Ralph Lauren Makes Paint

Pepe arrived at the bar. It would later become evident that he was itching to share what was on his mind with someone else. It would later become plausible that this itch was the primary cause for asking me, in a rushed, but polite tone, "Hey, is there a bartender here or what?" as he hoped to itch this itch with her. 

I looked down from the TV that was showing the soccer final above the bar. 

"Yeah, she's..." 

I looked to the right. 

"Well, she was right there a second ago. She'll be back." 

I did not explain that I had just ordered a fajita salad from said bartender, thus sending her to ferry the order to the kitchen. I kept my poker face, and he was none the wiser. 

"Ahh ok." 

Pepe swung around in his chair, looking for a member of the waitstaff, I supposed. I looked back at the game on the TV above the bar. It was still in the first few minutes of the first half. There was no score. Soon the bartender returned. She was met by the eager eyes of Pepe the painter. It would later become evident that Pepe wanted a Modelo Especial. 

"I'd like a Modelo Especial."

And in San Antonio, beers get a bonus question. 

"Dressed?" asked the bartender.

"No,, thanks." 

He really paused between that 'no' and that 'thanks.' By now the itch to share what was on his mind had moved beyond the itch-phase. In Pepe's mind, there were very few desirable options. It was Cortizone, talk to somebody, or death by un-itched itch. 

"Man it was hot today, I was working painting this roof and just got off," he said. 

Unfortunately for Pepe, and confusingly for me, the bartender had already turned her back and begun moving the other way to attend to the couple four seats to my right. Noticing both his conversational error and my attention to it, he audibled, quick, and turned to face me. 

"So, this is what, the semifinal or something?"

"Actually it's the final. Jamaica upset Mexico."

"Oh riiight I didn't even know." 

He closed his mouth, hummed a little laugh at himself, then continued. 

"My name is Pepe, by the way." 

He extended his tattooed arm over the vacant barstool between us. I shook it and told him mine.

"Nice to meet you, I'm Will."

There was a few minutes' pause. The sort of pause guys at bars take when there's a game on, and you don't know each other. But soon Pepe was at it again with the hot roof and the painting. Unfortunately I could not turn my back to him and walk over to attend to the couple four seats to my right. That would be all sorts of confusing, seeing as I was a customer, not a bartender, or even a member of the waitstaff. 

"It was hot out today. I was painting this lady's house."

"I bet it was. Just around here in the neighborhood?" 

I hoped to god Pepe understood I was talking about where the house was, not some new micro-weather pattern of heat. It would later become clear that he had fully understood. 

"Yeah, just a few streets over. Biiig house, man. Like, big. She's from Ireland." 

Pepe probably did not hope to god I understood he was talking about the lady, and not some migratory house. Most people don't self-analyze their grammar like I do. 

"Ireland! Wow."

And Pepe the painter began to scratch his itch. 

"Yeah, man, I've been painting this lady's house for a few weeks now. I've painted it seven different colors. Blue, yellow, then pink, everything. Ralph Lauren colors. You know how Ralph Lauren makes paint?"

I didn't know Ralph Lauren made paint.

"You know how Ralph Lauren makes paint?" Pepe repeated. 

Apparently it was not rhetorical. 

"I didn't know Ralph Lauren made paint." 

"Yeah, man, she and her husband started painting the house, but then her husband died. So she called me to finish the job, because, you know, the husband had hired all the painters and she didn't know who to call or how to organize it. So she called me."

Something didn't add up, I thought. Why would she call Pepe?

"You know Home Depot?"

"Yeah sure." 

"Yeah everyone knows it." 

That one may have been rhetorical.

"So a month ago I was at Home Depot and I see this older couple loading a bunch of paint into their car, and I offer to help. So I help them, and I ask if they need anyone to hire to paint, because that's what I do. They said they already had hired some people, but I gave the wife my card and they said they'd call if they needed help sometime. I didn't think much about it."

It was starting to add up.

"And then, three days later, the husband died."

It all added up.

"And so a few weeks pass and finally she calls and asks if I can finish painting the house that she and her husband painted. And man, I had no idea about what had happened. But all the photos of her husband were turned face down in all the rooms. Eventually she tells me what happened and, well, I don't bring it up anymore. After the first time she asked me to repaint the house, I moved all the photos of him to another room out of sight to maybe help her. And I keep painting, and she's like super chill, she'll cook me lunch and we get along really well, just talking. I don't think she knows that many people in San Antonio. And then she asked me to repaint a third time and I said, 'I'll repaint it but I can't take your money.' Because I genuinely enjoy spending time there, you know?"

