I have a friend who has a helluva problem.  A nearest and dearest of his is a compulsive gambler.  This is the closest I’ve been to the problem myself – it’s so far removed and still so terrifying.  He’s so frustrated – his heroic measures, cashing out his 401K, living on a shoestring budget and selflessly sending his money to this person, have been like spitting into the ocean. Or yelling into a black hole. But even less enjoyable.

He’s come up with so many different ways to make a plausible current financial picture for this person – suggestions on simple changes, having a lesser cable package, not having all the same subscriptions, little things that he knows from his own experience can make a big difference – but his suggestions fall on deaf ears.

I told him that I thought it might be as though this person, recognizing the damage that’s been wrought, might see the gaping hole in the side of their boat and they might be looking for a tire-sized plug to fix it. Because of this singular goal, this black-and-white thinking, each time he proffers a cork it gets dismissed because clearly it’s not a tire-sized plug, and that’s all that they’re looking for.

After we talked, though, as often happens, the conversation continued rattling in my head and I started extrapolating.  Is it arrogant that sometimes my own analogies please me? I hope not. The words weren’t as gratifying as the pictures that I imagined in the instants while developing the analogy.  Corks tied and glued together to form a tire-sized plug.  The continued out-flow, the idea that the tire-sized hole was still growing, that it wouldn’t stop, the building urgency, the sinking feeling, and feeling further and further away from shore, away from safety, away from a solution. I feel so bad for them.

In our conversation’s aftermath my contemplations wandered onto people – supposed idealists who are so dissatisfied with their day jobs & their now’s because they were meant to BE somebody – someone more significant than their paltry pay and titles allow them to be – but each passing moment is like a cork that could be tied and glued to the next moment, creating SOMEBODY. Instead, in the lamenting of their now they grow even further from their ideals, more bitter about where they are, and from those around me I would surmise that they also feel more as though this dissatisfactory existence is one that has been foist upon them by everybody else.  I feel as though there are some people in my life who pull me down, mire my ‘tude, so to speak, and unwittingly, simply through association, by providing a shoulder, or a sympathetic ear, I serve as the representative them. I take it on, I try & solve it, all the while sounding more & more polyanna & delusional.

And I’m coming to realize that it’s a lot like spitting into the ocean. Or yelling into a black hole. But even less enjoyable.