Merry Humanity to You!!

Today my mom and I engaged in what is becoming a Christmas Eve ritual for us: noshing on burgers and fries at Gott’s Roadside diner in the Napa wine region of California. We’ve spent Christmas week in Napa for the past four years, gently sipping and eating and wondering what it would be like to spend the other 360 days of the year doing the same. During previous visits I had noticed the custom at Gott’s to use pseudos for your pickup name: “Fang, your order is ready, Fang!” I’d been anticipating all year what I might call myself the next time I visited Gott’s. I settled on a category: Greek philosophers.

I’ll let my tweets record what happens next:

How did Aristotle become Eristonald, I wonder? The person taking my order didn’t flinch when I said Aristotle. Didn’t ask how to spell it; in fact just confidently keyed my chosen name into the computer. Now, as is the case in fast-food jobs, this person was quite young and it is entirely conceivable and understandable that Aristotle had yet to enter her consciousness. But why ERISTONALD?

Does she know an ERISTONALD?

How could she so confidently type in a name she was clearly only guessing at?

There’s something lovely about her phonetics (or quirky about my pronounciation.). The ERIST syllables seem to suggest another language.

Is correct spelling just an eccentricity these days? or  Is correct spelling not a core Gott’s competency?

The poor person who had to announce to the world: “Eristonald, your order is ready, Eristonald” looked at me for an explanation. When I told her it was supposed to be Aristotle, she was relieved but only shrugged.

And then it all struck me as charming. Just another lovely example of sweet human imperfection. And how silly it is for us to get caught up in conceits, however small.

Which gets me to Christmas and religion. This time of year some of us think more about religious and spiritual matters than we normally do. And the pleasure I got from the sweetness of “the mistake” made me think about one of my main problems with most religions–the insistence that the goal of existence is human perfection.

I can’t help but think how silly this idea is. Human perfection seems perfectly pointless. Our charm lies in our clumsiness. Our grace is that we forgive each other our mistakes–or at least we should. And our passion comes from the desire to improve. Without the desire to improve, I just don’t understand how we can be very human.

There’s nothing profound here, I’m sure; it’s just one of the ways that the emotional logic of mainstream religions escapes me.

Like the promise of eternal life. First, I REALLY hate being bribed into religious belief. Sure, just play upon my fears. Second, I can’t think of a worst fate for humanity than eternal life. And if it’s eternal, perfect life, I’m really trying to understand what could possibly be the point of that.

I’m much happier just trying to be a productive member of the human team, making sweet mistakes that in time others may learn from.

Merry Humanity to All.