“Amid Kanye drama, Pete Davidson is shooting into space” is a real headline from the LA Times this week.
Scrolling past new legislation in local governments and Ukraine news, I clicked on the story and took the time to read every single one of the messages Davidson leaked between himself and Kanye about Kim Kardashian.
Here’s a snippet.
Pete: “I’ve decided im not gonna let you treat us this way anymore and I’m done being quiet. Grow the f**k up.”
Kanye: “Oh you using profanity now. Where are you right now?”
Pete: “In bed with your wife.”
Forgetting that these are grown men having a fight that could be had verbatim in a middle school playground and forgetting that these men are quite wealthy and have huge audiences, I kept yelling at my phone, “What do you think this will change Pete?!”
I thought back to an Argentinean expression my cousin Ariel taught me earlier that day, “What’s an extra stripe to a tiger?”
Why would Kanye change (removing an important conversation about his mental health from this equation)?
Why not continue to double down on his attempt to smear Pete and get his wife back if he thinks that will eventually lead to success?
He has already gone viral, gotten a lot of press, and dealt with negative repercussions of this…so what’s another stripe to a tiger?
My cousin said this phrase at the end of our trip to Carilo, a beach town 4 hours south of Buenos Aires. Before I had even gotten to BA my two male cousins who were around my age had decided we should take a boy’s trip to the coast to hang out for the first time without our parents around.
It was our chance to hang out as friends and I am so freaking glad we got this time.
In a mix of English and Spanish we spent the weekend reading on the beach, watching Netflix movies and standup, sitting by the pool, drinking beers, and going to the same vegan Mexican restaurant in this tiny beach town as often as possible (yes, a significant portion of my family in a country known for its meats is vegan).
It’s crazy to have people so similar to you in your life whom you don’t know really well. It was just little things like dating struggles, work complaints, etc., that we approach and think about really similarly.
It was a relaxing vacation from my vacation after another week of touring the city and Spanish classes (this time featuring another eclectic mix of a young Dutch guy who just graduated college and is on a gap year with his girlfriend, a German guy from Berlin with a nerdy disposition and a love of psych-trance EDM or something like that, and a young Argentinian teacher who has us reading the Argentine equivalent of Shakespeare sometimes in class because of his love of classic lit).
But this trip also marked a moment in my time here when I wanted to change my mind from vacation mode in Argentina, to settle down and make a temporary life and routine here mode.
As I’m writing this I have one tab open to explore cooking classes in the area, another open to KAYAK.com where I’m looking at trips to the north of the country, have a website open for intro lessons to graphic design in my area, and another one on Google maps where I’m labeling all the restaurants I’ve been recommended on one map.
As my Mom would stay, “I’m nesting,” by throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks.
But something about that Spanish phrase (“What’s another activity to an overly energetic guy with time”) didn’t feel right to me while I was booking and planning and scheduling.
If a tiger is going to get another stripe it either needs to get bigger or other stripes need to squeeze in…not to overuse the metaphor … but extra space doesn’t come out of nowhere.
Kanye isn’t just digging in his heels every time he insults his wife’s BF or makes a public announcement, he is chipping away at the relationships he has with his family at the same time. You can see it in Pete’s texts…Pete is seemingly open (although still quite sassily) to making a pivot and every message isn’t another invisible stripe but rather an extra straw on a camel’s back (metaphor mix alert).
As I settle and nest and think about what I am looking for out of the day to day (Yup, introspection from last week don’t go away in seven days folks), I forgot that when we double down on something we are taking time and energy away from something else…usually spontaneity.
If I double down on planning, I am taking time and energy away from the unplanned fun: the last-minute trip because a friend mentioned a cool concert close-by, the date night that lasts 5 hours when you planned for 1, the night out with your cousin's friends when you thought it was just going to be two of you getting a beer (20s-30s men shooting the s**t is the same in every language, may I add).
But what’s the balance between the unplanned fun and the planning that needs to happen so you can DO things (AKA: reservations to the most popular restaurants that I’ve yet to make)?
That’s a new lesson I want to learn and I think this is a good city to do that.
It’s like the running joke here that people from Buenos Aires are notoriously late to things.
Times are considered more or less flexible from my experience. But it’s not because of bad planning.
It’s because if a dinner, lunch, meeting, activity, etc., is going well, Portenos (people from BA) have no problem making a calculated decision to stay…knowing they will need to deal with the consequences later. And they don’t mind.
Good moments are rare, so whether you are Kanye or Pete maybe it’s important to let the stripes come and go as long as you don’t forget you’re a tiger and forget what tigers do.