I hit one of those milestones where I've heard you're supposed to take stock of your life. While I can't put the brakes on this aging thing, I still refuse to grow up. Hopefully, though, I'm a bit smarter than I used to be. These little pearls of wisdom apply to me. They may not apply to you. Some days they don't apply to me, either.
Let it go. There are a million things out there that seem poised to take me down at any given moment. A car nearly takes out my cycling self on my way to work. Cucumber beetles efficiently decimate my seedlings. The cat destroys the bedspread. Friendships that I thought were solid gradually evaporate. I could dwell on any of these. I was a really good dweller for a while, till I realized I was dwelling myself into a hole that I was no longer capable of climbing out of. I had to establish time limits for life's hazards that I could not control: five to ten minutes for the little stuff, up to a day for the big. Let the minutes tick by, take a breath and keep moving. So much that immediately seems so important just isn't after its allotted time has passed.
Life is a series of choices. This phrase ran through my mind pretty often a few years back when I felt like I was surrounded by a small chorus of malcontents. The litany of woes about roommates, work and finances was familiar because it'd once been mine. While there will always be forces at work in the universe that we'll never sway, there's a whole lot out there that's completely dependent on the decisions we make. In making a choice, we have to accept both the responsibilities and the consequences and it's usually easier to throw up our hands in defeat. When eight years of house-sharing had run its course, I was fortunate to have met someone younger than me who had bought his own place. This was a new possibility and I embraced it. "I'm buying a house." Money was squirreled away, time for construction passed. I had my house. For a long while I'd had these daydreams of going to Ireland. I thought it was a place that I
had to go to, though I had no idea why. But I didn't go. For fifteen years. Till the Friday afternoon I got online at the end of the work day and bought a plane ticket. I announced to my co-workers on Monday, "I'm going to Ireland." And I did. That was followed by "I'm going to Australia." "I'm going to New York for the weekend." "I'm going to visit some friends in Europe." Some of these plans sound impossible to people I know, but the choices I make leading up to them seem to make them possible for me. And saying them out loud helps, too. My plans are made more real when spoken aloud and ultimately I get to say things like, "I'm in the passport control line at Heathrow."
The world is a really big place with lots of stuff in it. Get out and explore. As much as I treasure my home, I relish the new. In my town I try to deliberately ride down streets that I've never been on, maybe trying to make up for all those streets I skipped over as a kid, all those blank spaces on the map. I'm more likely now to find myself in unfamiliar territory on purpose, like at a holiday fair at a French catholic school or a junior nordic team progressive xc ski dinner in a mountain town. In both cases, I am the outsider and it's great. Life is for experiencing.
I am responsible for my own happiness. Depending on anyone else to provide it for me will not end well. This one probably took the longest to sink in. As an only child, I have always been self-reliant, but I went through some periods of extreme neediness, even if I tried to hide it. Relying on others to ensure my well-being just set everyone up for failure. Now I've likely pushed things to the opposite end of the spectrum, but I'm damn good at looking after myself.
If you ever get a chance to meet those who inspire you, do it. Say thank you. You won't regret it. If I'd had the nerve or had the knowledge that it was possible, I could have thanked Edward Gorey and Kurt Vonnegut. I missed my chance. I won't let that happen again.
Find what makes you happy and embrace it. And be prepared to move on from it when it no longer brings you joy. Some of my current predilections were established in childhood: books of all kinds, music, the natural world, good foods. Others have come into my life as I found myself in new surroundings with new influences. A few years ago I started racing my mountain bike on a team and I loved it. I never would have thought I'd find myself competing in sport. That was never a part of my life while I was growing up. But I was surrounded by my new friends on bikes and I was quite content. And then I stopped. My friends were moving away, some were turning into real grownups and starting families and the self confidence I'd managed to develop on a bike rapidly disappeared without explanation. Riding became a sometimes frightening chore and I felt guilty for ages. And then I finally excused myself. There was no sane reason to continue to do something that made me anything other than happy. I found new things. I started to explore cities near and far. I developed a taste for British television. This past weekend I spent hours watching Comicon panels online. And I took my mountain bike out to the mountains for the first time in a year. I didn't do it out of a sense of obligation. I just wanted to see if it made me happy. It did. As long as that remains true, I'll find a place for it between Doctor Who and weeding the garden.
"When things are going really well, be sure to notice it." That's a paraphrased quote from Kurt Vonnegut's
Timequake which I first read not long after I moved out to Colorado. He was quoting his uncle Alex who encouraged him to appreciate the perfection of small moments. I don't know if I absorbed the advice the first time around, but I certainly took it to heart in the long run. It probably kicked in when all the big things in life were going so terribly wrong. Relationships turned sour, home became a place I couldn't stand to be and I didn't see a way to fix a single thing. When I finally crawled out from under the weight of all that, I started paying more attention to the little things. A praying mantis swaying on a vine. Giggling like an idiot in the garden when Amanda Palmer's "Vegemite" song comes up on my ipod. The plastic flamingos that are
still in the retention pond on Berthoud Pass. Fireflies in a valley where they just shouldn't be. The ridiculous blue of a hydrangea on a Boston street. Falling onto sun-dried sheets. A Cure song on the radio that I haven't heard in years. A dill sauce/poached egg/tomato/chard/english muffin combination that made me exclaim out loud (tonight's winning dinner experiment). My best moments are definitely not for most people. For most people they'd be completely meaningless. But, for me, they are sometimes everything.
"If this isn't nice, what is?" Thank you Kurt's uncle Alex, for the question I get to ask myself at least once a day.
(P.S. - If this all sounds a bit Pollyanna-ish, keep in mind that most of these revelations came after a whole lot of dark days. And I'm not foolish enough to think that those are over for good. This is just what's letting me get by for now and if it's slightly useful to anyone else, that's a bonus.)
