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The Sorrows of Young Phoenix Quinn

Note: This article really has nothing directly to do with eRepublik. I'm not even entirely sure why I'm publishing this. I was thinking about a great friend of mine and the impact he had on me, then about Arjay Phoenician and his whole campaign around ethical game play, then about my own somewhat child-like moral deficits when I play eRepublik, and then this thing came flowing out. I don't really know what it means, but feel like I should share it.

Stay tuned to this channel for another article coming out shortly on why PQ supports Emerick for President and you should too.



Children are pretty much morons when it comes to ethical behavior, aren't they? I was no different.

I can't really remember all the sins I committed prior to about age 14. No doubt I committed quite a few. I know when I was a teeny tater-tot I probably cried a lot until I was fed. But I don't recall if that upset anyone.


The Repentent Magadalene


Oh, yes, now I do remember one pretty bad thing.

When I was about 11, I got into a knife fight with my older brother and that got kind of ugly. Luckily, neither one of us got hurt but I think I scared the crap out of my brother.

Ah. And once I killed a frog by throwing a rock at it. Still feel bad about that.

What else? What else? Let's think. Umm.. I once convinced my cousin to climb up a tree and then refused to help her get back down. That was mean.

Oh. And when I was about 10 I threw a bunch of icy snowballs at the trucks that passed in front of our house. That was fun until I hit one on the windshield. It came screeching to a halt and I ran like the wind. Not because I was ashamed of having done something wrong, but for fear of having my ass whooped.



I come from a decent middle-class mid-western family that's been in America since before it was the USA. Oddly enough, I am very distantly related to both Barack Obama and Dick Cheney.

My family always had enough to eat. My Uncle was a preacher in a respectable high-brow Protestant religion, a Bishop actually. One of my best friends when I was around 9 or 10 -- his Dad was a pastor of that same religion. My point is: we had every opportunity to be taught right from wrong. Nevertheless, us little horror shows still thought it was fun to run around wild in our nice suburban town on Summer nights shooting off fireworks in all sorts of weird places, scaring the bejeezus out of people. I probably wouldn't have done that if it weren't for the peer pressure.

At age 12 I discovered Buddhism and started learning how to meditate, but I wasn't very good at it. Mostly I liked putting on that black silk dragon-shirt kind of thing I'd bought in Chinatown, burning incense in this little antique Chinese incense holder that had been my grandmother's and making up mantras.

At 14 or 15, I don't remember exactly, I got confirmed into that religion I mentioned earlier. It was kind of ironic, because once I got through that, I pretty much stopped going to church. It was as if once I'd gone through all the Sunday School and the official training and the sacred ceremony, then I felt free to start doubting the whole thing.

Then about age 16 I started to indulge in lust. I won't bother going into the details.

It was all just lust though. You know, feelings, desires, fantasies and so on. I was much too confused about the whole thing to say its name or actually do anything about it. And I don't think that was sinful anyway. What probably was sinful was learning how to manipulate certain people. Not in any porno kind of way, mind you, much more subtle than that. Just by using a certain attitude, you know?

So those were my youthful sins, more or less.



Sorrow and Loss

A flashback.

When I was 8 my favorite cousin -- not the one I left up in the tree, but her brother -- was killed in a hit-and-run car accident. Not too long before that my grandmother and her third husband had died in a fire. My great-grandmother lived with us and she died, at a wonderful old age, a couple of years after my cousin.

I'm not saying my life was full of tragedy or anything. In fact, I had a very happy childhood. But a feeling of loss and grief was instilled in me at an early age. Looking back, I can see where I developed the attitude that everything you love will be taken away from you at quite a young age.

That attitude, a sort of love for a life of sorrow, became a theme in my life and I have since learned that that's ultimately a sinful thing. It's sinful because this kind of romanticizing of sorrow can become more powerful than actual sorrow for your fallen friends and family.

It took me a long time to realize that. It wasn't until much later, as an adult, when I started having to attend funerals on a regular basis, when I observed myself being oddly detached emotionally from the ceremonies, that I realized what a sinful thing it was. For several years, I wore black every Friday to remember my friends who had died. But upon self-reflection, I realized that, when all was said and done, I was being selfish. I was emotionally involved in the drama of death, but had lost some of the ability to actually feel the loss.



That changed dramatically when my great friend, whom I will call Cibàyìbàyì, passed away a few years ago.


Rebirth

Cibàyìbàyì means "butterfly" in the Cilubà language that is spoken in the Kasayi region of Congo. He'd grown up in the Congo and then moved first to Belgium and then the USA.

A great and wonderful friend to many people, Cibàyìbàyì always appreciated my intensity and encouraged me both in my political enthusiasms and in my ability to argue convincingly about practically anything. But he also made of point of teasing me about being overly morose and taking myself too seriously. As long as I knew him, he tried to teach me how to loosen up, how to smell the roses, how to dance the light fantastic and all that, you know?

He had mixed success. I did loosen up, but not completely.

When he passed away at the too-soon age of 73 -- he always did like that palm oil way too much -- I cried uncontrollably like a baby. In fact, I'm crying now just thinking about it. His passing was a turning point for me. I had lost a friend who I really, deeply cared about and it hurt like hell. All my stoicism and theorizing went flying out the window. I think -- to some extent anyway -- I was reborn in that torrent of tears.

I was taken aback by Cibàyìbàyì's endless deep well of kindness and wisdom. At his funeral, person after person after person -- most of whom I'd never met -- walked up to lectern to tell a story that sounded amazingly familiar to me. How he'd come into their lives and transformed them. How he'd become a real friend that not only took an interest in their lives, but helped them to overcome their sorrows and look with amusement and clarity on their character defects.

***

My sorrows and struggles didn't end there, of course. This world is full of them, both small and personal, large and profound.

But now... Now I keep looking around me more, reading more widely, and listening more carefully to my friends and acquaintances. I am no longer convinced I have the answers any more. Now I know that wonderful, amazing people can come into your life unexpectedly.

And that's refreshing. I am better for that, I think, even if I'm still a bit sinful from time to time.