Your arms and legs want to move around.

You've got your laptop on your lap, or you're checking messages on your I-phone, or you're propped up in front of a bulletin board full of stupid meetings. In any case, you're sitting.

While you're sitting, the muscles in your arms and legs are doing nothing. Your fingers are in charge. The rest of your physical body is on hold. For how long?

Does that feel okay? To have your major limbs doing nothing?

Don't you remember when you were a little kid and running and jumping and falling all the time? Don't you remember what pleasure your body used to give you? (Sex, too, though that was much later.) Don't you sense that your arms and legs would love be doing something, anything? Not to be politically incorrect, but what's the difference between you at your desk and someone who's lost the use of those limbs?

It's not natural to let our arms and legs stay immobile for long periods of the day. Our arms are meant for lifting, our legs for walking and running. If we don't give them that kind of exercise every day, it's sort of like not letting our dog out for a walk once a day. Wouldn't you feel kind of guilty about that? The poor pet cooped up all day with no exercise? Well, that's how your arms and legs feel after a day staring at the computer. They want to be lifting and walking, if not running. They yearn to be doing something besides watching our fingers type, for God's sake!

We too often think of ourselves as just part of our computer environment -- typing stuff in, downloading stuff, relaying info to others, playing stupid games during our downtimes -- but we are physical animals, and our limbs want to be exercised! It doesn't have to be time at the gym, maybe just a brisk walk in the park, but our arms and legs -- like tigers or monkeys in the wild or in a cage at the zoo -- want to be doing something!

Have you tried to lift something recently and had a hard time of it? Gotten out of breath going up the stairs? (Took the elevator just to avoid walking up?) Have you tried to un-screw a lid and couldn't do it? You're letting your body down, and it's letting you down. Your body is your super-structure, the underpinning that helps you navigate the world, but it's made up of parts that have to be used from time to time to keep them functioning properly. Your arms and legs, to be exact.

Move your arms and legs every day and, when possible, give them some resistance, either through dumbbells or bands or just, for the legs, jogging. Put some weight on your muscles and joints, and make them get used to it. After a while, as you get stronger, your own body weight will seem like nothing, and you'll move through the world easier and with more confidence.

Once all the hullabaloo about the internet has become just common knowledge -- once we can all connect to anyone at any time of day or night and can share downloaded movies and family photos and personal regrets-- there will still be you and me in our bodies. Our brains will have shifted gears -- into cyberspace -- but our bodies will still require the same kind of old-fashioned maintenance. A workout routine. You can zip your mind up to the cloud, but your body will always need its situps and pull-ups and push-ups or yoga or whatever.

You can e-talk to anyone on the planet, but you're still trapped in your own body. Be sure you take care of it.

Your mind, too, of course, but I assume you're already doing that.

Here are your arms and legs talking: I'd like to kick something now, if no one minds. Anybody got a football? Me, I'd love to hug someone! Who's first? Watch this! I'm going to run to that corner and back and time myself! Okay, everybody stand back: I'm about to do a headstand!

In the necessary race to keep your mind up to speed, don't forget your body. Your arms and legs are just waiting to come out to play!

Who let the dogs out? You, if you're smart.

Secret and private are not the same.

I have a friend who smokes cigarettes but not around anyone else. It's his own addiction, and he tries not to inflict it on others. His wife says she knows he smokes, that she can smell it on him. She says he's a secret smoker. But since he doesn't deny that he smokes, I disagree.


He's a private smoker, not a secret smoker. He admits to the practice but chooses to keep it, as well as he can, to himself. I won't smoke in front of you, and I'll only do it outside the house, okay?


Before you judge, think about this: is there anything you do in private that you wouldn't do in public?


Of course there's bathing. You don't bathe or shower in public. Or use the toilet.

But what else?

Do you masturbate? Probably. Do you do it in public? I think not. But do you do it private? Of course.

And isn't it done with a bit of regret/remorse? Some degree of guilt? Why do I need to do this? Why isn't my love life, with my partner, enough? Am I thinking of someone else when I do this?

So there you go. At least one thing you might do in private that you wouldn't dream of doing in public and that you're uneasy about.

Like my friend's smoking.

