Aesthetic is Easy

You can wear a uniform. You can proudly display Russell, Hegel, Kant, and Aristotle on your shelves. You can fly a flag outside your house. You can own a dog, have a kid, go to church.

You can wish others well when they leave, send birthday cards, and tag them on Facebook with thoughts and prayers after they lose a job. You can talk about your patriotism, what is right, and of the good word. You can criticize the politicians, lament hardship, and decry evildoers. You can follow the child's lead and point out that the emperor is, in fact, naked. And you can be like the emperor, broadcasting for all to see.

But the two uniforms you have are pristine. The book spines are uncracked, their smell saved for the second owner, and you confidently thought dialectic was a term to describe a discussion on dialects. The flag you're flying is just as freshly hemmed as the last one before the most recent wind gust took yet another one away. The dog is bored and doesn't know what a leash is, the kid is on their iPad at their friend's house while you chill at home, and the only verses of the bible you know are the ones your pastor talked about most recently, and some of Leviticus for some reason... Aesthetics are easy.

And outside of birthdays and the occasional tagged post, these people are non-existent to you. Your patriotism is only evoked upon viewing symbolism. Your concept of right and wrong is a toddler's shape sorter: white circle, black square, matching holes. You think the apostles wrote in Shakespearian English about how God has enriched only the good and how Jesus loved his nation. You don't complain about your politicians without bringing up mine. The hardships you lament are of people you'd later refuse into your country without proper paperwork. The evildoers you decry are always their politicians or whoever we've most recently killed that half the news describes as being against 'us.' Words are cheap.

You can portray what you want to portray, whether that is to present a façade to new company, or to dull the concerns brought by any brief introspection you may suffer. What many seem incapable of is being what they portray.

So, to the soldier only following orders; to the self-proclaimed genius speaking without a trace of thought; to the gaudy prayers of saved blaspheming nationalists who've flocked to American Sadducees and temple merchants; to the bumper-sticker patriot who stopped reading the first amendment early, started reading the second halfway through, and skipped to the pledge of allegiance before calling it a day; to the guy with the Tinder dog; to the parents I couldn't possibly judge or understand as a childless person; and to the people who treat my thoughts as invalid because I don't attend a church.

You seem to be unaware or unconcerned with the divergence between what you've done, what you've said, and what you intend to do. You've given up on your own thoughts, the presumably-loved ones you're responsible for, the country you claim to love, and the Jesus I've only read about, whom you claim to love.

I've tried over and over. But I'm tired. I agonize while imagining another poor conversation with people I know and care about. I chastise myself for assuming they would actually do that. I am disappointed in myself for expecting something different when I do finally engage. I then blame myself further for pushing too much on them.

You seem unwilling to engage in these ideas with me. You speak over me after I've waited. You placate me with a defeatist optimism. You speak of a topic you know nothing about and swap to another topic once I try to scratch the surface. You won't entertain a critique of your own politics even after I've masochistically pointed out my own in front of you in good faith. You nod along if I try to talk to you about your kid and dismiss the commentary you've ignored because I don't have a kid. You dismiss my asking a pointed question about a verse in scripture because I don't believe and only go to church when my wife brings me.

You don't see me go home to read the news story, confirming what I thought I knew before entering conversation with you. You don't see that the optimism fails to soothe me every time. You don't see that I've spent years developing expertise on a few topics, while working hard to learn about more and more. You don't see that I am regularly disappointed in my politicians along with yours. You don't seem to care that I've lived through a similar experience to your kid and can relate to you a perspective they might not be able to describe to you. You don't see that I've purchased two different translations of the bible and am reading them to try to understand what you've come to know, all for the sake of discussing things with you.

Even while writing this, I continue on the coil: I've begun to reflect on how any of the people whom I'd like to have shouted these words to could possibly take all of this as anything other than self-pity. I've begun to wonder if it is my inability to communicate my ideas, or to even communicate my desire to share ideas. Do I come across as condescending, or ingenuine? Is this just a complaint?

I wrote this to leave my spiral. I can confirm: the critique I gave in the first seven paragraphs, offered without seeking your response, was easy. It even gave me a flicker of self-satisfaction.

But I was left empty. And I'm now angry at myself while I debate whether to put this up.

So, to all of you, I'm tired of doing the work for us to talk. Try or let me know to leave you alone.