The Cowardice of Cynicism
"Cynicism is the sewage of the soul."
- Maria Popova
We all have that one cynical friend. They sit in the corner at parties, with some unspectacular glass of liquor in hand, a dangling cigarette in the other, choking their immediate environment with seductive swirls of poison. Why do we keep them around? I’m cynical about cynics.
Sure, there is something uncomfortably useful about them from time to time, but most of the time, how do they really make you feel –– honestly? Isn’t this cookie-cutter proxy-cliché of a stereotyped New Yorker or Londoner (not-to-mention, wart-like companion) just a sad caricature of themselves, with their perpetually overcasting unibrows, shadowing their view on all-things-life? And we’re hanging with them why?
Aren’t they like those oddest pieces of candies –– the sweet ones, but counterproductively soured intentionally? Those ones, to the masochist’s delight, disturbing and rude to the palate, re-chiseling every taster’s face into lemony countenances and snatched-away smiles? Those LIGHTLY-sweet-n-HEAVILY-sour ones –– bursting in cancelled sugar, still getting to hang with the legitimate candies, in like, real candy stores –– all for the confused and most indecisive of sugar-fiends? Aren’t they like that? And aren't we the indecisive fiend?
Pardon my cynical inquiry but, have we now a hidden penchant for these embittered, counterproductive friends? If so, why? Have we now also developed a long, snaggly, sour-tooth? –– With the insatiable munchies for everything to intelligently complain about? –– And drag the mood to its death?
Self-saboteuring is a communicable disease, you know. And perhaps now we've made them our pocketed, occasional fix, a hit, when we need to masochistically decimate the sweetness of our useful optimism –– blunting and canceling and killing random reasons for happiness for no purpose other than sadistic appetite? I mean, why is this person at our damned party? Aren’t they the very antithesis to the term? Why'd they RSVP? And why'd we give them the opportunity to?
It's because we might be being slowly seduced by their little twists of interesting tart. And that's a problem. Because, if we're not careful, you or I could become one of them –– an acid heaving lemon-head.
What is it about cynicism? Is it the product of smart people? Is it the product of pointlessly negative people? Does it hail from biting insight and deep reaching intellect? Or, does it hail from depressed cowardice, hiding form itself? Is it truly the mark of a real realist? (Cuz, last I checked, the recipe for REAL life was filled with equal-parts shitty and beauty, so... let's not just take massive dumps on all the beauty, dude.) Maybe and perhaps it's simply the mark of a human being, gurgling and drowning and crying for help in the sewage of their own collapsed point of view? What’s really going on beneath their atrophied, paralyzed smile muscles?
I’m going to go so far as to say no child comes to our world cynical. Most children seem to organically arrive with a pair of glad and happy spectacles strapped to their view of life. Their plentiful giggles, their belly-laughs and lightening-fast recovery from deep grief seems to corroborate this “more than a theory, but ironclad” observation.
Cynicism does not seem to be a product of youth, the fresh, the recent. It seems to be the product of the old, and perhaps, the inner-gunk-acquiring, the decaying. Cynicism seems more like something that has failed, spoiled and exceeded its recommended expiration date. And it's mad about it. It reeks of something molded, dying and disintegrating, something rotting and increasing in foulness toward what it means to be a human. Where’s the smarts in that?
Cynicism is a defensive discarding of hope.
I said...
"Cynicism is a defensive discarding of hope."
While cynicism is the jail, the cage, of the grounded bird; captured by its own talons, pecked to a petty death by its own beak.
At its most noble, cynicism is the savior of naiveté and the accident-prone carriers of that often fortunate malady. For a’las, cynicism and all its cleverness, is like a vest made of rock, lined in cement with threads of freighted iron, quilting a wearable-coffin.
A person guarding themselves in this garb will never fly –– in any way –– and this is sad. They will never invent the impossible of the first plane, the first telephone or first rocket-ship. They will never love the unexplained love that mystifies the logical and imagination-disabled. All things sweet in life are barred from them, from their existence, from their experience, from their view. They’re afraid.
Cynicism, though biting, and cunning, and sharp, and occasionally useful, is, like many of its other negating attitudinal cousins, its own tormentor. It eventually consumes its host like a disease devours a body.
Hope is the substance of any human eligible to evolve to greater heights of human possibility. While cynicism is the jail, the cage, of the grounded bird; captured by its own talons, pecked to a petty death by its own beak. Cynicism may be the product of kind-of-smart people but definitely not the product of the wise.
For my friends, drunken to a stupor with its savory sour juice, let me offer, finally, in the most cynical view I can, in the most cynical way I can, a cynical motivation to escape it. Cynicism lived is its own bloodied sword, impaling the short-term clever, the already hemorrhaging unwise. You're not a new cool, or anything of the sort. Cynicism, is just clever pain.
Heal, my friend.
Our twirl on this blue-green marble is shorter than you think. These are our lives. And we’re just trying to party, and celebrate, all we can. The invitation still stands.
Join us one day. Life is sweeter when you are. That's how it works.
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
