The Firsts

We are a society that is addicted to great beginnings. And who can blame us?

We’ve been conditioned as Americans to be greedy and wasteful people, desensitized to pleasure through decades of casual violence, gluttony, overstimulation and exceptionalism. The results of this behavior and conditioning will be studied by historians for centuries, like we do the Ancient Greeks or Romans today.

It’s a certainty that people will show up for beginnings, not so much for the rest. It’s why tire shops keep their grand opening banners up for years.

All you have to do is look at TV ratings to see that this is true. The most watched episodes are the first ones and last ones. That means there are millions of people who don’t watch the middle of the show, but still consider themselves fans.

We’re often inclined to believe that the beginnings are the sweetest. It’s the opening of a movie that leaves you delirious with glee. The first chapter of a book that hooks you immediately. The first time you and your lover hold hands. The first day of school. The first bite of a delicious meal. Your favorite band coming out on stage. The tip-off at Madison Square Garden. The opening kickoff of the Super Bowl, with flashbulbs attempting to capture it for all of time.

We love great beginnings because they equate to the absence of a bad beginning. There’s a belief that bad beginnings equate to horrible experiences. While that’s not always true, there’s plenty of evidence to say it’s certainly not always wrong.

9/11, World War I, HBO’s The Sex Lives of College Girls, to name a few horrible things for society that were proven to be bad from their onset, and in-fact became much worse. With bad beginnings, you can only hope that things don’t spiral to the point of being absolutely devastating, causing irreparable damage to people and society.

Bad beginnings certainly imply that it may get worse, but good beginnings have the same problem. In fact, things with great beginnings things often get worse, as it’s hard to live up to a tremendous opening. You create expectations for yourself and for the audience, who think the middle is going to be even better.

How woefully wrong we often are.

In politics, the first 100 days of a US President’s administration are often looked at as the most important.

The lay the groundwork and foundation for years of hard work, bureaucracy, and policy debate. It’s where an administration establishes trust and reputation with the public. but in reality, a President will be tested more in the middle than it will in the beginning.

In the mid-term, a president learns whether or not they have the confidence of voting society. It’s after the election buzz wears off and some horrible thing happens and everyone turns to them for comfort that we see who they are. Some hide, some don’t.

When I was a standup comedian, the most important laugh was often the first one. It’s here where you first have a chance to build trust with the audience. If things start to hit a lull after the first laugh, which they often do, the show can go off the rails. But having gotten that first laugh will buy the performer enough time to try and right the ship.

It’s in the middle where things start to drift. Where people sway from their emotional heights and begin to get cynical. It’s the point where people with unbridled enthusiasm are swindled by the cynical. It’s when advertisers begin to creep in and distract you from the initial purpose. It’s the moment when a couple begin to argue on a path forward in a relationship.

You’re watching a football game, but you’re not watching a football game, you’re watching a football game on television. Which means you’re probably watching a commercial for insurance. You’re looking at your phone. They show you the sideline, while a left guard screams in agony on the field. They show the replay of the horrific injury, his back falling over the knee of his teammate.

They zoom in on his face as he lays there, surrounded by other players knelt in prayer (not protest, which is disallowed) and medical staff applying painkillers and braces.

This is nothing like the first quarter. With the fireworks, and the happy players. The crowd is silent, as it’s the home team’s left guard. Were this an away player, he would probably be dealt with on the sideline.

As a cart comes out to collect the injured left guard, you can’t help but wonder how long it will be until the game begins again, the announcers go silent and the game fades away. It’s time for another insurance commercial.

The middle often gets a bad wrap, because great middles aren’t noticed as being middles at all. We see them as part of a whole great thing. You realize you’re in the middle of an amazing steak dinner and begin to relish every bite. You look at your watch during a great night out and realize the evening still has plenty of juice. A great middle isn’t agonizing or slow, nor is it something new and unexpected, it just is the consistent essence of whatever is being experienced.

In buddhism, the middle path is what we seek. Balance and harmony. The path is not tossed aside for a sweeter path that offers excitement and newness. It is held on to in the name of consistency, patience and virtue. All things that Americans tend to reject in the name of comfort and pleasure.

