Confessions Of A Closet Curmudgeon

I love mankind — it’s peo­ple I can’t stand.
– Charles M. Schulz

This isn’t the kind of arti­cle I nor­mally write. The gen­eral tone of what I offer here is pos­i­tive and uplift­ing, in search of the magic elixir that will turn life’s lemons into lemon­ade. Lord knows, we all can use daily doses of pos­i­tive rein­force­ment. Espe­cially now, when the world has gone into the great cos­mic crap­per and we’re all left won­der­ing who stole the toi­let paper.

But after writ­ing an ear­lier post, Hap­pi­ness Is Over­rated, I seem to have writ­ten myself into a cor­ner, where I find myself in dis­cov­ery of and wrestling with, some star­tling infor­ma­tion. My task now, is to write myself back out again, hope­fully emerg­ing with a greater sense of my true iden­tity and pos­si­bly help­ing you shed some light on your own.

Let me explain: My take on hap­pi­ness in the ear­lier arti­cle, cross-posted on the Liv­ing page at the Huff­in­g­ton Post, drew in many inter­est­ing com­ments. Mostly, read­ers agreed with my premise, that hap­pi­ness exists much lower on the food chain than joy and that most of us are really seek­ing the lat­ter, while con­fus­ing it with the former.

We tended to agree that hap­pi­ness is tem­po­rary and sit­u­a­tional, mostly related to con­di­tions being aligned with pref­er­ences, while joy comes from within, an eter­nal state, aris­ing from Being as opposed to Doing, gen­er­ally accepted by read­ers as the ori­gin of happiness.

A few self-proclaimed “cur­mud­geons” weighed in last time, “happy” to find an arti­cle on the Liv­ing page that wasn’t gooey-sweet and Pollyanna. One such reader requested that I write some­thing about love for cur­mud­geons and since I began my last arti­cle by announc­ing that I’m not one, his request sent me on a jour­ney in search of mate­r­ial. It turns out I didn’t have to look very far.

The cor­ner I wrote myself into turns out to be the “Curmudgeon’s Cor­ner.” Hav­ing spent nearly a week there, I’m ready to come out, and in more ways than one. For I’ve not only been in the Curmudgeon’s Cor­ner, while there, I dis­cov­ered I’ve been in the Cur­mud­geon Closet. Hence, you all are invited to my offi­cial “com­ing out.”

After find­ing the Charles Schulz quote, and spend­ing time sleuthing stuff writ­ten by peo­ple who wear their cur­mud­geon cre­den­tials like a badge of honor, to my sur­prise, I’ve dis­cov­ered my own not-so-latent cur­mud­geonly ten­den­cies, wrapped in an inter­est­ing “cos­tume” of enlightenment.

I’ve dis­cov­ered that I’m a kind of “New Age” cur­mud­geon! It’s oxy­moronic, I know, but then I always did love con­tra­dic­tions and col­or­ing out­side the lines. The cur­mud­geon in me hates the term “New Age,” which con­jures up images of naval-gazing, tarot card-reading, tree hug­ging, Birkenstock-wearing, granola-eating flower chil­dren of the 60’s and 70’s.

But as much as I hate to admit it, I have to cop to being a New Age type. Can you hear my clos­eted cur­mud­geon chok­ing on those words? Astro­log­i­cally, I’m a dou­ble Aquar­ian. What does that mean? Remem­ber the 70’s musi­cal, “Hair” and the song, Age of Aquar­ius? Peace, love and broth­er­hood, baby! Step right up! I’ve got it going on in stereo!

The cur­mud­geon in me could care less about astrol­ogy. “As above, so below.” What’s all that non­sense about, any­way? The dou­ble Aquarian/ New Agey me gets it com­pletely. I was put on the planet to teach about har­mony, unity and love. That’s my Aquar­ian mission.

We are, after all, in the Age of Aquar­ius for the next two thou­sand years, so we might as well all get with the pro­gram. Sooner or later, prob­a­bly later based on how things are going so far, the planet will be trans­formed and human­ity will real­ize it’s true nature.

“That is if humans haven’t already destroyed the planet in our race to dom­i­nate its resources,” says the N/A Cur­mud­geon, remind­ing Miss Dou­ble Aquar­ian that things look pretty bleak and she’d bet­ter get a move on if she’s going to save the world. But I seri­ously digress.

What is a cur­mud­geon? Accord­ing to sev­eral sources, a cur­mud­geon is com­monly thought of as: “A crusty, iras­ci­ble, can­tan­ker­ous old per­son full of stub­born ideas”. Hmmmm, then why do I find them so adorable?

