, but they don’t feel vivid, and you rattle them off without the conviction that it was you who lived them or that they happened to you.

But as time passes, you gradually begin to remember. There will be a sight or song or stray comment that will call another memory to mind, and it will seem real again, like it was, indeed, you who lived it, and it happened to you. And then you will smile…

Recorded by Deborah Stokol, August 14, 2011, with Michel Legrand’s “Un Ete ‘42″ playing in the backrgound.

Look, I know even robust minds atrophy at some point. He’s three years older than I am, and I’m old. So it’s not that I’m surprised, just sad. That’s all.

So I walk into his apartment today. And I’ve known him for, what, 40 years? More? And he’s been there for quite some time. We’ve always valued different things, he and I. I was a professor; he’s never really been a man of letters. But he had a fine mind on him—the kind that could get him founding and leading a bank.

He put stock (no pun intended) in the outward display of wealth. That’s just the way he was. So where I was more than all right with a nice, elegant, but no less manageable, apartment, he wanted something a bit more grand.

And he got it. He had a beautiful house and everything, but when he got older, he and his Lady purchased a beautiful apartment. This was years ago. As I said, I’ve known him for quite some time, and I make a point of visiting him often. I always have. But it’s especially true when he’s one of two friends I have left. That’s what happens when you turn 92; your friends start disappearing. If you’re being honest, they disappeared a long time ago. And you have to start living through the memories you have of them—or through the moments you witness occurring in the lives of your children, your grandchildren, and if you’re lucky, your great-grandchildren too.

So as I was saying, I visit him pretty often, maybe every couple of weeks. And while I’ve never really found his conversation the most stimulating affair, he’s a good man, and we have history. It feels good to relax, maybe reminisce. He’s a great host. I told you he’s big on display, and he skimps none on the tea and herring. It’s like the old country, or at least what my mother used to say you’d find there. She would have been proud; he gives his guests the works.

Well, I get there today. And he recognizes me and everything. It’s not that. He’s always been a strong-willed sort. It takes guts and discipline to start and maintain a Bank. All that. He’s friendly as usual, very solicitous.

But then something odd happens. Well, it’s sadder than it was odd. I knew what was going on, but I didn’t have the heart to say anything to him about it.

He asks me to see his impressive new apartment. His new apartment?! He shows it to me with all the pride that comes from recent acquisition. But I tell you, he bought it years ago. I don’t even know how many, but I know the place well. Very well.

And here he is, living confused. Like I said, he’s three years older than I am, and I’m old. Terrible. What could I say? I said nothing, but it deeply troubled me. It made me sad for him—and for me. One of the few friends I had left, another bastion of a lost generation.

I just couldn’t wrap my head around the thing. You should write a story about it.

***

Ok, Grandpa I will, I promise.

Flags waving in a winter breeze. Photo by Deborah Stokol, Argentina, 2010.

Based on the memories of my uncle, “Tio,” Alberto (or my reimagination of the inherited narrative of a reimagination)

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”

-Jorge Luis Borges

We were young. It was the Buenos Aires of 1950. The Spanish Civil War was so recent all the Argentinean Spaniards (of which there were many) still divided themselves into those two requisite–passionate–camps of “Nationalist” and “Republican.” Hemingway and Orwell weren’t yet part of the canon; the things they described were more news than they were fictional responses to history.

His family, of course, belonged to the Republican camp. They were sophisticates. It could not have been any other way.

The San Telmo of then had more character. But then, poorer neighborhoods tend to have “character” before they become trendy, expensive—gentrified. So it was with San Telmo—that bastion of tenement living, those conventillos that piled bedroom onto squalid bedroom, human onto yet foreign human, til they surrounded the gritty central courtyard. But I loved it.

Now, “artists” fight for lofts there, and the flea market is as legendary as it is overpriced. Each dulce de leche-filled crepe costs $6 pesos. I can’t even imagine what that would have bought us. People were more careful with their money. But that was a different time, and things were different then.

American folks and saucer-eyed students flock there in droves. “I love Buenos!” they proclaim with enthusiasm, christening the city with a name no native would call its worn streets. They bandy their scarves and silver earrings, their new love for the bandoneon and the exchange rate. But we’re grateful they visit.

I don’t miss the past. But “lo añoro.” That is to say, I’m wistful; I yearn. Those years were grand—those years of adolescence and idealistic intellectualism. He and I had been such good friends, and we were young.

His name was Eduardo Luz-Stratford*—the ‘Luz’ a product of his father’s Spanish heritage, the ‘Stratford’ a badge of English pride. Like me, he was 16. But unlike me, he expressed his indolence with fervor, practically sounding his cultured yet Barbaric yawp from the rooftops of San Telmo.

