Time to Wake Up, or Is Your Soul Sitting on a Shelf in an Air-Conditioned Storage Unit in the Middle of Nowhere?

I rarely do rants. I don’t like them and I generally cringe when people do rant. I say this as a preface and an apology in advance in case these next few paragraphs sound like they came from the belly of some wrathful beast. No, strike that. Forget the apology. I can’t be responsible for any reader’s reaction. I can only be responsible for my own words, and that action, I do take seriously.

About a month ago I was at a doctor’s office. Doctor’s offices are designed to make you feel small and inhuman. The waiting rooms are small, and the actual room you go into when you see the doctor are even smaller. They got you on a leash and you can’t do anything about it. The receptionists (usually over-perfumed, caustic middle-aged women with cakey make-up, pink lipstick, and blue eye-shadow) are short with you, and somehow through their eyes, your intelligence level has gone waaaaaaaay down. They make this assumption pretty quickly and you better accept it. You better not complain.

So, here I am waiting, my appointment time set for 1pm, and like a dutiful little soldier (or a Communist Pioneer), I have arrived “20 minutes early” as was indicated on the monotonous, non-human, robotic message that was left on my answering machine. There is a television set blaring in the corner. Some bald dude that looks like a biker is talking about interior design and things we can do to “spruce up and spice up our living space.” Translation: get more useless Pier 1/Target junk to fill up your living room. There are some people around me, waiting like me, silently.

By now, it’s 2pm. Usually, I am not the complaining type. I let things roll and I try to resolve matters in a reasonable manner. I also get anxious at the possibility of a conflict: heart palpitations, sweating buckets, you name it. But damn it, I will get up, I said to myself. And so I did.

“Um, excuse me,” I said to the blond (well, the dark roots showing, so obviously not a blonde) receptionist.

She didn’t even say anything. She just looked up from the computer screen and gave me a rather sour look that said “how dare you even think about complaining?” I swallowed whatever saliva I had. My mouth was becoming dry very quickly.

“How long do you think until I go in to see my doctor?” Oh, man, I thought! I am speaking from the throat. She will know that I lack any confidence to nail her sourness.

“Tough to say. She [the doctor] has two more patients before you.” The “blonde’s” head went back into the computer screen.

She? But my doctor is a MAN! What is this? I am seeing his assistant who does not even have a degree yet?

“But I never made an appointment with her,” I said weakly. The “blonde” was not listening. And I retreated, like a turtle. It would be another hour until I finally saw a “nurse practioner,” another blonde (tough to say whether she was fake). I was shrinking further and further in the sterile world of stethoscopes and gurneys, and that awful paper they put on a gurney and they make you sit on it, and it crumbles under your ass as they measure your blood pressure and take your pulse.

The blonde asked me whether I am feeling ok, and I blurted that I’ve been feeling anxious. Without asking me any questions about my past, she sent me home with four boxes of an anti-depressant medication and a prescription for eighty (yes: 8-0!) Xanax pills. As I took this, I heard my reasonable (but angry) self yell: Why are you not standing up for yourself? Is your soul sitting on the shelf in some perfectly air-conditioned storage unit in the middle of nowhere? I left the office, and as soon as I got outside and into the car, I started to breathe again. The pills were thrown out, and Xanax never filled.

I find it quite interesting that we don’t “complain.” And I am not talking about whining. I am talking about American apathy and listlessness. The indifference that we see these days about one’s own personal life or someone else’s is staggering. Think of the recent case of that woman on a train, talking on a cell phone for sixteen hours! Of course, she is the primary culprit but what about people around her who bought the ticket to be in a quiet section of the train? It took people sixteen hours to finally SAY something?

In 1961, the great WFB wrote an essay called “Why Don’t We Complain?” Buckley was confused as to what has happened to the American people. Where is that American spirit of getting things done? I can only (unfortunately) say that it has gotten worse. People feel alienated, telling themselves either that everything is alright (read: Obama is a great guy and he is not leading our country towards a statist chaos) or they are attaching a label to themselves of a particular “disorder” they are suffering from.

Apathy, acedia, sloth—call it what you will. One thing is for sure: it’s not good for the future of our civilization. Our voices need to be heard. I am not calling for a revolution. Far from it. But I am calling for a thoughtful, intelligent and reasonable “complaining.” There are degrees of issues and degrees of complaint. Sometimes, some battles need to be left alone, especially if they are trivial. But when something is serious and it requires our attention and devotion and honest (not superficial) judgment, then we have to take the responsibility and SAY SOMETHING!

In his essay, Buckley wrote “when our voices are finally mute, when we have finally suppressed the natural instinct to complain, whether the vexation is trivial or grave, we shall have become automatons, incapable of feeling.” And once you desensitize yourself from the phenomenological aspect of life, then evil does not exist, and goes unpunished. Abortion is alright, and if you want to take your own life because you can’t take the pain, go ahead, you have every RIGHT to do so. Oh, and wait for the government and regulation to tell you what to do, until one day, they will knock on your door or send you a letter that says, “sorry but your soul just died” (words taken from another great writer, Tom Wolfe).

So, come, let us wake up from this state-induced sleep and love reality, once again.