I’m not really used to stress being a thing I worry about. I get stressed as much as the next guy, but I have a tolerance for such things that comes in part from living in NYC and in sum from living with mother. Still, the events of the past year really have tested my tolerance for stress and definitely affected my taste for it. Wanna Get Away? I do wish those commercials would come back. As I find myself in the oft familiar position of doing far too much for far too little capital I am left to wonder if this is how it is going to be. I keep returning to that pivotal question I first heard in a movie As Good As it Gets back in the Paleozoic era of 1997, “What if this is as good as it gets?”
To quote one friend in my life, ‘Then it isn’t worth it.’ I keep believing and striving for things to be better—in my daily life, in my personal life, in my teaching life, in my writing life—often falling into the rhythms of old Melvin Udall who said, “So never, NEVER interrupt me, okay? Not if there’s a fire. Not even if you hear the sound of a thud from my home, and one week later, there’s a smell coming from there that can only be a decaying human body, and you have to hold a hanky to your face because the stench is so thick that you think you’re gonna faint – even then, don’t come knocking.”
I don’t want to become myopic or nearsighted or forget the amazing things in life that there are to enjoy or to miss a sunset or to miss my kids laughing or to forget what they heck I’m doing this all for. I don’t want to be the guy who leaves too soon and missed all the good stuff or the guy who did so little that he never let his best stuff bubble to the surface. I don’t want to be the guy who could have been great or the one who buried his head in the sand or let the work control his life or let his life control the work.
I want to be the balanced one. The one who believes. The one who comes out on top and knows that life isn’t zero sum but the sum of all things that you do and you don’t do and that were done to you. That guy isn’t angry or sad that he screwed up; he sees it as a moment of growth, a twist down the road or into and alley and back out again. That guy oozes ‘life is beautiful’ and deals with the bad stuff as he does the good. That guy isn’t real. But he’s in everyone I know—bits and pieces scattered across a sea of upturned faces all looking for a better tomorrow. Only, the forecast calls for rain.