His house lay but four blocks from my parents’ apartment, but it seemed to inhabit a distant country. A palacette it was—at least at first glance. Small when compared to Xanadu, it was a palace nevertheless. His parents, Francophiles like most, had built it in the modern “French” style, and it offered a staircase I thought of as ‘ambitious.’ I peered at its infinity with wonder. But the wonder I sustained for that staircase was nothing when compared to the one I held for the house’s shocking interior.

It was a disaster. I couldn’t reconcile the building’s outside with the raucous chaos taking place within its otherwise majestic- seeming walls. These folks ran a publishing house and clearly had money.

But from the looks of it, they had disavowed their material goods or just could not recognize their heads from their asses (or the manner in which the first had found itself lodged so deeply within the second).

The sofas looked like they’d been clawed by a thousand feral cats. The Argentinean penchant for exaggeration even fails me here. But allow me to convince you that torn wallpapers, dirt-covered floors, bric-a-brac tossed indeterminately and clearly without care across the entirety of floor are simply the commencement of a long list of human messes riddling the interior of the Luz-Stratford home.

The house had four, no five, floors. I’d never before seen the like and have never since seen it. Eduardo took it all as a matter of course. The only “course” to which he paid any heed.

“Come on!” I’d shout from outside. “We’ll be late for school!” But his father, bedraggled and amused, a permissive robe-wearer, would simply seek his son and ask whether he wanted in on that whole high school thing, shrugging to me as if to say “no dice; que se joda.”

The pair would invite me in, and I, responsible young man that I was, would refuse, guarding my dignity while pronouncing the importance of an institutional education.

And I stuck to my guns for a few days, but before long, I’d entered that house, that sanctuary of sloth, ascended those imposing stairs. Climbing my way to the highest reaches, I found a sort of paradise.

Eduardo ushered me into a world of philosophy and depth, a world of auto-dictaticism and “who needs school, anyway?” There was cigarette smoke, and through its prophetic clouds, I could see that these were the happiest days of my life.

I was larger than life; I was invincible. I was 16.

And the basement of that house would have left Aladdin slack-jawed and mute. Piles of dusty novels filled the large room. In the center of this treasure lay a ping-pong table, and we alternated between edification and competition. Late at night, the sound of the paddle hitting the ball would echo in my head as the words of the books I’d read would swim before my closed eyes and lull me to sleep.

We smoked and played chess. We’d engage in these games all day, fancying ourselves young Zweigs or Jack Londons. We’d play for hours. Sometimes I’d play white, others, black. The game would absorb us.

I’ve never played again, cannot. The association’s too fixed, the game too central to a time gone. It exists only in my memory now.

Eduardo would read, and he’d lead me through his maze of books. We were leftists; we were idealists. Peron was in power—the first time. We hated him.

I became intimately acquainted with Hesse and with Maugham, and with their love of Eastern philosophy. Eduardo and I attempted to lose our corporeal shells, tried to free our souls to visit the stars as their protagonists had. And with a pang, we felt our hopes crash down, dead or disappointed, as our souls went nowhere our bodies could not.

I stopped going to school.

Eduardo, his father, another friend and I would sequester ourselves in the house, surrendering our minds to the life lessons taught by these masters. We blew smoke rings like the men we thought we were and transcended materialism in the arms of literature. We were thinkers; we were wonderers; we were young.

And then one day, my head cleared.

I emerged from the palace to choose university. I studied civil engineering, made new friends, read the new—exciting!—words of Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov, serialized each week in the magazines I eagerly tore off the racks and raced home to read.

But even at school, I worshipped at the altar of my recent memory, every day yearning for that golden time with Luz-Stratford, my philosopher friend. I itched for vacation time, for the moment I would come home to “Baires,” as we called it.

And that moment finally came. I traveled home during a school break, eager to meet him and to return to the life I’d left behind.

But things were different now. The boys had changed, seemed immature, stagnating in a mire of their own making. Their goals seemed childish, their dreams, irrelevant.

Maybe, I thought, it wasn’t they who’d changed, but I. I heard their talk, found it irritating, the ceaseless chatter of the aimless. I had different dreams and new goals now.

I have a wife, three children, five grandchildren and a father-in-law. My old friends lived a certain dream but refused to awaken from its pall. I likened them to those dwelling in opium dens. Their ways intoxicated me like the drug, but I found them too heavy, superfluous, unhealthy.

Eduardo’s since written many books. I’ve long since stopped poring over fiction, and I stopped smoking after my second heart attack. I am still an engineer.