What about those cookies you gorge on when no one's looking? Or that booze you swig in the garage that you think your wife doesn't smell on your breath? If you admit that you eat too many cookies and that you drink too much, then you can call your indulgences private, not secret. It doesn't excuse them, but it might excuse you. Up to a point.


That point may come when your privacies become public. If your drinking problem lands you in the slammer with a D.U.I., your privacy is null and void. If your over-eating causes problems with your spouse, who has always said that he/she doesn't want to be married to a fat person, then you have a problem no longer private. If your collection of letters from old lovers is un-earthed by your kids and shown to everybody . . . you get the picture. If and when your secret is out, your privacy violated, your soul on display, well, that's when you have to suck it up and take a good look at who you are.

It's always good anyway to stop and look at ourselves. Are you someone who does lots of things in private? Why? Do you devote just as much time to your spouse or significant other as you do to your private moments? Or do you have lots of secrets? Why? What are you hiding, and from whom? Is it for their good or yours?

I think privacy is a fine personal privilege so long as it's not hurting anyone else. But if it becomes a secret, we're courting interpersonal disaster. The one we've committed to, whether we're married or not, has a right to know about anything that might harm the relationship. If you secretly keep porn, in magazines under your bed or on the internet, that might be a problem. If you hoard money, same thing. But if you only love to watch soaps on TV while your spouse is at work, that can be worked out. Same as if you like to sneak a beer with friends at a local pub, so long as you don't come home drunk.


We all have secret lives and private lives and shared lives and public lives, and sometimes it's like keeping all the juggled balls in the air to keep them apart. Our best bet is to be honest with our mates, married to or not, and then go from there. But sometimes it's not that simple, and the person we're with may not approve of what we're doing, be it drinking with friends or going out hang-gliding when we said we'd given that up. Maybe we're not so close to our spouse anymore, even thinking of divorce, but we're running for office and have to keep up the charade. Or maybe we have fantasies that we pursue online that we think no one will ever know about.


We humans are incredibly deceitful when it comes to our deepest impulses. And we should be. Who can understand your attraction to buying shoes you don't need but love because they look cool and fit you? Or your need to see girls bare-breasted on the internet? Or your love of the TV channel that shows guys fishing in the Carribean? Or boxing? Or your attraction to those cooking shows that your spouse despises?

Some things we should keep private, our own indulgences, but not if they interfere with our relationships. If our spouse really and truly objects to something we love, we have to stop and take stock. Is this obsession of mine worth risking my love of this person? Some of us may have to give things up to preserve the relationship. And it works both ways. The woman may have to give up her best friend who can't stand her husband, or the man may have to give up time with his buds because she thinks they're neanderthals. In any meaningful relationship, each must surrender something for the sake of the union. Sorry about that, but it's how it works.

So anyway, secret and private are not the same. Secret is what you don't tell anyone. Private is what you do on your own time. Just be sure they stay that way and don't stray into the gray area of what affects your love for and commitment to someone else. The union is always first.

Did you give up something to be married to this person? Well, duh, of course you did! Is it worth, in the long run, what you gave up? That's up to you and him or her. Sometimes it is, sometimes not. But don't give up too soon, just because you're dissatisfied. You'd likely be as dissatisfied, sooner or later, with anyone else you chose. We humans all have faults, and they're displayed at their worst in relationships. (Hey, left alone, you can watch TV in your underwear, right?)

Does he/she accept you as you are and let you keep your secrets secret and privacies private? If so, don't throw it away! The next guy/girl you fall for is not likely to be so accommodating.

Secret and private are not the same. Keep your secrets, and keep some things private. But always remember to share what you have in common. And be ready and willing to give up something, as long as you get something of value in return.

It's the not-so-secret secret to long marriages.

It's time to pay attention to your teeth.

I never thought about my teeth until a couple of years ago when not one but two broke off. In my mouth! Pieces of my teeth floating around in there, tongued but not immediately recognized as what they were: pieces of my teeth!

Truly I'd almost never given my teeth a second thought. They were hard things imbedded in my gums inside my mouth that chewed up food and that I brushed every day. I took them for granted.

Big mistake.

A year or so ago, those fifty-year-old fillings I'd had implanted in my cavity-ridden teeth as a kid had started to give way, like old bridges or old buildings. One morning I discovered half of a molar on the tip of my tongue. Not long after, it happened again. The infrastructure of my mouth was starting to give way.



