soopastryheart

Aging means losing things, and not just eyesight and flexibility. It means watching the accomplishments of your youth be diminished, maybe in your own eyes through perspective, maybe in the eyes of others through cultural amnesia. Most people live anonymous lives, and when they grow old and die, any record of their existence is blown away. They’re forgotten, some more slowly than others, but eventually it happens to virtually everyone. Yet for the few people in each generation who reach the very pinnacle of fame and achievement, a mirage flickers: immortality. They come to believe in it. Even after Jordan is gone, he knows people will remember him. Here lies the greatest basketball player of all time. That’s his epitaph. When he walked off the court for the last time, he must have believed that nothing could ever diminish what he’d done. That knowledge would be his shield against aging.

– excerpt from Wright Thompson’s ESPN article on Michael Jordan.

If you can keep your head when all about you 
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; 
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, 
But make allowance for their doubting too; 
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, 
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies, 
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating, 
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master; 
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim; 
If you can meet with triumph and disaster 
And treat those two imposters just the same; 
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken 
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, 
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken, 
And stoop and build ’em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings 
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, 
And lose, and start again at your beginnings 
And never breath a word about your loss; 
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew 
To serve your turn long after they are gone, 
And so hold on when there is nothing in you 
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, 
Or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch; 
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you; 
If all men count with you, but none too much; 
If you can fill the unforgiving minute 
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run – 
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, 
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man my son!

–If, by Rudyard Kipling

Unashamedly, I am one of the 66 million viewers of the now-unavoidable viral sensation that is Gangnam Style (Boyfriend counts for about 1/8th of the total count). And despite being able to speak my native tongue (more or less), I didn’t actually take the time to understand its lyrics and quickly dismissed the song as just another catchy whim in passing.

Turns out, the lyrics and video are something of a brilliantly subtle-but-not-so-subtle commentary on Korea’s culture/obsession with portraying the luxurious life:

This skewering of the Gangnam life can be easy to miss for non-Korean. Psy boasts that he’s a real man who drinks a whole cup of coffee in one gulp, for example, insisting he wants a women who drinks coffee. “I think some of you may be wondering why he’s making such a big deal out of coffee, but it’s not your ordinary coffee,” U.S.-based Korean blogger Jea Kim wrote at her site, My Dear Korea…”In Korea, there’s a joke poking fun at women who eat 2,000-won (about $2) ramen for lunch and then spend 6,000 won on Starbucks coffee.” They’re called Doenjangnyeo, or “soybean paste women” for their propensity to crimp on essentials so they can over-spend on conspicuous luxuries, of which coffee is, believe it or not, one of the most common. “The number of coffee shops has gone up tremendously, particularly in Gangnam,” Hong said. “Coffee shops have become the place where people go to be seen and spend ridiculous amounts of money.”

– Excerpt from Max Fisher’s article on The Atlantic.

Gogol listens, stunned, his eyes fixed on his father’s profile. Though there are only inches between them, for an instant his father is a stranger, a man who has kept a secret, has survived a tragedy, a man whose past he does not fully know. A man who is vulnerable, who has suffered in an inconceivable way. He imagines his father, in his twenties as Gogol is now, sitting on a train as Gogol had just been, reading a story, and then suddenly nearly killed. He struggles to picture the West Bengal countryside he has seen on only a few occasions, his father’s mangled body, among hundreds of dead ones, being carried on a stretcher, past a twisted length of maroon compartments. Against instinct he tries to imagine life without his father, a world in which his father does not exist. 

“Why don’t I know this about you?” Gogol says. His voice sounds harsh, accusing, but his eyes well with tears. “Why haven’t you told me this until now?”

“It never felt like the right time, “ his father says.

“But it’s like you’ve lied to me all these years.” When his father doesn’t respond, he adds, “That’s why you have that limp, isn’t it?”

“It happened so long ago. I didn’t want to upset you.”

“It doesn’t matter. You should have told me.”

“Perhaps,” his father concedes, glancing briefly in Gogol’s direction. He removes his keys from the ignition. “Come, you must be hungry. The car is getting cold.”

But Gogol doesn’t move. He sits there, still struggling to absorb the information, feeling awkward, oddly ashamed, at fault. “I’m sorry, Baba.”

His father laughs softly. “You had nothing to do with it.”

“Does Sonia know?”

His father shakes his head. “Not yet. I’ll explain it to her one day. In this country, only your mother knows. And now you. I’ve always meant for you to know, Gogol.”

And suddenly the sound of his pet name, uttered by his father as he has been accustomed to hearing it all his life, means something completely new, bound up with a catastrophe he has unwittingly embodied for years. “Is that what you think of when you think of me?” Gogol asks him. “Do I remind you of that night?”

“Not at all,” his father says eventually, one hand going to his ribs, a habitual gesture that has baffled Gogol until now. “You remind me of everything that followed.”

— excerpt from The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri

It was never about the chicken.

I remember thinking, under stress, “I hope they choke.” That’s not true. Even though I did my best to make the salads and wraps extra-gay, I don’t want to harm the customers. (Otherwise I may have been moved to spit on their food. I didn’t, because that’s going too far.) The only thing that kept me going without screaming or storming off was simply knowing that I’m right. These people won’t choke on their food—I wouldn’t wish that, just as I wouldn’t wish anyone go hungry—but they will end up hurting. It’s going to be a long fall from the saddles of their high horses, once we do have equal marriage rights. Their descendants will be ashamed of them, just as I’m ashamed of my grandparents’ support of segregation. When their children and grandchildren ask, “How was it possible to be Christian and oppose equal rights?” their own words will choke them. They don’t need food to do it for them.

— excerpt from an anonymous Chick-fil-A employee. Check out her full post at The Daily Beast.