Millennial Homesteading

The rules of life were lost under the existential sofa cushions.

I’m happy when it rains because rain gives me an excuse to hide.

Rain fell today. We spent most of our time inside wearing pajamas, but I had to walk to therapy in the rain. We all have therapists. Today was my day for therapy. I talked about my feelings of inadequacy and my therapist gave me reasons on why they are illogical. We joked about people’s misuse of the word “addicting.”

“Don’t smoke cigarettes,” they say. “They are addicting.”

“Addicting what?” I say. “You mean ‘addictive’? Who are they addicting?”

I went to the barber and asked him to shave my head again: Setting .5 all the way around. Walking home, I pretended the rain drops were the cold tips of my mother’s fingers, patiently messaging my head, the way they once did when I was small enough to fit in between her legs while she sat on the sofa and watched TV. My fiancée was still sleeping when I got home, so I kissed her forehead, dripping rainwater onto her face. She groaned and turned over, kept right on sleeping. Stacy stood in the kitchen in her work dress, frozen, staring at nothing. She laughed at herself and said goodbye, her tea untouched on the kitchen counter.

Now, tonight, three different screens are shining in the dim living room, illuminating three different faces. The windows are shut and the black-out curtains are drawn. The drunks are wailing outside our windows; the bar next door is closing. We wrap ourselves in blankets, sip tea, and discuss the horrors of the election cycle. The dog whimpers for food she has already eaten. The cats hiss at each other and take turns scratching up the ottoman. We’ve given up policing them.

The room is quiet. For an hour or so, we are happy.

Twenty miles away, my brother is snoring. He dreams that his six-year-old son is beating him at chess.

As I silence the screen and slide the phone in my pocket, I remember my brother’s words to me:

“You’ve got to have a kid, Mike. You’ve got to. It’s the the most amazing thing, and you don’t want to end up old and alone.”

I imagine that far, far away, perhaps at the center of the universe, there is a smoky room where the rules of life were etched into law by a committee of grumpy old men; In the corner of that imaginary room is an existential sofa, and this template for life, this treatise on how to master the human condition, is lost underneath the existential sofa cushions. No one has seen it in ages, but many claim to have gleaned its secrets.

“Live in the moment.”

“5 steps toward a happier life.”

“The 15 things that successful people do.”

“This one trick will give you limitless energy.”

“God wants us to prosper financially, to have plenty of money.”

“Follow me, for I am the messiah.”

Each generation is another attempt at mastering the elusive math problem whose sum will be equal to peace and everlasting happiness. We’ve gained some insight over the centuries, a piece here, a piece there: treat others as you’d like to be treated, live in the moment, have sex every day if you can, call your mother. But the page has been lost. The ink has been smeared. The paper has degraded to the texture of cloth.

In its absence, we learn from our elders. We learn to trust them, first. Then we learn to doubt them.

“Look what you’ve done to the planet,” we say. “You should have had more foresight!”

Our elders take a seat on the existential sofa, they cross their legs and light up their pipes. Smoke rings fill the parlor.

One of them clears his throat.

“What did you expect?” he says. “We were told to live in the moment.”

(Thank you for reading)