I hadn't been to a dentist in years, since flouride in the water eliminated cavities, so when I was put into that seat that looks meant for torture, I got kind of nervous. The dentist was a nice man and very professional, so when he said I needed crowns on those broken teeth, and I said okay.

I had no idea what I was in for.


To begin, the chair in question was tilted backwards -- way backwards -- so that I was staring up into a bright light that was focused into my mouth. Then the dentist appeared, all in white, with sharp instruments in his hand. To the side was his female assistant, handing things to him and smiling at me. It'll be okay, she seemed to say.


First came a couple of shots of some deadening agent in my gums, which hurt but not all that much. Then the waiting to see when I was numb. At some point the dentist decided it was time to go to work and got out some pneumatic device that produced that high-pitched sound we all hate and associate with a dentist's office -- and started filing my back tooth. I was upside down at the time, and the shrill whine of the drill -- inside my mouth! -- was almost more than I could take. My big fear was that the dentist's drill would suddenly go down further than the pain-killer went and I would be out of that chair in a second, in the worst pain I'd ever felt. I think that's why most of us fear dentists: they have the power, if they screw up, to inflict on us unimaginable pain.

Of course they don't mean to do that, and most of us endure time in the dental chair perfectly intact -- if a little shaken -- and go on to lead normal lives.

What happened while I was under local sedation -- still conscious but gum-numb -- is that the dentist filed two of my teeth down to nubs and then fitted new fake teeth (crowns) onto those nubs, getting the measurements just right, as the crowns have to be ordered from somewhere.

I paid the many-hundreds-of-dollars fee as I exited, looking forward, sort of, to coming back the next week to have the crowns (fake teeth) inserted onto the nubs of my filed-down teeth.

In the meantime, you know how when something goes wrong in your mouth, your tongue won't let it alone? When you're a kid and you lose that first tooth, your tongue is obsessed with probing it, right? Try having two perfectly normal teeth whittled down to points: your tongue will go crazy. After all, it's the tongue's job to monitor everything in your mouth. (If you don't think it's super-sensitive, think about deep kissing or, well, you know.) My tongue was beside itself for the next week: what did you DO in here? What the hell happened in my mouth?

I can't say the fitting on the crowns -- the fake teeth -- onto the sharpened nubs was painless. There were moments when I almost asked for more deadening. But, in the end, it went okay, and I now have what I assume are teeth that will last as long as I do.

In the meantime, however, I've had a couple of other old teeth chip off. My tongue discovered them and, of course, and won't leave them alone. I guess it's just a function of getting older.

But you know what? Unless they cause me pain, I'm going to just let them be. My time upside-down in that chair, with that inhuman whir inside my mouth (and brain), cured me of worrying about my teeth. It would take an old-fashioned tooth-ache to get me to a dentist's office again, and it would have to be pretty bad. And right now my teeth are just chipped, not hurting.

You can avoid lots of this by having your teeth checked every now and then. If you're smart, you won't wait, like me, twenty years or more between visits.

I took my teeth for granted. And see where it got me?

Dark matter in the universe.

When I first started to read and learn about our universe, something struck me as odd: that all those massive stars and planets could just exist out there in nothing but empty space. Granted, they were supposedly moving around at high speeds, but it still seemed odd to me that they could be doing it all in air that was lighter than any we know on earth. In space, air has
no consistency at all. It's nothing. If they were moving about in absolute nothingness, wouldn't their speeds be infinite? But they weren't.

It occurred to me that there must be something holding them all up, slowing them down. I'm not a scientist, but it just seemed logical to me that the empty space we envisioned must be firmer than that, more solid. Sort of like a cosmic Jell-O. I didn't say anything about it to anyone for fear of being ridiculed, but it made sense to me. How could all those cosmic bodies be supported in nothing but air that had no density? Yes, gravity might account for some of it, but something was missing.

In short, I always thought that there must be some kind of substance that permeated the universe that held up all those stars and planets and asteroids and comets and whatever and still let them travel as they had to. I just didn't have a name for it.

Astronomers now say it's dark matter, something they can't explain but that they think may make up most of the known universe.

I love the idea of dark matter, this kind of gelatin material -- probably not what is out there at all but that provides a reasonable analogy for what really is out there -- that provides a base for all that we can see and can't see. It's the background stuff that holds everything else in place while still allowing the celestial bodies to move around in space. It's there, providing stability.