This of course, leads us to endings. The closing ceremonies. Death. The finale. What we all live for, what we all inevitably die for. We run from it, wonder about it, fantasize about it, ignore it. But it comes for all of us, and all things.

In America, we either celebrate or ignore our endings. We love to prolong them, rather than accept that things are over. In sports, we love overtime and extra innings, especially ones that include sudden death. It’s sweetest in those moments for the home crowd, when they’re watching their team lose and the game seems out of reach. As the crowd empties, a transfer of energy can be felt among the players. They’ve got a chip on their shoulder now. They are going to prove those “fans” wrong.

It’s never promised, but those who stick around for it are blessed with a palpable sense that things are changing. They’re validated as the impossible seems to happen before their eyes, those faithful few who stuck around to confirm that their dreams would in-fact be crushed, when their team who was once losing has tied the game and prolonged the ending, avoided execution, or even turning the blade back around on their enemy and escaping with victory.

There is no wilder a feeling amongst people than this. Strangers become bonded through their shared commitment. Hugs are shared all around. The players become icons who will forever be etched in their team’s lore.

The best example I can find from my life was this. Tracy McGrady scoring 13 points in the last 35 seconds of the fourth quarter, hitting a buzzer beating 3 to win the game.

The stadium, now half empty, erupts to levels higher than it would get at full capacity. One of the greatest moments in sports, taking place in the middle of the season when most most fans aren’t paying attention.

I was 8 years old watching at home on TV when this happened. I had been able to pay attention for the whole game, alone. I wasn’t even a Rockets fan. But I loved basketball. It was one of the greatest sports moments I ever experienced. I called my dad, who was at work, to tell him about it, and he had to explain to me they didn’t have TV at work. (This was, and still is, an upsetting concept to realize.)

It awakened my brain to a world where anything was possible, even the impossible. Impossible had in-fact become nothing, as the Adidas campaign would soon tell me, using McGrady’s game to first express this idea.*

We relish our endings, but we also avoid them. In death, we ignore grief through statistics about it and explanation of it through sociopolitical** motives. We spend our time arguing over how to prevent it and how it can best be avoided.

We cremate ourselves to ensure endings to our bodies as well. We streamline the decomposition process through fire and ash to avoid the idea of maggots eating our flesh inside of a box six feet in the ground.

And who can blame us for that? Whose idea was burial in the first place? Perhaps there is a future in which we are shot out of an airlock, destined to drift through space for all of eternity. This would be my preferred outcome, and the whole reason we should be trying to go to space in the first place.

Endings never come when we expect them, even when we can see them coming. We still expect all of our questions to be answered, to see it all would transpires. we thought. We are thus often given an epilogue in order to provide comfort amidst the abruptness.

I will not be doing this, but I will say: If you got to the end of this piece, thank you. If you skipped the entire middle to see what the end looks like, I still appreciate you. I’m going to be posting new stuff for the next ten days. Some of it will be content like this, some of it will be fiction, or script concepts. Maybe you’ll even get a poem or two (Oof).

Yesterday I left my job at The Travel Agency, A Cannabis Store, where I had been working as a Copywriter in a freelance role for 3 years. The original name Union Square Travel Agency was conceived by me and my creative partner Jeff Greenspan. As a huge “cannabis enthusiast” (as I am now referred to in the business) it was a pleasure and honor to have a hand in naming the largest cannabis retailer in New York.

As the second dispensary in New York to open, it was a great beginning that had a fucked up middle (due to the industry) and a wonky ending that I’m still trying to process.

In short, great people do great work, and when great people get fired you go with your people.***

That has nothing to do with beginnings or middles or endings, but it is a reason I’ll be having more timeto write. You can expect posts here every day, and maybe a weekly video.

*Interestingly enough, the campaign itself was conceived by a man named Chuck McBride at TBWA\Chiat Day, a man and agency who I would end up working for (on separate occasions) for a short time. While both Chuck and Chiat are great, the experiences ended quickly and seemed in-fact quite probable in the current media landscape due to reasons beyond anyone’s control.

**What a word, right?

***Unless they’re accused of crimes or sexual assault or something, obviously.