50 lessons from my 50 years and other birthday foofaraw

Caitlin Clark is mentioned in this column, though it's got nothing to do with her.

Editorial cartoon created with ChatGPT based on prompts by the author.

The headline is a trick.

I said there would be a list of lessons.

There’s no list.

I just wrote that to get people to click on my column.

I added Caitlin Clark to the subhead.

Her name juices the page views even though this column has nothing to do with her.

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That is how writing is done today — in “best of” and “takeaway” lists behind misleading headlines that go through contortions worthy of an Olympic gymnast to tease and titillate without revealing any information.

I turn 50 on June 26. That much is true.

And I hope that I have learned scores more than 50 lessons in a half-century of life.

I started to write that column.

No. 22, for example, was “Use the word ‘foofaraw’ more often. It describes our trifling society so well.”

That’s amusing for connoisseurs of antiquated vernacular, but it is hardly a life lesson.

The problem with that column was when I “opened a vein and started typing,” which is how Red Smith described the process of writing, I started to say things that I knew would get me in trouble.

I have thoughts that would enrage my liberal friends. I have different ideas that would incite my conservative friends.

Yeah, I have both liberal and conservative friends. It’s possible to do that if you’re not an ultraist. I know too many ultraists.

I’ve spoken my mind unfiltered in the past when I was young and reckless.

I paid full price for crossing groupthinkers. It cost me jobs, friends, and money.

I don’t know much about being 50, but I know it’s too old to make those mistakes.

In truth, I am afraid.

There is a savage vein in our culture of people who seem to want to do nothing but destroy other people.

I am a deeply flawed human being who has made an unabridged encyclopedia's worth of mistakes. Most of them are publicly known. Some are not. The weight of them, the guilt and shame, is almost too much to carry.

I have censored myself so many times because I feared this mob mentality, that I feel like a fraud calling myself a columnist.

Besides, I make a poor Oracle of Delphi.

Why would anyone want my list of lessons or observations?

At 50, I am less confident and more confused than I can ever remember being.

It feels like every day I wake up in a world I never made and am repeatedly reminded — if not outright told — that I do not belong here.

My faith in my fellow human beings was always shaky, but now I am terrified to talk about my thoughts with people that I haven’t known for at least 20 years.

We are a nation awash in zealots and their followers repeating catchphrases like zombies.

I see little difference between a pro-Trump Make America Great Again rally and the recent No Kings protests.

I see people with signs and slogans. I see people who are pitchforks and torches away from becoming a mob.

Maybe Loki was right in the first “Avengers” when the Norse god of mischief told frightened Germans: “You were made to be ruled.”

I see a nation of people caught up in the cult of personality and false idols, desperately seeking their version of Jim Jones.

I see the makings of a nationwide Jonestown, with people lapping up blue and red Flavor Aid and not even noticing they’re choking to death on cyanide.

(Despite the popularity of the phrase “drinking the Kool-Aid,” Jim Jones’s followers poisoned the off-brand Flavor Aid, not the real deal Kool-Aid. There’s nothing worse than a false messiah who is also a cheapskate.)

I recognize that comparing our political system to a cult that committed mass suicide is cynical.

I am OK with that.

I believe cynicism is a reasonable worldview when presented with the evidence of human behavior.

The Greeks tell us of Diogenes, the first cynic, who wandered the streets of ancient Athens with a lit lantern in daylight looking for the last honest man.

Were he alive today, Diogenes would go full Oedipus on his eyeballs after looking at TikTok for half an hour.

I’m aware that this column has a lot of references to stuff people might have to look up.

I’m OK with that. There’s no harm in being challenged by what you read, despite how much my students whine about it.

I’m also aware this is not the pithy birthday column with snappy advice that I led people to believe would be in these stacked paragraphs.

I’m OK with that, too.

I’m not a cheerful person. I may not even be all that nice. I faked those things for years.

Sometimes, I still fake pleasantries. The one thing all societies demand is conformity.

It doesn’t matter how open-minded or liberal they claim to be — if you challenge conventions, you face retribution.

We all must bow down before the General Zod of the moment.

But I am too old and my knees are too arthritic for that.

On my 50th birthday, I think of Nadezhda Mandelstam, the wife of the exiled Russian poet Osip Mandelstam.

His poems criticized Russian dictator Joseph Stalin. He died under arrest. His poems were banned.

Nadezhda memorized her husband’s works rather than risk being caught with them. She published them in the West while living a nomadic pauper’s existence in Russia.

She wrote a memoir, “Hope Against Hope.” The book contained a powerful quote, one of the most moving I have ever read, and I want it to be the light in my lantern as I embrace 50.

“I decided it is better to scream. Silence is the real crime against humanity."

Get ready, dear readers, for my rebel yell.

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Daniel P. Finney is a member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative, but don’t hold that against them. Please visit their page to view a full roster of writers and consider subscribing to their columns. Writing is hard work; people ought to get paid for it. If you enjoy it, throw them a couple of bucks. They earned it.