Rick's January Tirade
By the Sweat of Your Brow
We pay a kind of obligatory homage to men who sweat their way to
success. We applaud their earnest ambition, their drive, their grim
tenacity. We cite how they built their careers one brick at a time,
in rain, snow, fire and monsoon. We praise them for their
perseverance. They're the kind of men who inspire honest dreams
among the Rotarians of Kalamazoo and Keokuk.
But do they inspire the rest of us? When they stand at the
podium, don't we observe the ill-fitting suit, the droplets of
perspiration on the brow, the long wisps of hair desperately
plastered over the balding noggin?
Such men sweat too much. They exude a figurative stench. They're
made of all- too-mortal flesh and innards. We might toss them an
occasional bone, but we rarely elevate them to the pantheon of gods,
heroes and celebrities. That honor we reserve for the anointed ones
-- the chosen few who maddeningly outshine our most laborious
efforts with a yawn and a shrug.
You almost never see the anointed ones sweat. Witness Shakespeare
at his desk, spinning immortal verbiage by the yard while scarcely
blotting a "forsooth." Here's Mozart, composing a gorgeous
symphony in his head while shooting billiards, then sitting down and
calmly transferring his finished masterpiece to paper. Coleridge
received "Kubla Khan," arguably his finest poem, in a
dream. No sweat there. John F. Kennedy eased his way into the
presidency on his looks and charm (and his father's string-pulling),
then effortlessly dazzled the entire planet before being whisked
away to Olympus.
The Kennedy example is especially instructive because, through a
fortunate quirk of history, the times conveniently supplied us with
his opposite number in the person of Richard M. Nixon.
Kennedy represents success by grace; Nixon, success by effort.
Kennedy conducted himself with the cool insouciance of James
Bond, even while consorting with the mob and conducting nightly
trysts with call-girls and smitten receptionists. Nixon sweated in
the mere presence of a camera.
Kennedy was a consummate actor; Nixon, a transparently bad one.
Kennedy easily ingratiated himself with the press and the people.
Nixon was heartily disliked by the cultural elite and finally driven
to fatal paranoia.
Today, in the popular mind, Kennedy is revered in spite of his
manifold blemishes; Nixon is reviled in spite of his real virtues.
You might object that Nixon earned his vilification because of the
Watergate mess. Fair enough. But the fact is, poor Dick was never
much liked even before that bone-crushing fiasco.
Oh, Nixon tried hard enough to be likable. He was earnest,
moderate, sensible and soberly intelligent. He was capable of rueful
wit. He occasionally flashed an engaging smile. But America never
warmed to his jowly countenance and hunched figure. His rhetoric
didn't soar; it chugged. His body language was hopelessly spastic.
He wore his navy blue suits and black oxfords to the beach. Cast him
in a Wagnerian opera and he'd play the stout, evil basso to JFK's
romantic heldentenor.
In short, Nixon wasn't a natural. Everything he achieved, he
achieved through laborious effort. He sweated his way to the top and
wasn't about to let his enemies undermine his hard-won success. So
he ended up undermining it himself. And as his fortunes collapsed
like an imploded housing project, Americans sat before their TVs and
snickered at his tragedy.
Why all this fuss over a dead president? Because Nixon's case
makes you wonder whether effort is really worth the EFFORT. What's
the point of all the unnatural striving, the self-laceration, the
infernal sweating and straining in the name of achievement? If your
gifts don't spring from within, your career becomes a lifelong quest
for an elusive grail. You lose your youth conforming to somebody
else's rules; you bump repeatedly against your limitations; you hurt
inside and out; you grow weary and disenchanted; you're forever an
awkward alien among glib insiders.
And what if you don't even succeed after all that effort? Then
you've earned the privilege of looking back on a thoroughly wasted
life. Wouldn't you have been happier as a simple wayfarer, roaming
free under the puffy clouds, playing sweet tunes on your fiddle and
enjoying the warmth of evening campfires? Failure after a life of
effort seems the worst of all worlds; you've known neither success
nor merriment.
Of course, most of us succeed just enough to keep us lusting for
more. That's how the establishment ensures that we stay productive.
By doubling our efforts we might reap a ten percent gain. With a
little luck, we might even achieve the kind of success that inspires
those Rotarians in Kalamazoo and Keokuk. But at what cost?
It's a fact that you can sabotage yourself by trying too hard. In
baseball, pitchers lose their mastery when they force their motions.
The same principle foils struggling actors, artists and husbands.
Critics hurl contempt at writers whose style is sumptuous and
artfully contrived; they prefer the plain oatmeal of the
minimalists.