I do realize that I may be way off-base, just fantasizing, but the fact that scientists are starting to recognize its existence -- even if, like me, they don't know what it is -- gives me some hope that eventually we'll be able to analyze and understand it. On the other hand, maybe we won't. Maybe we'll be as baffled by this universal phenomenon a hundred years from now as we are right now.

And I'm cool with that. Who would want to live in a universe you understood? Who would want to know what goes on at a sub-atomic level where particles can't even be detected? Down where you and I are hatched and become us? Where everything becomes what it is? Shouldn't there always be some mystery? As a friend once said to me, Would you want to believe in a god you understood?

I love the idea of dark matter -- and also dark energy, which is somehow related but which I can't begin to understand, much less explain. To my way of thinking, the very facts of you and me defy explanation, not to mention the stars and all that other stuff.

So much of life can be explained and accounted for by biology and chemistry and psychology and all the other sciences. Isn't it kind of cool that some of it can't be?

I love thinking about the imponderables in our existence and not coming up with answers. Don't you?

Live life the best you can, but embrace the mystery.

Addictions are forever.

Let's suppose you got drunk the first time you had anything alcoholic and thought, "Wow, this feels great!" That was the good news. Here's the bad news: You're likely to have to fight that addiction the rest of your life.

Maybe you snorted a line of cocaine and thought, "This is way I was meant to feel." You're already addicted. Congratulations and condolences.

Our addictions start early. If we're smart -- which most of us aren't when we're young -- we'll recognize them and head them off. That probably happens once out of a hundred times. Most of us have to deal with them later, when they've already taken root and are harder to get rid of.

Different drugs seem to bond to particular receptors in our brains. [I don't pretend to understand how it works or why. Look it up, okay?] And our particular brains appear to be pre-programmed for specific receptors. That's why some of us get addicted to alcohol and some to speed and some to heroin, et al. Maybe it's also why some of us can't resist certain foods and get fat. Or why others of us get an adrenaline rush from dangerous activities -- skydiving, climbing,
driving fast -- and too often die young.

Unlikely as it is to happen, it's important to recognize our possible/potential addictions early, when we're young, when there's still time to understand and deal with them. If you get drunk too easily and enjoy it too much, if you go way higher than your friends on certain drugs (and can't wait to get more), if you can't just be yourself, without "enhancements", for a whole day . . . it may be time for an intervention. Not with friends and family but with yourself. You have a chance to stop things in their track. As Nancy Reagan famously said in her doomed effort to stop drug use in this country, "Just say no." Or at least say, "I need to think about this."

All substances that alter our consciousnesses give us great pleasure. (Why we need to leave our day-to-day selves once in a while is the subject of a different discussion.) They probably all connect with receptors in our brains, since they all make us feel better. But only a few out of how many make that dreaded connection in your or my brain with that specialized receptor just waiting for that drug. Bang! We're addicted. And we always will be.

What we do about the knowledge that we're addicted -- once we've accepted/admitted it -- is a matter of personal preference. Some of us deny it and keep doing what we know we shouldn't be doing. Some of us try to stop on our own, usually without success but sometimes. A few braver ones enter some kind of treatment program -- brave because you have to confess to your weakness as a pre-condition to being let in. If left alone to run their course, most addictions will eventually kill us. Whether it's from a stopped heart or from pulminary arrest or a car wreck or just the dragging weight of obesity, our addictions inevitably kill us.

To re-cap, addictions start early and last a lifetime. If you've got one, you'll always have it. If you're young, consider yourself lucky: you have time to come up with a strategy. It's too late for those of us who are already addicted, but we owe it to the next generation to warn them not to get addicted to whatever they really like. That way lies heartbreak and sorrow never-ending.

How do you know if you're addicted to something? Ask yourself these questions. Do I love it? Do I need it? Would I go to extreme measures -- betraying a friend or robbing a store -- to get more of it? Could I give it up if my relationship or job or life depended on it? Can I imagine life without it?

We all know when we're addicted, even if we swear we're not. What we do about it is up to us. Hey, we could live a long life addicted to something or other. People do. But wouldn't it be better to see it early for what it is and come to terms with it? Spare ourselves and our loved ones lots of embarrassing moments? Addictions always, in the end, make us look foolish.

