Vice v. Virtue

I am currently in a cooling off period of sorts. My vices have been waning of late, possibly giving my virtues a fighting chance. I’m not certain of what my virtues are, but their time may be coming. Don’t misread this as self-effacing; it is just that vices are so much more easily identified than virtues. Compare crack-heads with patient people, for instance. Crack-heads stand out, generally speaking. They’re constantly puffing on that pipe, begging for a rock, and offering vomit-provoking sexual favors for just one more hit. I’ve not associated with many crack-heads in my time, but I imagine that some of the more “developed” connoisseurs the “white devil” have long since traded their social etiquette for tattered clothing and the smell of dried urine. It's my understanding that veterans of the crack game can be heard banging on doors and clanking on barred windows in the dead of the night, offering ever more degrading acts at a steadily increasing volume. They’re going down fast in more ways than one and they’re going to make sure everybody knows about it. Then there are the patient people, always taking a back seat, constantly waiting their turn. They’re the ones who slow their cars and wave frustrated mergers in without receiving so much as a returning wave in thanks. In distant dorm rooms they keep their noses buried in textbooks, dutifully studying for exams. Before they know it they are the busy beavers with their heads down somewhere in the vast expanse of a cube farm. They are rarely seen waving their hands in the air for attention, cutting into line at a movie theatre, or for that matter, banging on the barred window of a crack-house at 3 in the morning. They know that good things come to those who wait, and wait they will. So which is more likely to go unnoticed, vice or virtue?

I’m not complaining, mind you, this is just the way of things. While vice paints its message on the side of a dilapidated building in Technicolor letters 10 feet high, virtue quietly writes in its journal. In much the same way, the murdered child receives front-page coverage, while the 100 children who’ve been fed by someone’s charitable donation don’t even merit an honorable mention. Somehow the bad always seems to shout louder than the good, if you believe in that sort of thing, that is.

I’ve often wondered if some future phase of human evolution could change this dynamic, causing the good to be sexy and the bad to be demure. If I close my eyes for a moment and allow my mind to wander, images of this bizarro-world begin to emerge: meth labs are found grouped together in small encampments deep in the mountains, the business of escapism and addiction quietly eking out an existence far from the worried eyes of the proletariat, its workers, uniformed with thinning hair and missing teeth, softly chanting to themselves while tearing open Sudafed packets. At the same time, in some far off trailer park, bearded men with long, brown robes have completely arrested control, practicing their boisterous spirituality on a sweaty blacktop basketball court after mid-summer afternoon’s pickup game. Prostitutes operate out of confessionals, their johns free to come and go with quiet anonymity, while librarians flood the street corners and loudly hawk tattered copies of Jane Eyer and Moby Dick. Frat boys engage in organized, well-mannered games of beer pong, while grad students spill over balcony railings, engaged in chest-thumping, bravado-laden, bragging contents regarding their latest thesis defenses and grant proposals.

Admittedly it’s a silly notion, and perhaps a well-mannered vice would be the worst vice of all, given that it would no longer serve as its own warning. Maybe those clanking crack house bars are just what the world needs? Their function to serve as a signpost that says “hey Titanic, you may want to turn the wheel, there’s an iceberg just ahead.” Still, when considering my own vices and virtues, I sometimes wish the high-road had a few more signposts. It would be a soul comfort to have the fog lift just long enough to reveal a big, green arrow reading “road less travelled, this way.” Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the way the game is played. The Israelites wandered the desert for 40 years before being delivered into the Promised Land, just as Thomas Edison repeatedly miscalculated in his efforts to create an electric light source before finally getting it done. Finding the right road is tough - I guess that’s why the road less travelled is, well, less travelled. Perhaps it’s best for those of us seeking the “right path” to accept that there’s simply no way to know for sure if the road we’re walking will lead us to what we’re searching for. That is, of course, unless we happen to be searching for a crack house.