For a long time, I have been in JC’s corner.  I believe in delusional optimism as much as anybody, but a lot of idiots want to be Clooney or Pitt, aspirations which make no sense given those men’s obvious natural advantages.  Cusack, on the other hand, is a modern male role model by virtue of having stretched his limited gifts.  He’s far from the best looking man in the world, or the most charming, or the most manly.  With the exception of Con Air and 2012, Cusack knows enough to avoid looking silly in action pictures, and instead confines himself to movies where he more or less plays himself: slightly smarter and slightly more self-aware than average.  For this, women everywhere LOVE him with a devotion akin to the Branch Davidians.

I suppose I’ve always felt Cusack and I were simpatico, and never more so than in the film High Fidelity (based on a book by Nick Hornby, my other man-crush).    In it, JC plays Rob,  a guy in his 30s not unlike myself in that he’s freshly dumped, perennially broke, largely miserable, and trying to figure out why.    Rob is hurting over a break-up with his girlfriend , and his moment of clarity comes about three quarters of the way through the film:

I can see now that I never really committed to Laura.  I always had one foot out the door, and that prevented me from doing a lot of things, like thinking about my future and…I guess it made more sense to commit to nothing.  Keep my options open. And that’s suicide…by tiny, tiny increments.

I’ve loved this movie for a decade now, and every time I’ve watched that scene I knew it was significant and I’ve nodded in agreement but today…TODAY…I just woke up and knew in my bones that what he describes is exactly what I’ve been doing.   If I’d had this moment when that lady in the minivan knocked me off my motorbike the timing would be more sensible, but what can I say? Different things come to all of us differently.

So basically, in order to be a Better Man,  I think I may need to limit my options.   This seems counterintuitive, since having lots of choice feels like an unmitigated good thing.   I remember talking about this with my dad many years ago.  I was in a rare confrontational mood and I took him to task over his seeming disinterest in my life choices.   He said  that by the time he was my age he was married with two kids and had no choices, so he saw no point in taking away my options by pushing me in one direction over another.    I took his words to heart, perhaps to my detriment.

There’s a concept in economics known as “opportunity costs”.   Basically, an opportunity cost is the price you pay when you choose one option over another – the cost of Betty is Veronica, and vice versa.   For most people these days, there’s more to it – modern social conventions don’t place that many demands on us anymore.   There’s no expectation to get married by a certain age (or to stay married – hello Al and Tipper), no expectation to have kids by a certain age, or to stay in a job for any length of time.   Short of not indulging our desire to riot after the Canadiens lose (okay, bad example), or kill someone for taking a favorite parking spot, we’re pretty much free to do whatever we want, whenever we want, and more so now than at any time in human history.   The problem is in a world filled with all kinds of choices, opportunity costs are everywhere, and by choosing one path over all others a lot of us don’t feel the cost of just one missed opportunity but ALL missed opportunties.   Opportunity costs can feel so pricey nowadays it can be hard to find any joy in a single choice, so a lot of guys (like Rob and me) end up choosing nothing, and lot of times the result is they end up nowhere.   This is the paradox of choice.  In fact, a guy named Barry Schwartz actually wrote a book called The Paradox of Choice:

What could create larger opportunity costs than choosing one mate and losing the chance to enjoy all the attractive features of other potential spouses? People also stay in their jobs less than half as long, on average, as they did a generation ago. Whereas delaying marriage and avoiding commitment to a particular job would seem to promote self-discovery, this freedom and self-exploration seems to leave many people feeling more lost than found.

Everybody is different, but for me the proof is a little incontrovertible –  I have so many options, yet I’ve never felt more left out in my life.  I know my dad wanted me to have as much choice as possible, but when we spoke I don’t know if he realized how his choices shaped him into a man…maybe not the kind of man I want to be, but certainly more of a man than I am now.

Now to be clear, I’m NOT saying that as soon as I’m finished writing this I’m going to run out  and knock up the first woman who agrees to let me….I still believe in falling in love (but you never know – maybe I’ll kick that notion out the door as well).    But for the first time, my mind feels open to a committing to a choice – perhaps a tad too late for some of my ex-girlfriends’ taste, but no matter.  John Cusack, if you’re reading this, don’t be alarmed if one day you’re in Canada and some guy runs up and gives you a hug.  Or a punch in the groin.  Either or.

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