When I get headaches, Tylenol and Advil doesn’t work for me. I drink caffeine and naturally medicate with it. And when I have PMS, I medicate with natural herbal remedies. As is often the case with any treatment, when you fix one ailment, you usually end up creating a whole new one. The caffeine clears up the headache but kills your stomach or gives you insomnia. The herbs help to ease the cramps but they give you a bad case of dry mouth and paranoia. That’s ironic.

In the movie Reality Bites, Winona Ryder’s character LeLaina, blows a job interview because the interviewer asks her to define “Irony”. She fumbles for the words, fully understanding the meaning but unable to articulate it. Later she meets up with Troy, her tortured, Gen X Love interest (played by the ever tragic yet fetchingly boyish Ethan Hawke who I have had a thing for eversince 1989 when he stood on the classroom desk in Dead Poet's Society, proclaiming, "Oh Captain, My Captain" to Robin Williams) and she tells him about the impossible question. "I mean really, how can you define Irony?" she asks. “It’s when the actual meaning is the complete opposite from the literal meaning.” Troy rattles off without hesitation.

Case in point. Troy and LaLaina have a constant antagonistic banter that implies their literal “distaste” for one another, but it really exposes their actual “attraction” to each other. When they finally come together and consummate their festering lust, Troy just up and disappears the next day without explanation. Clearly, he is going through some sort of existential crisis that he can’t communicate but all she knows in the heat of it is that he has abandoned her. Ultimately, she lets him go, he comes back, grovels, and professes his love over two Java Lattes and everyone lives happily ever after.

I’ve never been a fan of irony except for on the rare occasion when it works out in my favor. Something in me is very deliberate. You get glimpses of it on my blog rhetoric from time to time. I’m a truth seeker and it perplexes me when the actual truth doesn’t prevail. But here is where the Irony creeps in. Oftentimes when I get to the heart of the matter, I end up wishing I never knew it to begin with. In a way, it can ruin things for me. Ruin a perfect fantasy image I have in my head. Disappointment ensues. Does this happen to you too or is it just me??

Knowledge is power, that is true but it isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be. I'm reminded of the old sayings, "Ignorance is bliss" and "Be careful what you wish for" and maybe just maybe I'm starting to rethink all this honesty crap. In fact, screw the truth, let me have my unrealistic fantasies and daydreams. They keep me lot warmer and satisfied at night. In the movies, a man's spiraling existential confusion never lasts longer than 20 minutes. And in my head they are always as tragically hip and adorable as Ethan Hawke. That my friends, is Irony.