And then it gets really juicy. 

"I mean by the fourth and fifth times, we were like,, smoking, you know, smoking, and laughing."

He really paused before that first 'smoking' and took a look around the bar. 

"She even took me to the lake one day and it was great."

"It sounds like she likes you, Pepe!" I said. 

"Yeah, I mean, nah, man not like that. I even told her. 'You know I'm only here like a friend and stuff. Only for your company, like I genuinely enjoy your company' I told her. She told me I was lucky that Latino guys weren't her type!" 

He hummed a little laugh here, followed by a shorter but fully vocal laugh. 

"Anyways so I told her I would only repaint her house seven times, max. And she said that's fine."

The Unpredictability of It All

"Brother, I said a 'hello' on the radio for you tonight." 
-Danilo, Radio Heliópolis FM

Looking backwards, the story of this Whatsapp text, translated from its orginal Portuguese, is completely logical. For Danilo, it was natural to welcome visitors to his neighborhood and to promote his brand of clothing to an international community. He lives in a favela of São Paulo called Heliópolis, and professionals in marketing may want to take notes on what he is up to. He has leveraged his pride for his home into a neat little clothing line, coupled with a radio program. He beamed as he showed me photos of folks all over the world wearing his brand's swag. He also does a local radio show, and I have no doubt he puts in plugs for his brand whenever he can. You could argue that the radio "hello" was less than ordinary, perhaps unexpected, or even unnecessary. For Danilo, it was not uncommon, who from our brief encounter seemed to have a beautiful balance of both genuinely friendly and cleverly economic motives. For me, it was as though Madame Unpredictability waltzed up behind me, tapped my shoulder, slapped me with a Nadal backhand, and skipped away into the night with a mischevious grin as she peered back at me over her shoulder. How in the world did I arrive at this moment? I kept wondering as I rubbed my left cheek (Nadal is a lefty). I just got a shoutout on a radio station from a favela in São Paulo.

"You can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards."
-Steve Jobs, Stanford Commencement Speech, 2005

Even a week ago, no amount of research or guesswork could have connected the dots going forward. There is a taste of unpredictability in each and every moment. It is the salt that goes into everything we make of ourselves. On Friday night I crunched down hard on a fat hunk of its unground variety. Extreme circumstances like these allow us to see the mundane with extreme perspicacity. Once we acquire the taste of, say, unpredictability, it suddenly becomes palpable in nearly every situation life cooks up. Looking backwards, though, the connections are there. Unpredictability does not exclude understanding.

"Will, think of what could happen if I throw this glass on the ground over there. Maybe it breaks and cuts a woman, and she has to go to the hospital. And while she is waiting there, she looks up and sees a man who will be her husband. That is how crazy it is." 

-André, São Paulo friend

There is a shadow of helplessness that accompanies this realization. It is a bit like watching kids without quarters sit at the driver's seat of the arcade, twisting the steering wheel and slamming the gas, pretending that *demo-mode* is not flashing yellow before their very eyes. On a daily basis I happily admit to catching myself playing, too. Exacto-knifing out a neat corner of the world just big enough to think that you are in control - this ownership of free will is ingrained in our psychologies and has been shown scientifically to benefit us. Not only that, but its opposite suggests unseemly consequences: "Believing that free will is an illusion has been shown to make people less creative, more likely to conform, less willing to learn from their mistakes, and less grateful toward one another." (see previous link). Following this line of reasoning, some thinkers like Saul Smilansky even argue that free will is an illusion that must be upheld at the expsense of truth. Back in the day, I imagine a similar study could have predicted that the discovery of the earth not being the center of the universe causing equally damning social upheaval (Catholic Church pun intended). 

Here are my two bits. In the "saltiest" of situations life cooks up, the dots may seems helplessly scattered around and misnumbered, and the connections between them beyond prediction. However, unpredictability on the outside does not stop us from thinking deeply on the inside, nor should it stop us from doing great things. It adds flavor, even when the smallest of decisions are not fundamentally ours to make. This truth - that decisions happen, rather than are made - should encourage us to tune our minds in to the mental mechanisms that lead us to their happening. In a word: self-reflection. We should not agonize over this disillusionment. Rather, we should ask ourselves: what triggers, emotions, words, whims, and hopes affect our decisions the most? These decision making processes appear to reside deep within our nature and our nurture, waiting for us to understand. I find power and inspiration in this potential for understanding how we make decisions. Its opposite, a belief in an entirely free will, is another happy illusion that, like the idea of earth's central importance in the universe, must be cast aside in the wake of better explanations for how things truly are.