If you're young, and if you're smarter than lots of us were when we were your age, you'll keep an eye on yourself, know when you're liking something way more than you should.

Addictions are forever. You and I aren't.

Embrace your contradictions.

I live in Colorado but don't know how to ski. I love women but never learned how to dance, which most women seem to know how to do. I like people but don't like to meet them for the first time in social situations: I'd rather get to know them one on one, personally, before encountering them in a group setting. I love the mountains but mainly from a distance. I've hiked them, but I'm no mountaineer: too little air, too much effort. Whew! But I like to know they're there. I love looking at them. I'm also fascinated by the water but can't swim.

We are all walking contradictions, and I think we should be glad.

Maybe you hate killing animals but love cheeseburgers or tacos or meatloaf. Maybe you say you like your privacy but check your cell phone every five minutes to see if someone's called you. Or you swear off bad boys that look good while treating you mean and end up with another one and feel really good about it, for now. Or you pretend to fit into a family you can't identify with, no matter how hard you try. Were you adopted? But you smile and hug and make nice, right?


We all do our best to accommodate ourselves to the lives we're given and the persons we are.

Maybe you're overweight but remember yourself as young and lithe and springy. You're an internal contradiction. You have a picture of yourself that doesn't jibe with reality but that you try to make real by buying nice clothes and carrying yourself well. You cherish the slim you but can't resist eating too much. Just like a former jock who still carries the weight but doesn't get the exercise anymore and whose heartbeat is getting way too fast. He sees himself as that quick and agile boy, but he's fooling himself.


Why not just admit that you're overweight -- or addicted to whatever or under-achieving -- and deal with it? Forget making excuses. Just say, "Hey, this is who I am, at this time of my life, and I'm dealing with it the best I can. Thanks for your concern. "

Another scenario: You're a successful man in business who hates meetings and would rather be playing video games at home by yourself in the basement rec room. Or let's suppose you're an elected official, at whatever level, who really doesn't like shaking all those hands; you keep a hand sanitizer in your office. You are passionate about your causes but, if you're honest about it, don't particularly care for people. You have a few friends, and your ideals, and that's that.

Or suppose you're a pretty but aging woman who married the up-and-coming guy and who enjoys the benefits -- a big house, a social circle, lots of nice clothes -- but who can't forget the boy who was in love with you way back when who wrote poetry and didn't amount to anything.

Where is he now? Would he be interested in getting back in touch?

Stop right there.

Yes, he might, but you would be putting in jeopardy all you've achieved. Forget it. Keep all that old stuff in your own mind and in your memory, where it belongs. You made your choices long ago, and now you need to live with them.

We are all walking contradictions. We're who we appear to be and who we think we look like and who we really are and who we might have been, all at the same time. If we're smart, we come to terms with the contradictions and live a pretty good life. If not, we end up in therapy.

The American poet Walt Whitman said, more or less, "I contradict myself. So I contradict myself. I contain multitudes." So do we all. We are not just this or that, but any number of beings that exist within ourselves at any given time. Bill Clinton was a womanizer, but he also had the best interests of his fellow citizens at heart. (Or at least I like to think so.) So did John Kennedy, who famously -- allegedly -- bedded Marilyn Monroe, while standing up for the workers of the nation. You and I may commit acts we aren't proud of, but we probably also do lots of good in our lives. We're weak and strong at the same time. Moral and sinful.

Embrace the contradictions in your life. You're not just this or that person: you're all the people you've ever been or wanted to be. You choose to be this one or that one depending on the situation. Yes, you owe something to anyone you've committed to, but you owe something to yourself, too. It's a balancing act, this living.

The reason we humans remain so interested in other humans is that we can't comfortably categorize each other (or even ourselves). We love to think we can, but as soon as we try, someone upsets our assumptions and does something out of character, something that makes us look at that person in a new light. (It might even be us.) We aren't robots, pre-programmed. We're all making our way through this confusing life together, all learning together and screwing things up together. We're constantly surprising each other, and even ourselves. We don't have a clue as to who we are, or are supposed to be, and neither do our friends and family. We're all works in progress, bundles of contradictions.

And, really, would you have it any other way?

Don't be a taker.

