Lately, I’ve found myself reinterpreting the current world state of affairs, political decisions, events, social situations, etc, by seeing middle fingers everywhere. ‘Shock, horror!,’ I hear you roll your eyes. But, I’ll have you know, seeing middle fingers in everything, everywhere, all at once is actually quite a new phenomenon to me. And, if I might say, rather alarming for the naive and overly sensitive soul that I usually am. But it can’t be helped. I’m all of a sudden seeing middle fingers left, right, and centre. What’s more, this reframing and rewiring in my mind has once and for all wrenched open my eyes to this increasingly hostile place we live in (yes, I am fully aware that the world has always been a rather hostile, dog-eat-dog-and-they-eat-your-cats world, especially for those way less fortunate than me). I’m climbing on my soapbox anyway, allow me to indulge.
Back to my bookshop café
I was sitting in the bookshop café again (actually finishing a book for once), and it was the second time I’d seen this distinguished gentleman there as well. I call him distinguished not because he was old, which he undoubtedly was, but especially because I watched him spending his whole Friday morning carefully and patiently reading each and every newspaper on the coffee table, one by one. And he sat there until his apple pie and large cappuccino were completely finished. And let me tell you, he made that apple pie last a looooooooong time. I’ve always had a soft spot for old people, especially those who still read newspapers and look like they smoked a pipe way back when it was still the thing to do…
Anyway, at the same time, I’d also been amusing myself watching the new, oblivious-to-his-surroundings-15-year-old busboy clearing tables and bringing café guests their coffees and cakes (I calculated his rate of accuracy on getting the correct orders out to the correct table to be around 55%, bless). Oh, one more important detail to mention: Oblivious Busboy couldn’t speak Dutch. Which brings me to my second (slightly cynical) soft spot: oblivious teenagers who have yet to find out about living IRL (note to my parents: IRL stands for In Real Life and is not the abbreviation referring to Ireland).
A bit of context: this bookshop café is situated in a very affluent neighbourhood, full of rich old people and expat families. The two protagonists of my little anecdote are seemingly both comfortable inhabitants making up this slightly surreal world; essentially, they make up two sides of the same gold coin.
When two sides of the same coin meet up
So, imagine my horror, at witnessing, from the comfort of my safe-space that is the bookshop café armchair, these two sides of the same privaliged coin colliding in spectacular fashion. It happened when Oblivious Busboy (obviously son of an oil magnet power couple but forced to earn his own money by parents wanting to teach their only son the true value of ‘hard labour’) made the colossal mistake of trying to clear away the plate of Distinguished Gentleman (proudly well-educated, respectable, former upper middle manager of a smallish chemical research company before it was taken over by a multinational and eons before upper middle management positions became classified as bullshit jobs).
Distinguished Gentleman had stretched that piece of apple pie to its absolute limit (all of 1 1/2 hour). Anybody could have mistaken the plate on which rested a collection of crumbs and a single bit of apple for a finished plate. And Oblivious Busboy (perhaps never having had to completely finish his own plate) made the schoolboy error to try and clear Distinguished Gentleman’s table. ‘I’m still eating that!’, Distinguished Gentleman spluttered in Dutch, ‘can’t you see??’ Oblivious Busboy mumbled something about not understanding Dutch but eventually grasped the fact that Distinguished Gentleman was not very happy and for some reason didn’t want his table cleared. He shrugged and slouched over to the next table. After which huffing and puffing Distinguished Gentleman looked around desperately trying to find supporters for his predicament: ‘the state of today, can’t even speak Dutch, what is the world coming to?!’
Middle fingers everywhere.
My own world-view collision
Just to illustrate how far this seeing middle fingers everywhere has seeped into my already overly cluttered mind: You know how sometimes a song, or just a few lyrics of a song get stuck in your head and comes out at the oddest of moments? Well, there is this one children’s poem that frequently pops into my head. It’s called ‘There are big waves’ by Eleanor Farjeon. It’s a sweet, uplifting poem, about life. I’ve taken it to mean that there are all sorts of waves (i.e. obstacles, opportunities, situations) you come across in a lifetime. And you’ll undoubtedly make a success of said life, if only you navigate them as best you can (yep, I did mention my naïve and sheltered upbringing). Mind you, as a child I just liked how the poem rhymed:
There are big waves and little waves,
Green waves and blue,
Waves you can jump over,
Waves you can dive thro’,
Waves that rise up
Like a great water fall,
Waves that swell softly
And don’t break at all,
Waves that can whisper,
Waves that can roar
And tiny waves that run at you
Running on the shore.
You can imagine my alarm when I realised that over the past months, I had gradually and subconsciously swapped the word ‘waves’ in this poem for the words ‘middle fingers’. Framed in this way, the world is presented not as a life in which we all swim in, observe, and ride different but essentially unharmful and innocent waves. Rather, it all of a sudden becomes an unkind, confrontational, dog-eat-dog-and-cats-and-all-other-pets-and-all-living-things-on-this-planet-and-beyond world.
The moment I realised that the world is made up of middle fingers, is the moment I started writing this next sensemaking blog post. But before you swipe left, I’ve also realised that not all middle fingers are created equal. Yes, there might be harsh, confrontational, bullying, opportunistic, crass, egotistical, power-hungry middle fingers abound. This type of middle finger is as old as mankind (obviously). But there also exist quite a few necessary, respectable, greater good, inclusive, bigger picture middle fingers in the world we live in as well, you just need to look a little bit harder to notice them. How does the Serenity Prayer go again? ‘G, grant me the to accept the *middle fingers* I cannot change, the courage to change the *middle fingers* I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.’
I made myself a deal. I was under no illusion that I could ignore all the horrible middle fingers in the world today; it would mean me having to stay in bed and hide under the duvet covers for all of the next four to eight years (or until bots have finally taken over the world). Instead, I was going to proactively look for those middle fingers in which I could actually find some solace, those that would help make sense of this middle finger world, those which I could perhaps even respect?? It took me all of a month, but I found three absolute scorchers of admirable, uplifting, and welcoming middle fingers in the form of an art exhibition, a book, and a film. Stay tuned for blog post Middle fingers everywhere – Part II.
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