Say what you will about the Marvel Cinematic Universe
They occasionally drop some absolutely excellent one-liners.
“What is grief, if not love persevering?” We can all thank WandaVision for that one. It might be time to rewatch WV, as a matter of fact. When did that come out? 2022? No – it had to have been earlier than that, because Multiverse of Madness was 2023…final answer, on the board, 2021 for WandaVision, lets see what the answer is —
January 2021 release for WandaVision. And now we can ask ourselves our favorite questions when considering content:
Was Max alive? Did he watch WandaVision? Did he like it?
And worst of all —
Did he and I talk about it? Did I just forget? How many memories with my brother have been blended into serotonin soup, reduced to synapses and grey matter, to be coughed or sneezed out? (It’s true – whenever you hawk tuah a thick loogie, there’s a little bit of brain juice in there). Now, you might be thinking to yourself, “Hey, Jack, did you really just post this picture of you and Max only to talk about WandaVision and dubious brain facts?”, and the answer to that question is No, No I Did Not.
As human beings, we are wired to be risk-averse, to be loss-averse. Tversky and Kahneman (1979) demonstrated this heuristic over a thirty year period – the pain of losing 100$ is twice as strong as the pleasure of gaining the same amount. So I sit here, staring at photos of my dead brother, thinking about how great it would be to find 100$ in my pocket, only to realize the 100$ bill has a bit of brain cancer on it.
I mean, how else is there to think about? You don’t know me. You don’t know my relationship with Max. You might have known one, or even both of us, sure. You might be one of the few remaining childhood friends we still have (NA, AB, BW, hey hi hello); but even you have limited perspective on exactly how times I threw away the 100$ bill of my brothers love.
I’ve been trying – quite a bit, as a matter of fact – to feel good. It’s an easy goal to set, after all – I don’t want to feel bad, I do want to feel good, baddabing baddaboom we just aimed at something to strive for. I wrap myself in a cloak of positive affirmations, warm myself by the fire of empty platitudes, and try not to think about the oppressive darkness at the edges of my campsite.
I look at this picture and something opens up inside of me. Something sharp and twisted and dense with gravity and pain and loss. Max looked at me like this for 23 years and I didn’t even notice until it was too late. I see his love, and reach for it across time and space, trying to find my 5 year old little brother who just needed someone to let him know that he was safe and loved and Perfect the way the is; and my love turns to ashes in my mouth.
I’m a big fan of delusion. It’s a pretty fantastic invention – delusion saw Alexander conquer half the known world; delusion saw the invention of the lightbulb and the car, the overthrowing of countless monarchs and dictators – hell, delusion is what gets most people out of bed every morning. The delusional belief that maybe, just maybe, today will be better. Maybe today things will be different. Maybe the way things are, isn’t the way that things need to be.
Where’s my delusion? I seem to be all out. All I have to look at is death and suffering and meaningless fucking days spent working at Starbucks, or dreaming about a time when maybe things will be different. Max’s delusion left him with nothing. His life didn’t get better. He didn’t get what he deserved. He deserved an older brother who loved and supported him and made sure that he knew that every second of the day. He deserved to feel how much love he brought to the world and how much better off the people in his life were for knowing him. He deserved — he deserved more than what he got. And I’m left at the intersection of Nightmare Ave and Reality Blvd, just missed the last bus to Dreamville, fresh out of anything that might be useful.
I feel like a boomer on any street named after a civil rights leader after midnight. Am I afraid of nothing but my own conceptions of suffering? Or is there a validity to my fear? Are the shadows in the derelict buildings here to steal my catalytic converter? Or are they about to help me change my tire? You might be asking yourself if this anecdote is racist. Let me know the answer when you figure it out.
Anyways. I’m only adding more text here because when I went to go upload this post I realized that asking You, one of my Three People Who Actually Read These Things, a rhetorical question about my hypothetical racism probably wasn’t the philosophical headscratcher I was hoping for. I guess the moral of the story for today is Loss. And the bitterness of realizing how much Love I could have returned to someone who deserved it – who NEEDED it – more than anyone I know.