When I worked as a waiter in a restaurant years ago, a fellow waiter almost always ended the night by saying to one or another of us, "Hey, I've got a hot date tonight, so would you mind filling the salt and pepper shakers for me? I'm make it up to you, I promise!"

We covered for him because he was a charming guy, good-looking and actually friendly to us. But never once did he reciprocate and fill the salt and pepper shakers for any of us. We were dupes. He was a taker.

Let's suppose you have a friend who always brings cheap wine to a social function and then ends up drinking the more expensive stuff other friends have brought. Or someone who asks you to take care of her kids but doesn't offer to take care of yours in return.

The list of takers is endless. They're always looking for something in return for nothing. They want to get the advantage, even among friends. They show up with chips and expect to dine on the shrimp casserole someone else spent hours making. They make nice with you and then ask you for favors they don't deserve and don't think of returning.

It seems to be a nasty personality trait: Some people just think that they're entitled to things they really aren't. And it gets especially complicated when they're your friends or family members. How do you tell your no-good brother-in-law that he's borrowed all he can from you and that you don't have any more to give? Or your sister that you don't approve of her new boyfriend who has no job and seems to be using her and who she insists on bringing over for dinner every weekend?

Life as we live it is full of people who want to use us, to take advantage of us, and it's up to us to know who they are and avoid them. But when they seem so sweet and sincere, it's hard.

After all, we're human, too, and looking for love, right?

Does your friend who asks for your sympathy while complaining about her ex that's she's still having sex with think how that affects you? Does your mother who wants to be friends with you, after all these years of estrangement, know how hard it is for you to spend time with her when you think back to when you needed her and she wasn't there?

That answer, of course, is no. They aren't thinking of you at all. They're thinking of themselves.

To reiterate, takers are people who, in any given situation, think only of themselves. They're looking for whatever will serve their own interests. They may be our friends or our family members or co-workers, or they may be people we don't even know, but they're looking out, first and foremost, for themselves. They don't worry about what it may cost you, their friend or sister or brother or son or daughter or fellow human. It's all about them and what they want.

If you decide to give them what they want -- out of guilt or love or just cowardice -- you can't expect much in return. They may say they're grateful, but it's only temporary. Sooner or later, they'll be back for more. And then you have to decide: how much more do I have to give?

Takers are everywhere in life, from the purse-snatcher to the bogus financial advisor who turns your investments into his/her savings account, from the lover who promises to marry you while having sex with someone else to the employer who guarantees your job only to cancel it just when you need it most. Lfe is rife with scoundrels who know that all the time they're promising something, they're really lying. Sometimes they don't even know it: it's just who they are. They're so used to trying to get something for nothing that they say whatever it takes to get what they want.

The worst of them can't help themselves, and you can't help them, so don't even try. Just get smart and steer clear of them. It's easier said than done, because they're often good-looking and persuasive. And they may hold the purse strings to your job. You don't know you've been had until you've been had. And then it's too late.

But there are ways to look out for the takers and to avoid them.

First, know who you are and what you want.

Don't be fooled by anyone -- in business or in love or in life -- who promises more than he/she seems capable of delivering. If your new beloved has no track record, be wary. If he or she seems more interested in you than you think reasonable, the red flag should also go up. (Again, know yourself.) It's a sad truth that this world is full of con artists who exist to prey on others instead of developing and pursuing their own talents, who are after the easy money -- meaning yours -- instead of the harder-earned money they could make on their own if they were more honest and more disciplined.

Beware the shark in a sharkskin suit, as an old saying goes. If it sounds too good to be true . . .

But this shouldn't just be an admonition to those of us who might fall prey to the takers. It's also a heads-up to the potential takers among us. Are you one? Do you always think about how you can get something for nothing? How you can take the rubes among us in some scheme you've cooked up? Are you always skirting the law, hoping not to get caught?

Are you one of those people who brings the cheap wine to dinner and drinks the best that someone else brought? The guy who puts in his fifty cents for the newspaper and takes out ten more to provide a pee-floor for your pets? The one who has lunch with the girls and, when the tab comes, puts in less than your share, assuming someone else will make up the difference?

Do you always try to work the angle so that you're paying less, doing less, contributing less?

You know if you are. You know if you're a taker. Are you ashamed? Probably not. But you should be.

We're all in this together, and we should all be paying our fair share. Right? Right.

