- Writing - vignettes
- 2025-08-22
To be a boomer who was born before therapy was available. To have never gone to therapy. To have never read a self-help book. To have never tried to improve your skill at relating to people. To have been stuck in a freeze response for decades. To grow weirder and more isolated every year. To have multiple divorces under your belt. To be a strange and difficult presence. To operate as if wearing a mask - to listen to others with a blank expression, a total lack of affect displaying on your face. To receive any and all news the same way, a look of blank rigidity, to blink once and then resume your talking. To no longer exhibit curiosity or enthusiasm. To have strong opinions, and no appreciation that you may be mistaken, that perhaps what feels true to you may, in fact, be wildly incorrect. To feel that your worldview is the correct worldview because it’s just common sense. To shut down new things as soon as you hear them; “oh, that’s x”. To be a walking advertisement for the Dunning-Kruger Effect and Negativity Bias. Love of a drug (beer) as a defining personality trait and raison d’être. A whole generation devoted to going places to drink beer. A holiday involves driving from bar to bar, drinking beer. This is as good as it gets.
To have been unlucky - unlucky to be born before the cognitive revolution had percolated through society, before we learned that our default way of thinking is awash with bias. To have been unlucky to not have marriage counselling as an option. To have been born in the time when religion had left the culture, leaving nothing in its place, but beer and football and work. To have been born into a time when the best way to connect was to drink beer and talk about football. When connection involved talking at people. Going to the pub and talking at people, who talk back at you. The illusion of connection, each person isolated, souls and dreams and fears tucked away in drawers and forgotten about, a few decades ago now.
So of course I can’t be curious about you - it isn’t personal. Yes, you’re my only child, but how could I remember to be interested. I’ve lost the part of me that feels joy and wonder, it was here once, I think, but no longer.