-Do you hear me now?

Growing older brings all sorts of things that are unpleasant and stressing. We have to figure out how to pay bills online. We learn to function on a total of two hours of sleep. We discover just how much caffeine a body can handle without our hearts bursting through our polos and our sweaters. We figure out how to manage workloads and deadlines, how to make the best of group projects. We navigate the choppy waters of self esteem and post acne outbreaks. There are a lot of benefits to becoming older though. Getting to have credit cards. Making our own schedules. Getting to have power lunches and power naps. The incredible ability to drop as much money as we want in any store we want. One of the most interesting things that comes with growing older is stress; and figuring out how to deal with it. When stress hits there are infinite amounts of ways to deal with it. Killing 820 calories on the elliptical. Watching half a season of your favorite show. Filling your lungs with nicotine goodness. The less attractive option of getting blitzed and making out with inappropriate people. Or the original way of making stress go away: karaoke. Karaoke is the good ole’ fashioned way of relieving stress and having a great time with some good friends; but like anything else, there is a right and wrong way of doing it. No one really expects for someone to get up on the ego-defying stage and belt out a tune worthy of a Grammy and a full fledged entourage. Karaoke is about giving stress the shake off and showing life that you still have some life in you. If you are going to go, then go big. Get up on the stage and let loose with whatever song you so chose to do. Please don’t get up there and sing through half clenched teeth while standing there motionless staring at the screen as the words appear. The point is not to worry about whether or not your voice sounds like a cow being put through a wood chipper; the point is to get noticed for having a fun time. The karaoke stage is a place to communicate what is really going on. Heartbroken, sing some Pat Benatar. Relentlessly in love, sing some Olivia Newton John. Pissed off, sing some Rolling Stones. Of course there are always the classics; Blondie, Beatles, anything from the seventies and “Why do you build me up butter cup baby?” So if we can get up in front of strangers and be honest with them, then why can’t we be direct and forward when we aren’t on stage?
Somewhere a scientist got paid to figure out where the majority of stress came from; he said that after years of study he concluded that most stress comes from miscommunication. Is that really such a problem for us? We tell people how we want our food. What size we want our clothes. What color we want our hair. How fast we want our car. How many seats we need at our table. We vocalize when we hate the weather. When we can’t stand our government. When we want more options. And of course when we are tired. So how come we never say what is really on our minds? We go through everyday thinking of things that we would like to say to fully express what is going on, and yet we just keep it in and gather them all up. We have mental closets full of sayings and expressions we will never try on or wear out. But what keeps us from being direct? As children we are taught to be careful and mind what we say, we have to be taught because we are born without verbal filters. Then as we enter middle school and high school we become masters of passive-aggressive verbal warfare. We can make people cry by complimenting them, if it is done correctly. Now that we are out of high school and into the majestic real world we have all been waiting for, how come we are still relying on passive-aggressive tactics to express ourselves? Are we that scared of fully becoming adults and responsible citizens that we hang on to this one last means of adolescence? Real grown ups don’t hold back, and especially when it comes to telling us what to do. They can step all over peoples toes and not worry about it. They can yell and kick and scream to get what they want from their employees or whoever works below them. Is the next generation too bashful or concerned with feelings to be direct?
There are those amongst us who not only express directly but take it to a whole new level, and that level would be called annoyance. Being direct and being a blunt asshole are two very different things, the line is thin and long, but the line between them does exist. Some finesse and proper thinking through of things is needed before shooting off your mouth. Being direct is not about overstating, reiterating or saying completely rotten things. Being direct is about putting an end to passive-aggressive manners.
Not only our we PA players with others, but we are passive-aggressive to ourselves as well. We can make sense of everything in our head, and rationalize all our actions to the voices in our heads. Then why do we struggle and fumble for words when we have to make sense to others, to those who are asking the real questions. We are masters at hitting ourselves on the back of the head and then asking “where did that come from?” It’s time that we all start listening to our Jiminy Crickets and speak up and speak out. Since life and growing up is not about things becoming easier or simpler, it is time to tie our own shoes, button our own coats, zip our own flies and face problems head on. Belt out a tune. Conversations, like anything else, do have a natural rhythm or tune to them. So when we decide to push things underneath the carpet of our brains, we screw up the pleasant noise. Or we decide to withhold our solo until we are in the company of our friends and not the local critics. But life is about singing, and saying what is really on your mind; always being able to hit the right note or hold it for three measures is really impossible, but at least we are singing. Making noise.