Well, I got fired today. Just a month or two of working once a week at the salad/sandwich place Chopped and I was informed today that I was being let go. So, yeah, you can imagine what wonders getting fired from a minimum-wage fast food job does to your self-esteem, but that’s actually not what I want to get into right now (and in fairness I can’t really blame them; they probably really didn’t need to take me on in the first place and I wasn’t as quick as everybody else on the salad/chopping line [though in my defense it was only four/five hours a week so I think it was harder for me to get into the rhythm of it]). Ah, crap, I did get into it. I’ll stop and actually move on to the real topic of this post.
Lately my mind’s been getting stuck on the seeming contradictions or inadequacies in certain phrases we human beings use. You can see this in my last post when I went on a quick side-tangent about the phrase “Native American.” Well, today what I thought about was the phrase “We’re letting you go” as an alternative to “We’re firing you.” Now, I appreciate the desire to be tactful about firing somebody (and the manager, Nick, was very kind), but “letting you go” seems like a very retarded, almost cop-out way to say you’re firing somebody.
We’re letting you go!? Letting someone go implies that they wanted to go, that you were holding them back and now you are setting them free.
Why, yes, indeed, I hated having a job, hated actually having an income, hated gaining job experience, hated feeling like I had something steady and reliable, a place where I could contribute and receive rewards; those jerks were making me come in every week to work! I didn’t want to but they bodily dragged me in and chained me to the counter! If only they would just liberate me and let me go.
Sometimes I wish for a world with less tact and more frank, up-front communication. “Sir, we’re firing you because you suck at this job.” Yeah, it hurts, but it hurts no matter how you dress it up. Whatever method they have for telling you you’re fired, the same feelings of loss, inadequacy, and failure set in (ah, dang it, I’m getting back into it again).
Point is, I think the phrase “letting go” is a phrase that that simply does not jive with the reality of what firing is.
The other phrase that’s been troubling me a bit lately is the phrase, “anti-war” (this train of thought was inspired by the movie Avatar). Whenever I hear the phrase “anti-war” applied to a movie or story, it's usually a turn-off for me. Which then makes me feel weird. I mean, does that mean I’m pro-war. That’s a terrible thought!
Why, yes, I can’t get me enough war. Every morning I wake up thinking, “Boy, I just can’t wait till the next big war!” I just love the thought of young men from different cultures and nations coming together to kill each other. I love the smell of napalm in the morning!
I guess my issue with the phase is I’m not really sure how to define myself (at least not in the simplistic pro/anti terms we like to use in politics), because I would say overall I’m anti-war, too. It’s just that I do think there are situations where the alternative is worse, that there are situations where not going to war now means that eventually an even more horrible, disastrous conflict will take place later on(see Neville Chamberlain), and that until the Lord comes and sets things straight that war will be a fact of human life.
There are anti-war pieces of art/story telling I enjoy (musically, for example, I love the songs “Devils and Dust” by Bruce Springsteen and “Belief” by John Mayer even though I know both songs are protesting the war in Iraq/Afghanistan, military engagements which I have supported). But when I hear that term applied to something I always fear that it will be some over-simplistic narrative in which Americans are always painted as the bad guys, soldiers are either blood-thirsty nut jobs or psychologically-shattered victims, and the reality of there being dangerous, evil men out there who will not be deterred by anything less than violence is denied.
Anyways, just some things that have been on my mind.