If you possess the gift, you don't sweat visibly like the rest of
us. Yes, you still have to work, technically speaking -- but your
work fills you with secret joy and energy. You glide through
frictionless days, youthful and incandescent. You express your
talent as naturally as you breathe or sleep. It's only a matter of
time before your gifts are recognized and (unless you're unfortunate
enough to be a writer) financially rewarded. Success without sweat
must be the headiest of drugs. You're one of the elect, you know it,
and you shrug it off to put the commoners at their ease.
The illusion of effortlessness carries subtle class connotations.
Preppies appear not to be equipped with sweat glands. These highborn
Anglo-Saxons normally conduct their affairs with an economy of
energy that leaves their brows unwrinkled and their thatched hair
unruffled. They calmly wonder why the rest of us have to push so
hard.
Cool people don't sweat either, and they're the aristocrats of
pop society. On "Seinfeld," the titular star is so cool
that he has to FEIGN exasperation. Rap singers seem to construct
their rude rhymes with the natural ease of mockingbirds. Fred
Astaire, a prime specimen of celluloid cool, appeared not to possess
a graceless molecule in his entire body; every movement across his
black-and-white domain looked inspired and effortless.
But wait a minute: it's a fact that Astaire rehearsed his
"effortless" routines for weeks on end; rap music can be
ghostwritten by nerds; the too- cool Seinfeld sweated uncomfortably
during an interview on "60 Minutes"; those unflappable
preppies often commute absurd distances to maintain their exalted
status; even the masterly JFK was something of a self-created
illusion: he spent most of his adult life in pain and ill-health.
The point is that, illusions to the contrary, nobody really
achieves anything of substance without effort. The artful ones
simply adhere to the stand-up comedian's adage, "Never let them
see you sweat." But sweat they do. And sweat we must. Somebody
pass the deodorant.
Here's the complete archive of Rick Bayan's immortal tirades for your reading pleasure:
December 2002 — Hello, I Must Be Going
November 2002 — A Raving Moderate
August 2002 — Is Western Civilization Worth Saving?
July 2002 — To Scam or Be Scammed
June 2002 — I Read the News Today, Oh Boy
May 2002 — Speechophobia
April 2002 — Fanatics on Parade
March 2002 — The Prestige Gap: A Lament
February 2002 — On Becoming a Dullard
January 2002 — Art for Slackers
December 2001 — An Unsolicited Christmas Card
November 2001 — A Tale of Two Tribes
October 2001 — On the Fallen Towers
August 2001 — Why Do We Bother?
June 2001 — Notes from a Doomed Planet
May 2001 — The Museum of Discarded Names
April 2001 — Indecision
March 2001 — A Slight Case of Insanity
February 2001 — Letter to a Conscientious Critic
January 2001 — The Cynic's Inaugural Address
December 2000 — The 50th Tirade
November 2000 — Travel Advisory
October 2000 — Beyond Work
September 2000 — More Work
August 2000 — Work
July 2000 — The Doves' Nest
June 2000 — Great Affectations
May 2000 — Tale of a Virtual Village
April 2000 — The World Is My Obstacle Course
March 2000 — A Living Heck
February 2000 — On the Treachery
of Time
January 2000 — A Letter to the
Future
December 99 — Rare Bird
November 99 — Not Just Another
Obscure Ethnic Group
October 99 — Extinction Reconsidered
September 99 — Good Life, Bad
Life, Better Life
August 99 — Household Relics:
An Elegy
July 99 — A Meditation on Profanity
June 99 — In Praise of Sloth
May 99 — A Bug's Death
April 99 — Obligations!
March 99 — The Courage to Be Ordinary
February 99 — A Grave Story
January 99 — What's Left for
Men?
December 98 — On the Uses of
Friends
November 98 — A Cynic's Thanksgiving
October 98 — Grand Illusions
September 98 — Filth
August 98 — Will the Real God
Please Stand Up?
July 98 — Adventures in Downsizing
June 98 — Lady Longevity
May 98 — Uniquely Human, Uniquely
Clueless
April 98 — The Mathematics of Excess
March 98 — Humbuggery
February 98 — Love and the Single
Cynic
January 98 — By the Sweat of
Your Brow
December 97 — Is Suffering Unfashionable?
November 97 — The Tao of Housekeeping
October 97 — The Sensory Deprivation
Blues
September 97 — Down with Natural
Selection!
August 97 — Noise
July 97 — On Eating Our Fellow Creatures
June 97 — Trouble in Book-Land
May 97 — Interview with an Unemployable
Man
April 97 — The Cynic's Dream
March 97 — Inequalities
February 97 — Flesh and Mortality
January 97 — How to Be a Success
December 96 — Why I Can't Hate
Christmas
November 96 — How I Became a Cynic