It must be why I pre­fer this def­i­n­i­tion by Jon Wino­tur, author of The Portable Curmudgeon:

“Cur­mud­geons’ rep­u­ta­tion for malev­o­lence is unde­served, They’re nei­ther warped nor evil at heart. They don’t hate mankind, just mankind’s absur­di­ties. They’re just as sen­si­tive and soft­hearted as the next guy, but they hide their vul­ner­a­bil­ity beneath a crust of mis­an­thropy. They ease the pain by turn­ing hurt into humor. Nature, hav­ing failed to equip them with a ser­vice­able denial mech­a­nism, has endowed them with astute per­cep­tion and sly wit.”

“Astute per­cep­tion and sly wit” — who wouldn’t sign up for that? And how about this lack of a “ser­vice­able denial mech­a­nism?” Sounds good to me! Doesn’t every­one aspire to these qualities?

And as the blog­ger at Car­son Cur­mud­geon writes:

“Per­haps cur­mud­geons have got­ten a bad rap in the same way that the mes­sen­ger is blamed for the mes­sage: They have the temer­ity to com­ment on the human con­di­tion with­out apology.”

Heck, I’ve made a liv­ing out of com­ment­ing on the human con­di­tion with­out apol­ogy. The only dif­fer­ence being, I’m more focused on what’s pos­si­ble for human being as opposed to what’s wrong. But don’t accuse me of being a Pollyanna, just because I’m opti­mistic, have a calm and sunny dis­po­si­tion and am ter­mi­nally friendly most of the time. My “inner cur­mud­geon” is alive and well and on the look out for Polly and her band of merry maidens.

The enlight­ened observer in me knows bet­ter than to rant about the human con­di­tion. It is what it is and besides, none of it is “real.” It’s all a fab­ri­ca­tion of our minds. We live in the sto­ries we make up about real­ity, not real­ity itself. But if we did reside there, cur­mud­geons would be put out of busi­ness because there’d be noth­ing to com­plain about.

Mean­while, my cur­mud­geon self, the impa­tient one, the one my friends affec­tion­ately call “Abrup­tus Inter­rup­tus”, doesn’t think anyone’s time should be wasted by deal­ing with igno­rant or inde­ci­sive peo­ple, real or not real. “Let’s get this show on the road and life isn’t mov­ing fast enough” is my curmudgeon’s mantra. She’s always in a big hurry! Don’t ask me why. I have no idea. She’s com­pelled to move and move fast.

I do my best to keep Abrup­tus Inter­rup­tus under lock and key, pre­fer­ring that she not get too much air­time. But on occa­sion, when she’s been good for too long, Abrup­tus Inter­rup­tus breaks out, for­get­ting that noth­ing is worth get­ting her panties in a bunch for and then she pro­ceeds to do exactly that. Imag­ine a race horse being penned up in its stall for weeks. How long do you think you could keep one from bust­ing loose? My point exactly. Now, per­haps you under­stand what I’m up against.

The Cur­mud­geon Hall of Fame

We cur­mud­geons have a lot of good com­pany. Some of our favorite actors and enter­tain­ers have por­trayed lov­able grouches. Ever won­der why they were so good in these roles? Here are just a few of my favorites:

Jack Lem­mon and Wal­ter Matthau — two fab­u­lous Grumpy Old Men.
Heath Ledger– Batman’s ulti­mate Joker
Andy Rooney– CBS’ 60 Min­utes–
Car­roll O’Connor– Archie Bunker
Art Car­ney and Jackie Glea­son– The Hon­ey­moon­ers
Lewis Black– Red, White and Screwed

These are all extremely com­pelling char­ac­ters. Per­haps char­ac­ter is the oper­a­tive word when it comes to cur­mud­geons. They’d like peo­ple to believe they’re can­tan­ker­ous and mean, but I sus­pect that crusty exte­rior is paper-thin, just wait­ing for some­one like you or me to pierce it with just the proper dose of kind­ness. Even Heath Ledger’s Joker, one of the scari­est char­ac­ters I’ve ever seen on film, had a mother who loved him.

Which brings me back to my orig­i­nal inten­tion for writ­ing this.  How does one love a curmudgeon?

You could help me out by weigh­ing in on the sub­ject of love. I know you prob­a­bly have dis­tain for the very idea of talk­ing about love, but come on. You can let down your guard just a lit­tle, can’t you? In the name of being bet­ter under­stood by those for whom such things come eas­ily.…. give us a taste of what a cur­mud­geon really wants when it comes to love.

And for you non-curmudgeons or those of you still in the closet about your own inner grumpi­ness, what have we stirred up for you? Who are your favorite cur­mud­geons and how do you man­age to love them? To be continued…

Tagged as: Carson Curmudgeon, Charles M. Schulz, Connor- Archie Bunker Art, crabby, cranky, Curmudgeon, grumpy, Grumpy Old Men, Heath Ledger, huffington post, Human behavior, Human Interest, Jack Lemmon, Jon Winotur, Lewis Black, Walter Matthau