Out of Focus

The Economist

It's been a while, and unlike every other time it was for lack of time, not intention. It's a time of great change, and perhaps this is what defines this period of my life; that everything feels like it happened a lifetime ago.

Moving is difficult, if exciting still. It's nostalgic, if tainted by broken bonds and forced communication. This is a general statement, but it cannot be any more specific. It is a time when I cannot find ground, granted, but it is also a time when I don't remember the last time finding ground wasn't a belated rationalization. I accept it, and I move on in calculated adult steps, that lack the spontaneous tint of childhood and the illusion of choice, even as I make a choice. I do not know where I'm going, but I know what I want, and for the first time of my life, I'm overwhelmed by the support of friends and loved ones; a curious feeling that I am not used to but am figuring out how to deal with, alongside everything else.

I remember my last letter, it was clearer. A farewell that is emotional and driven with satisfied closure. A memory I will not touch by understanding. This one is not the same; I struggle with many emotions, most of which I cannot record yet, and the rest I will not, even if I did, just because I don't want to admit that I grew up this much.

I'm going to miss a lot of things about this place, but perhaps the one thing I'll miss the most is the dog-eared issue of the economist waiting for me on the reception counter every month, having traveled through many hands, table surfaces, coffee rings and unidentified liquids. An issue that entertains and lends insight as it confounds and lends esteem. A curious, complicated society we live in, where the simple gesture of holding a magazine can turn an impression around.

For me, it was the holy grail of Mondays; my source of hope and awe for the next few weeks. As a copywriter, I'd pine over paragraph twists and loaded sentences, drinking it all in as a student would who'd snuck into an advanced class. And as a copywriter, who procures millions of dollars worth of premium, branding content for other people, I could not afford the 86 EGP I'd invest in an issue each month on my paycheck. On good days, it made me think of third world development and the superiority of what we're investing vs. what we're taking on the bigger scale of things. On bad days, I had to choose between an average commute and a decent lunch.  

The issue was separate from its reasoning, and the feelings that clung to its pages were different from the feelings that clung to it. It reminded me of how much I had to learn still, and what constitutes integrity of profession, passion and fulfillment. I'd keep myself grounded by thinking about the writer's day; how stressful it was, how frustrating and painfully normal it might have been to get this piece through, even as it preached ideals of a bygone age of knighthood and pontificated the tortured idealism of political thinkers that thought a paradise was viable with law and education. How many people yelled at him/her, and how many sources turned him/her down. How caustic the editor was, and whether the writer might have been a conservative right that was forced to go liberal for the paycheck, losing integrity as he/she called for it. Did the paycheck even pay rent? So many factors that could break a fairy tale; and perhaps a sign of this age is knowing these factors and clinging to the magic still - without delusion, but with desperate hands that climb all the way out from childhood's hold and into the pulverized ashes of the real world, so utterly devoid of magic, meaning, stability or probable cause.

I thought of the mystery writer still, what their passions really are, how they thought of themselves as they twisted their own education to fulfill a superior accusatory tonality that comes from a place of right and wrong, points fingers and blames with the authority of an OP Rorschach, and I compared it against how powerless he/she is in person; to every person involved in the process of publishing - be it writer, editor, son, source or disagreeing aunt - and whether they got out for themselves what I'm getting out of their piece on the toilet. Do they know they're creating this beautiful illusion? Did they, at any point? Does it matter? Did it matter?

Does it really matter?

As children and educated teenagers, we hate corporations idealistically. We look on to the matter from the abstract eyes of great thinkers, and get the passion of hate through books of legislated anger and righteous emotional projection. We hate them because they do, and because the feelings were so true, we do not feel the lie as we partake; in all innocence, honesty and idealism that might even trump the author's. We are genuine, but we do not see. It is not our fault, for how would we see otherwise? Through the boring monologues and soliloquies of our parents over dinner? From the tales of woe of our friends? From the bad days of our loved ones? It is not powerful enough to contain a belief; it only commends a passing - if strong - feeling.

Then we grow up, and we revisit our hate for corporations with eyes full of dust and mouths full of memos. We see the little things; the small elements of the process that thinkers looked on and communicated to masses through political frameworks and narratives that divine human rights, justice and fairness from an act as simple as office terms of service. We re-learn the hate with new eyes; eyes that cannot always afford integrity if given the choice between making a stand and making rent. Because of these thinkers' ingenuity, we skip over the Kubler Ross model with the agility of a veteran ballerina, and find ourselves wallowing in bitterness faster than your head could spin at the mention of vacation.

Yet, we grow up. And with the acceptance come the bitter let-downs of idealism and childhood fairy tales of goodness. In getting over one small fact, we get over an entire system of belief, warranted for generations by hope, thought and genuine desire for development.

"Stick it to the big guy!" We giggle. Which? For how much longer? And who's going to feed me in the process of my intellectual jihad?

Thought is paused, for lunch break is over, and one must keep up with the game if one wants to live.

How much of your day is forced upon you by corporate culture? Take a moment and actually think. Is that all I'm worth? Is a meager paycheck worth giving up your head?

Yes, because your head was wrong; you might as well have been looking for giants in the bean stalks. And it's no one's fault, an adult once told you that big friendly giants existed, and that the fight goes on until you find better because compromise is a choice that only the sell-outs make. But who's buying? Is there demand, really?

And yet, I look back with affection. It is not one moment that breaks the shell of childhood; not the birds and bees, or corrupted officials, or the first time you fall prey to friendly scam, or the first time you lose a friend for wanting something different, or for no reason at all. It is not one thing, but many. And it doesn't stop as you grow up. You lose bits of it overtime, and they shatter louder in your head as you think they were the last. That was it, you think. I've finally grown up. This is the last thing I'll have to go through before I know better and the tectonic plates of adulthood settle down into their imperfect crevices. You get better, and you settle, and you wince at the memory, until you're hit by the primordial waves of the second coming and you realize you were still a kid when another part of childhood is broken.

And it keeps happening, and you keep getting surprised. Until one day you see the pattern; and that one day is the only day that you may call yourself a full-fledged grownup. You'll know it when it's here, for it will be the saddest day of your life. It's so sad, in fact, that everything else will feel better afterwards.

Good luck, and keep packing your cereal with your favorite colored latches. Keep buying stationery, and keep investing in glittery pens and other useless oddities because you felt like it. One day, years or months from now, they might be the forgotten relics that tickle your senses back to a time when you were younger, more innocent and better off.