Still in the Closet…

Feels like a day to do a little ranting.  A bit of purging does wonders for the soul. Perhaps offensive humour might not be your cup of tea, but perhaps you’ve also mistaken me for someone who gives a rat’s ass about your fucking tea.

Now don’t get me wrong, I think positivity’s a wondrous thing. I try to pump out some quality food for thought when I can. But sometimes an enema’s necessary to purge all the compacted bullshit we’ve mistakenly swallowed over the years.

And we’ve ingested a lot of it.

We’ve been presented some of the very finest looking ideological delicacies since the day we were born, and many times we’ve scarfed ’em down without ever considering what less-than-ideal ingredients might’ve gone into ’em. We’ve happily stomached concepts, theories, facts, and beliefs, ignoring the queasy feeling in our guts after ingestion, and still went back to the trough for more. We’ve swallowed the lessons we were told would make us stronger, smarter, well-respected, and successful, only to find ourselves throwing up later from the artificial additives not mentioned on the label.

We’ve all been offered religious, political, ethical, and cultural buffets since the day we were born. When we were young and famished, it was easy enough to accept the juiciness of a Catholic cheeseburger, or a Republican roast chicken, and conclude the sustenance was essential to the very fabric of our existence. Once indoctrinated to our favourite restaurant, we often lost interest to sample the menu from the Independent Thought Diner just down the road, despite the many flyers our intuitions received suggesting that tastier fares were available.

After a feast at the buffet, it’s only a matter of time before a bowel movement ensues. And, oh, how we love our movements! Animal rights, gay rights, anti-capitalism, anti-war, anti-globalization, feminism, pro-choice, pro-life, pro-donkey fucking, anti-donkey fucking… a movement exists for just about anything that two or more people agree with, or are offended by.

I think it’s wonderful to have a cause and a purpose to wake up to each day. But this motivation should not come at the cost of a closed mind. New ideas should never be discounted because comfortable ones are already in place.

Information considered a potential threat to so many established organizations or ideologies gets isolated, removed, dismissed, or completely ignored. Do this for a long enough time, and a once noble cause slowly morphs into just another bigoted, factional, us-versus-them conglomerate. When you only have one cookbook in front of you, it’s quite easy to disregard other recipes.

I used to be a meat-eater. Then I became a vegetarian. Then a vegan. And after spending enough time with far too many self-righteous people, myself included, I’ve become a closetarian. What’s that? Someone who hides in the fucking closet, hoping no one sees or hears them breathing, with the intention of avoiding conversation with a brain-washed fanatic.

Nutrition used to be an interesting topic for me. I’ve long since become closetarian.

Politics used to fascinate me. Ten year closetarian now.

Religion? Hard-core closetarian.

A certain amount of hypocrisy always seems to be intertwined with people who take themselves just a little too seriously.

I’ve been a frequent participant in conversations like this:

“Hey, Mike, you vegan? Me too! Let’s go visit that new raw-food restaurant down the street and spend hours discussing how wonderfully superior we are to animal-product consumers. I hear they have an awesome vegan sausage on the menu! It comes with Daiya cheese, tofu bacon, and soy honey-mustard. Mmmm!

Here’s another fave…

“How dare you flick that mosquito off my arm! Don’t ever do that again! God’s creatures have every right to crawl on me if they choose.” Later that evening, as the rabid raccoon went in for a second bite of her ankle: “Kill it! Kill the motherfucker! Kill it right fucking now!”

And of course the classic…

“Jesus is all about love and forgiveness, being reborn into the kingdom of heaven was the greatest day of my life… did you just see that? That piece of shit cut me off! I’m gonna run his sorry ass off the fucking road!”

Good times.

So instead of swallowing pills to deal with my acid reflux, I’ve discovered a new strategy when dining with humans.

Let them be. Don’t push ideas on people who aren’t ready for them. A quick sample of what’s on their plate is usually enough for me to figure out I won’t have a lot of room left to share a Radical Idea Cheesecake with them.

But that’s fine. Although there are a lot of people out there who have no interest in anything beyond the basics of their jobs, cars, families, and latest reality shows, every once in a while a chance encounter with some unexpected weirdo makes enduring all the other bullshit worthwhile. Fascinating people are out there, but you probably won’t meet too many of them if you keep frequenting the same Burger King all your life.

For some reason, all this writing has made me hungry.

Hungry for some truth.

And what is truth?

Wish I could tell you. I really have no fucking clue at this point.

An effective search entails asking effective questions, and when you can begin to question each and every concept you once blindly accepted as rock solid in your world, you can open your mind to new possibilities – to things you’ve never considered because you had no idea they existed. And once you realize your ignorance of things that you didn’t know existed, you open a menu to the Universe’s 2-for-1 appetizer selections.

I need to head out now, my favourite diner down the road is doing last call. But I hear there’s a new pub opening soon. The flyer said something about imagining your own menu, and creating elixirs that have never been sampled. Fridays are Ladies’ Night.

Might be worth checking out.

What's on your mind?