I Could Be Wrong, But...
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Misery Loves Company
©2009 David Boyne
When I was young and dumb, not middle-aged and dumb, I was perplexed by the old sayings that old people say.
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Birds of a feather flock together. A stitch in time saves nine.
These old sayings hurt my head. I thought I was growing up in a strange sect of New England Zen Masters, all of them reciting mind-stopping koans. (Questions or riddles designed by the Zen Master--to help the student—to find the Truth--behind the everyday images of reality.) Grownups seemed to have an old saying for every situation, and they would say the old sayings in a deeply knowing tone of voice. By age 5, all the kids around me were saying old sayings, too, and with that same deeply knowing tone of voice. I felt hopelessly dumb. Unlike Isaac Newton, I failed to see the hidden meaning in apples falling close to trees. Or in birds with feathers palling around with birds with feathers. Or in saving a planet called Nine, by sewing up a hole in time.
One of the most perplexing old sayings that old people perplexed me by saying, was, Misery loves company. At 7, failing to glean any meaning in this expression, I instead imagined a vivacious woman named Miss Surrey, who was hosting a party and serving her guests strange smelling brown-colored drinks, with crushed limes or squeezed lemons in them, and little cocktail weenies on toothpicks. (I borrowed these details from my real world experience with the leftover highballs and hors d'oeuvres I would examine, the morning after one of my parents parties.) I imagined Miss Surrey moving among her company, making sure people were mixing, mingling, and schmoozing, and that no wallflowers were left alone in a corner, sweating bullets and dying to be home watching television while spooning up a pint of ice cream. My interpretation fit the facts: Miss Surrey loves company. It was also completely wrong.
Despite this quirky compass, like all my navigational tools, being faulty, I somehow managed to navigate the strange world I found myself sailing through. Whenever the actual meaning of a sentence escaped me, I simply listened to the sounds of the words, and let my imagination imagine. This explains why, to this day, I always have an answer to any question, no matter how complicated, or trivial. And my answer is always wrong. But I can instantly come up with another wrong answer. And another. This is an undeniable talent which I’m certain to someday find a use for.
My father, who was doggedly training his children to become “good” Catholics, would dress us and drive us to church every Sunday. My mother, curiously, always stayed home. Alone. Which, given that misery loves company, proved that despite all outward appearances, expressions, verbal and physical assaults on others, my mother was in fact not miserable. Or perhaps had already achieved “good” Catholic status. These were the days when the Catholic Mass was still spoken in Latin. I would sit in church, overwhelmed with all the impenetrably, mellifluously, meaningless words. My imagination was in Hog Heaven. Hog Heaven is a place found only in old sayings, and in which I believed winged hogs floated on clouds, played Irish harps, and by their simple incontrovertible presence, answered the koan, Can pigs fly?
Catholic mass is highly participatory. We punctuated the flow of unintelligible Latin by beating our chests en masse on cue, and kneeling en masse on cue, and standing en masse on cue, and sitting en masse on cue, and making the sign of the cross en masse on cue. If a roving television interviewer had asked me, I would have said that our church was really a School for Mimes. And the one message we were all being taught to pantomime was, “Oh, Lord! I’m so miserable! Not that I’m complaining. Because this is way better than dying and burning in Hell for eternity, or languishing in Purgatory with nothing to do but check the mailbox everyday for a letter of reprieve that never comes. So please, Lord, don’t smite me! But if you could, maybe, just make me a little less miserable?”
This explains why, at age 11, I became an atheist.
But a funny thing happened on my way to where I’m going. In the years between 7 and 11, when I first began to run aground on most of the Big Rocks of Life, a miracle—don’t ask me how—occurred. I found the hidden key that unlocked the door to an alternative world. I have been exploring that strange other world, called Metaphor, ever since.
Despite opting out of my Catholic upbringing, and getting my student visa to Metaphor, I would still spend the first 46 years of my once-in-a-lifetime Life, more or less, miserable. I deserve a medal. Or an award. And since I am writing this just as Hollywood is awarding Oscars to its chosen people, I will follow that lead, and make an acceptance speech.
I want to thank my ‘producers,’ that is, my mom and dad! They instilled in me the traditional values of being miserable, and of wanting to share my misery with others. You know, being miserable wasn’t always easy. I could not have done it alone. It took many people to help me overcome, suppress, repress, and flat-out deny my natural tendency to feel good, to see the comic infrastructure of Life, and to sing when in the shower, or riding a bicycle, or driving a car. Let me tell you, being so miserable for so long took discipline. And a public education. Not to mention years of therapy. And the right combination of drugs. But with the nurturing of my family, friends, and teachers, I was able to overcome my carefree nature, and take on the socially acceptable burden of being miserable and making others miserable. Now, after 46 year of misery, this award in my hands means it was worth the struggle! You love me! You really love me! Thank you, everyone! May God bless every miserable sonofabitch on earth!
But another funny thing happened on my way to where I’m going. In the years between age 46 and 51, when I finally got tired of running aground on the same damn Big Rocks of Life I had first run aground on at age 7, another miracle—don’t ask me how—occurred. I became, more or less, happy.
At the very least, I became un-miserable. And now that I'm happy, or, un-miserable, I understand why I am spending so much of my time alone: Misery loves company.
But Feeling Good loves company, too. The difference is, Misery wants to hang out with miserable people, and if none are readily available, she will go out and make people miserable so she can be with them. Feeling Good wants to hang out with other folks who are Feeling Good, but unlike Misery, if Feeling Good can’t find fellow travelers, he’s happy to Feel Good Alone as he moves on down the road of Life.
Misery is like the latest starlet with swollen lips, perpendicular tits, and a publicist-authored backstory of having overcome the great hobblings of being born beautiful, and with a bulimia nervosa appetite for other people’s attention. So it is, that Misery is pursued by paparazzi, basks in the bright lights of television interviewers, and dances in the strobes of a thousand camera flashes. Misery is never alone.
Looking back, I see that while I was definitely not in good company when I was miserable, I was in plenty of company. Everyone I met in real life, and everyone I met in fake life, i.e., in books and newspapers and magazines, and in movies, and on television, was also, more or less, miserable. Everyone told the same story: I’m miserable because forces beyond my control are keeping me from doing what I most want to do. (The French existentialist version goes even deeper: I am miserable because forces beyond my control are keeping me from even knowing what it is I would most like to do. Life is merde!) Excuse my French.
Unlike socially obsessive Misery, Feeling Good just quietly, electrically, enjoys his own buzz. Compared to the drama queen that is Misery, Feeling Good is boring. Feeling Good doesn’t photograph well. Feeling Good isn't seductive on television (unless starring in an ad for mood-altering drugs or trans-fat-free margarine). Feeling Good is insular, self-reliant, self-sustaining.
And Misery loves company.
Misery loves company is an old saying. I can easily imagine Henry VIII, as he had another heir-barren wife trundled off to the hoosegow to await her final cut, saying it. Or Danté, as he was populating those rings of Hell, chanting it. And of course, for the authors of the Bible, Misery loves company was their storytelling Star of Bethlehem.
I could be wrong, but old sayings are more than just clichés. After all, precious few ideas, insights, or one-liners are worthy of being preserved in a cliché. Old sayings, or clichés, are the breadcrumb trail of wisdom that those who passed before us have dropped to let us know that Kilroy Was Here. It's a shame how a cliché becomes just a stunning, brilliant idea that no one over the age of 11 ever stops a moment to think about. Perhaps this proves, You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.
Or, as the deeper, profounder, koan created by Zen Master Groucho Marx teaches, You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him gather moss.