If you're a giver, keep giving and watch out for the takers. If you're a taker, take a good look at yourself.

You can be boring without being bored.

Let's say you're a guy who spends most of your time working at a job that brings you financial and personal rewards -- or not -- and comes home tired and ready for a drink and not much conversation. Maybe a little TV, and then lights out at ten. Kiss the wife goodnight and wait for the challenges of tomorrow. Do you have kids? Did you say hi or goodnight to them?

Now let's suppose you're married to that guy and spend your days maybe working at a job yourself that you either like or not. Or maybe you don't work, having agreed to be the one who sees to the kids and the house, etc. Either way, it's likely that at the end of the day you're ready for some fun, or at least conversation/companionship when he comes home.

But he's pretty much on auto-pilot until he goes to sleep.

Boring? Yes. You. Bored? No. Him. He likes what he's doing and likes coming home to find dinner on the table and something good -- or not -- on TV. He's thinking about tomorrow and work. He's not bored.

But you are. You may go power-walking with women friends and you may shop with a vengeance, but all the time you're trying to remember why you married him in the first place. You love the things he gives you but can't help remembering when you were young and in love with him and with life. Life with him. What happened? And when?

Or let's suppose you're a young woman just starting a career -- in business or academia or the arts or wherever -- and you're totally absorbed in the new environment: all the new people and new duties and responsibilities, etc. You come home and tell your mate all about it, but he's still either trying to find a job after having been laid off or is dreading another day at a job he hates. After a little while of filling him in about your new world, he's getting bored. (Maybe threatened, too, but for sure bored.) Without knowing it -- because you were so involved in telling about the wonderful things that were happening to you -- you got to be boring.

But you're far from bored.

And that, to reiterate, is the point. We can be boring without being bored. It's just a fact of life. What we ourselves find intriguing can be, if we talk about it too much, boring to someone else. We've taken all the spotlight to ourselves. And unless we're as fascinating as we think we are -- not usually the case -- we've shut out the person we're with and, if we're married, that we swore we'd listen to and consider an equal so long as the both of us should live.

Imagine that you're retired and reading books you've always wanted to read, for hours at a time, or you're playing golf or fishing, just enjoying that well-deserved time away from a life-long job you didn't much like. You're ready to spend endless hours doing almost nothing.

Imagine you're married to that guy. You've waited all these years for the two of you to be retired -- free of work and kids -- so that you could travel the world together. And here he is, plopped down in his recliner, reading yet another book, or out on his boat, catching nothing! He's already said that he doesn't want to go anywhere, at least not right now. And here you are with your tourbooks in hand!

He's boring but not bored. You're bored to tears!

One more scenario: You married him because he kept himself in shape and because he was kind of daring. He was a skateboarder or a free-flying hang glider or a tennis pro or a hiker of big mountains. He appealed to the jock side of yourself. Or, if you're a guy, you married her because she challenged you and didn't give in, because she was her own person. And the prettiest girl who had ever shown any interest in you.

Now let's suppose that, as time goes on, those first attractions fade away and you're left with each other, the one spending way too much time hang-gliding and the other frustrated because he won't talk about anything important. Or she shops while he reads, or he hikes while she does yoga, or one likes dinner parties and the other doesn't. On and on.


I think many marriages dissolve because one or the other partner forgets about the other's needs. After a while together, once the fires of passion have inevitably cooled, it's only human nature to take for granted that other person and to get more and more involved in whatever it is we like to do. But in the end, if we're to stay together, we have to come up with some kind of truce, a mutual understanding of how to avoid being boring to each other while still not being bored ourselves.

It's a delicate balance. Lots of give-and-take. Not all couples are up to the challenge.

Are you? And you?

Make-up is for men, too.

A few years ago, I had to have my picture taken, professionally, and the lady in charge stepped up and powdered my nose and cheeks -- to reduce the glare, she said. When I asked her about it later, she said that she was trying to reduce the redness (a more masculine word is "ruddiness"). Apparently the camera likes subdued flesh hues. When I saw the photo later, it struck me that what she'd done is what women have done for centuries: used make-up to make me look better.

I'm sure you know -- or have seen photos of -- couples where the woman's face looks more or less perfect, while the man's face is pocked or red or otherwise not photogenic. It's not that he's necessarily older or more time-worn than her; it's that she knew how to use make-up, and he didn't.