But that time—-that time to me is still golden. Eduardo may have changed. Or perhaps I did. Yet those moments, filled with chess and books, smokes and invincibility, remain preserved in the mausoleum of my memory, enthroned like the mummies in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, where one daughter once lived and my son still does. I find those bandaged recollections beautiful. Because we were young.

*This name has been changed.

Green-Eyed Face(book)

By Deborah Stokol

I remember when it was new. When no one had heard of it. When no one was “on it.” When some classmate told me to join this cool new site just for college students and to “friend” him too. For some reason, we figured, keeping something “webby” at the college-level somehow made it less sketchy than were Myspace or the erstwhile Friendster. Faulty logic. Because, of course, college kids have never been creepy. Anyone heard of a rufie?

Frankly, I thought the whole thing, including the name, seemed kind of silly, but I joined on a lark. It was 2004, and we were amongst this new generation of soon-to-become social networking site junkies who signed up initially apathetic before quickly morphing into feverish, gibbering addicts.

Now, we’ve returned to that initial state of apathy. What’s more, many of us find it loathsome—a drain on our time and a recipe for insecurity and needless self-comparison.

I have begun to fear logging on to Facebook because of the way it makes me feel.

It’s not just that (legitimate) fear of invasion of privacy or of facing the mindless din friends make by posting how gleeful they are to “have done laundry!” or that they “have a headache “ Nor is it of reading the bad grammar, the inanity, the relentless over-sharing or the cryptic, self-pitying updates like “And what was the point? Why did I make this decision? So many changes, and now I’m wallowing in a pit of despair.”

It’s much more than that. The site’s constant reminder of others’ activities makes its users hyper-aware of insecurities that might otherwise remain latent.

Facebook is the home of self-aggrandizement and the shameless plug. Yet those uncertain of their professional standing, and those feeling they have not reached that chimera–“potential”–will cave to the near-primal envy evinced by such status updates as “[x] got her dream job!!!!!!! She’s soooo excited!!!!!”—especially if that “dream job” happens to be your dream job too.

Where we once relied on hearsay or more direct, if slower, means of communication, we may now voyeuristically view our peers’ progress at all times.

Those logging on view a page full of friends’ status updates as soon as they enter the site. So we can never escape our contacts’ accomplishments–or what we perceive as such.

Similarly, only with difficulty can those most affected rise above those angry reactions or the resentful feelings that that should have been them or that somehow, they veered off course.

I can’t count the number of texts friends have sent me running along the lines of “Omg*, Facebook just left me so depressed. Everyone’s married, happy and has adorable babies.”

It’s easy to feel like a “failure” if all you can see is that delicate, prismatic view people choose to present of their lives. And it’s easier still to fall into a trap—that of thinking their lives better, fuller, infinitely more exciting and more complete than is yours.

It got so bad for a close friend that she asked me to be the keeper of the keys. She gave me her password, and I had to change it to a new one she didn’t know. She requested I intervene that she not log onto what she termed an insidious site and feel the despondence that washes over the one who has weighed herself against others and found herself wanting.

I can be certain of my post-Facebook bad mood because if I compare myself to others and find myself somehow better off—literally or existentially—then I feel ashamed of my uncharitable thought processes and see myself as unkind.

If, on the other hand, I find myself worse off, the immediate dejection will set in.

Of course, there is a solution for the users who wish neither to deactivate their accounts nor to purge contacts.

I, and folks I know, have taken to “hiding” “friends.” This means you can prevent those contacts you’re not really sure you should have accepted or even really know or who—most relevantly—provoke that painful self-comparison and displeased reaction, but whom you don’t want to “de-friend” (a pointless insult, in my eyes), from showing up on that front page you see each time you enter Facebook.

The process is quick, painless and discreet. The hidees will never know. I’m sure friends have hidden me, but thankfully, I can’t be sure.

Unfortunately, it has come to this. It’s sad, really, that a site meant to foster human contact can encourage such jealousies and feelings of low self-worth.

But if it aims to mimic real life, it succeeds in including the gamut of multi-emotion-eliciting situations. And after all, it is the enemy we know. Until there’s something new.

*Omg has become the shortened vernacular for “Oh my God.”

The Odyssey (Homer)
Ulysses (Alfred Lord Tennyson)
Ulysses (James Joyce)
Cold Mountain (Charles Frazier)

…and perhaps, at the end, the fantasy-like quest with a Wagner-like and Scandinavian spin: The Lord of the Rings (J.R.R. Tolkein). With or without it, I think it’s a win-win.