David McElroy

making sense of a dysfunctional culture

David McElroy

Briefly: If a person constantly annoys you, it’s OK to cut him off

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I was raised in a very polite culture. We were nice to everybody, even the ones we didn’t like. I carried this attitude into my adult life and even into social media. But I’m increasingly unwilling to put up with people who annoy me. A part of me feels guilty for saying that, but life is too short to put up with people who constantly annoy me. I have a choice. I can decline to associate with such people — without judging their worth as human beings — and there’s no reason for me to feel guilty about it. In some parts of my life, I don’t always have an immediate choice about who crosses my path. But I’m responsible for choosing who I associate with in my personal life and on social media. My new rule of thumb is that if every comment someone makes causes me to scream, “You are a moron,” inside my head, he has to go. I don’t mind people disagreeing with me because of differing values or reasoning, but there’s no reason to tolerate those who constantly annoy us. We have to right and the power to choose who we associate with.

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Great men who change the world rarely look impressive from start

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It was a surprise to hear from her, but it was an even bigger surprise to find out why she was calling. An old girlfriend was looking for a recording of an interview I did about six years ago with KFAR radio in Anchorage, Alaska. I didn’t know she had even known of the interview.

I started searching through my archives Saturday afternoon, but the search for the interview turned into a survey of hundreds of other things I’ve written and recorded over the last eight years. I was uneasy with how much I hated most of the older material and I was surprised at how dramatic the shift in tone and emotion had been for my work.

From this perspective, I see something much different in my work over eight years. I see what I’ve written and spoken as a vivid record of a struggle for me to become a different person, as though I knew I was changing but was both impatient and agitated about where I was going. Seeing this clearly made me feel very vulnerable.

When I contacted my ex this evening to say that I couldn’t find the recording she wanted, I mentioned what it had felt like to see my changes through the old work.

“I always thought you were going to change the world,” she wrote in her reply. “What you’re writing now is closer to what I thought you would be than anything you had done before. Every great man goes through a dark night when he’s trying to figure out his purpose, but you feel like you’re about to explode to fame, because you’ve found your voice. I’m sorry it didn’t work out for me to be there when it happens, because you’re quite addictive.”

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Briefly: Having someone to take care of is one of best parts of marriage

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Every now and then, a trip to a gas station reminds me how much I miss being married. My ex-wife hated putting gasoline into her car. She didn’t complain about it and she never asked me to do it for her, but as soon as I realized how much she disliked it, I made it a point to keep her car’s tank filled when I could. One of the things I miss most about being married is having someone to take care of. With another woman, pumping gas might not be one of those things. It could be a million different things instead, depending on what matters to her. The point is that two people who love each other and want to make life better for each other find little ways to help one another. Sometimes, taking care of someone is being there when there are big things wrong. Sometimes, it’s just pumping someone’s gas or doing something else she doesn’t like. Those are the little things which say, “I love you,” every day in concrete ways. I miss having a woman to take care of, even in such little ways.

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