Most of us guys don't know what we look like. Oh, we have a rough idea. But when we look in the mirror, instead of really analyzing our faces, we focus on our beards that need to be shaved or the stuff still caught between our teeth. We mistake the trees for the forest. We accept that, for the most part, we look like God -- or nature -- intended us to look and just hope that some pretty girl will find us attractive enough to date and even marry. It doesn't occur to us that we could take simple steps to look better. We assume we're stuck with the face we have.


Women have long known that's not true, that there are oh so many ways to improve on the status quo. Take a stroll through the cosmetics section of any big department store -- where men almost never venture (unless buying something a woman has asked us to buy) -- and you'll see what I mean. Whole counters are filled with exotic substances women use to refine their appearances, while the men's mini-section contains poofy fragrances someone thinks we want to pat onto our cheeks to smell better but that we hope no one gives us as presents.


But that may be changing. When I went to such a counter to ask about powder to mask my facial blemishes for future photos, the woman -- always a woman -- suggested I try not a powder but a "base". I'd never heard of such a thing, but she showed me what looked like a lipstick tube that can be matched to your skin tone and that covers all those red areas and other skin abnomalities with a simple swipe and some smudging that you can do with your thumb. Voila! My face looked clearer and cleaner and younger! (Think about that old pimple medicine/coverer -- I can't think of the name -- gone high-scale, and without the drying effect.)


I bought a tube right away! (Two, actually.)


As she was ringing up my purchase, she told me that more and more men are getting hip to the magical powers of make-up. Especially, she said, older men in business who know they have to compete these days with younger go-getters for promotions and raises. She said she had one older client who carried a tube to conferences to take the red out of his face the morning after too many drinks at a company dinner. But she has a younger buyer who packs a tube of make-up in his carry-on luggage to deal with emerging pimples that might pop up before an important job call or interview.


For the record, I've known more than one man who could have used make-up to cover a birth mark. I had a friend with a purplish blotch on one cheek that didn't define him as a person but that drew attention away from his overall good looks to that one jarring feature. And I think I recall a USSR leader -- Gorbachev? -- who had an obvious purplish whatever on his balding head, one you couldn't help looking at. In both cases, a few swipes of a tube of "base" make-up, spread with a thumb, would have eliminated the distraction.

(By the way, for the men: "Base" may also mean "foundation", but I'm not sure. Just ask for a tube of make-up that matches your skin tone, and the lovely lady behind the counter will be glad to help you.)


We shouldn't be surprised that men are re-discovering beauty aids. In ages past, men have always strutted their stuff, doing everything possible to look their best, and not just in Europe, which is always ahead of us in fashion: look at those old paintings of our founding fathers, of Washington and Jefferson and Franklin, all done up in powdered wigs and tight leggings and expensive clothing. (They may also have had on make-up as it existed then.) The males of most animal species are, by nature, the most flamboyant, always trying to put on a personal show to attract the most desirable females. If you've ever seen a painting -- no photos by then -- of the French king Louis-the-whichever and his young queen Antoinette, you can't help but note that they're both all dolled-up, almost as if in competition with each other.

Somewhere along the line, though, men started to dress down while women kept dressing up. Given a choice, men go for comfort, women for style. (Subject of a future essay; stay tuned.)

But that doesn't mean that men shouldn't and can't look just a bit better.

Men: If a twenty dollar tube of Makes Me Look Better (not a real brand) can cover up your facial flaws and make you appear younger, why not spring for it? You know you've spent more on beer on a weekend when you didn't get any female action at all, right? Hey, this stuff might actually help you get a date!

Women: Buy the beloved male in your life a tube of something that matches his skin tone and show him how to use it. He'll be glad and may soon be asking you for more skin products!

We're all stuck with our basic looks but we're also blessed with imagination, so if we want to look different, we can make it happen. Life as we know it is just one version; given a simple twist of fate, you or I might have looked differently or been born into different families, etc. In the meantime, we can at least prettify the faces we were given, no?

Hey you! Yeah you, the stupid-looking guy. You always said you didn't understand women, right? Okay, here's one of their secrets. Lean in and I'll whisper it. A little closer . . .

IT'S MAKE-UP, YOU STUPID PUTZ!

Got it? Good.

I'm ready for my close-up now.