Category: General Musings

Answers, I have them all.

How to land that perfect job? Got that covered.
Troubled love life? Not a problem.
Is there a God? Get comfortable, this one could take a few minutes

Next time you’re at a bookstore, go to the self-help section. Count the number of books they have on making a new and improved self. So many answers, and most of them for 19.99 or less. And there has to be something to them, right?

The difficulty isn’t finding answers. Answers are cheap and plentiful. Truths comes in shades of grey, each nearly as valid as the last.

The tricky part is finding the right answers for you.

Our problem, as a society, is that we settle. We discover an answer on our own, read one in a book, or catch it on Oprah – and then we embrace it. If it’s a close enough fit for your life, it may even stay with you for a while.

Close enough, for me, isn’t good enough.

Because even if I find the right answer today, more likely than not, it won’t be the right answer for me next month or next year.

We evolve. Situations change. Self-discovery opens new possibilities. Answers, like life, must be malleable. Must be adaptable. For me, the only absolute is that there are none.

We are not always what we seem, and hardly ever what we dream.

– Peter Beagle, The Last Unicorn

There are three rooms (and two bathrooms) that my cats are not allowed in. My study, my bedroom, and my newly completed playroom.

Essentially, any room with a door.

When I move between rooms in my house, I am always opening and closing doors. It has become an art for me, drawing the door closed behind me and opening those in front of me with just enough force that it doesn't hit the wall. My fingers know the stained grain of the doors; their edges have gouged my hands, leaving marks and small scars.

I wonder, at times, if I go through life the same way. Opening doors in front of me, closing them behind. Who am I trying to protect? Myself?

Or the people waiting on the other side?

We write into the quiet, the great expanse of night, our fingers clacking on keys as we scratch out our thoughts and desires. We define ourselves in small quotable paragraphs, determined to prove ourselves in a form palatable yet sublime.

Exhibitionists, one and all, we are addicted to the art of exposure, bequeathed status in the the approval granted by the unseen horde, the eyes that watch our confessions, both titillating and mundane.

We are redeemed not by our actions but by our sentiments. We have been baptized in the font of ennui – enjoyed the soft possibilities of spring and endured the stark emptiness of winter. Our words are spun in spools of self, the act of creation becoming the art of re-imagining, re-defining, until we no longer write what we are, but are what we write.

The distance between asshole and prick is only a few inches.

—

Being honest comes in many flavors. The two types of honesty I am talking about today are amongst the harsher variety. You can be brutally truthful without being entirely offensive. The difference?

When she asks, “Do I look good in this?” and you say, “No. Try on the short pink dress instead.” You’re being an asshole.

When she asks, “Do I look good in this?” and you say, “Hell no. What makes you think you can pull something like that off?” You’re being a prick.

Do yourself a favor. When necessary, be the asshole – but avoid being the prick.

Some days I believe I am not capable of thinking clearly while stationary.

I need to move.

In feet or miles.

In truth or behind closed eyes.

As if the very act of movement is enough to create the momentum necessary to escape the mire of ordinary life. To slip free the moorings of my mind and think.

Movement as an expenditure of energy or conceptualized promise of change.

Movement as an idea, as an ideal.

Movement is my muse, my catalyst of hope.

Can you quantify a person? Can you reduce them to a base number? Are we more than our IQ, height, weight and salary?

Does the number of people you’ve slept with reveal something meaningful? Should we calculate our genetic disposition for getting cancer and live our lives accordingly? Am I a poor citizen if my gas mileage is well below the national average? Does the length of my hair tell you how well I do my job? If sleeping with a married person is immoral, does sleeping with two make you twice as bad? What about three?

Are there diminishing returns on guilt?

Do we choose our friends to be funny? Which is better – base humor, sarcasm, sweet laughter or devastating ridicule?

What of intelligence? Is clever better than smart? Intuitive better than astute?

Am I a better blogger if I write three times a week instead of two?

Is the worth of a person counted in the number of friends they have? Does the quality of friendship affect this number?

Does fucking around with more people increase your chance for satiation or simply make you more hungry?

Sometimes people just don’t add up.

Sometimes we’re more than the sum of our parts.

And sometimes it is just better not to count.

Imagine you are a single grain of sand in the palm of my hand.

Imagine you have taken everything about yourself, your smiles and insecurities, your dreams and shames, your needs and fears, and you have compressed them into a tiny particular of existence.

It’s easy.

Start with yourself, the YOU that is reading these words. This is your core. Now wrap your hopes around it, squeezing them down until they shrink and harden around the center. Now layer on your secrets, the ones you won’t even admit even to yourself. Apply steady pressure until they, too, harden. Next is the burden of responsibilities, the weight of other’s expectations. A heavy layer, it may take a bit longer to squeeze them down.

Do this with everything about yourself. Strip yourself bare and lay yourself over the tiny sphere you have created. Drape your desires along the surface like a funeral veil, wrap the limbs of allowance around its curves like an embrace. And when you think you have nothing left, place yourself inside and draw inward, continuously, until all that exists is this tiny bit of you.

A grain of sand.

In the palm of my hand.

Smile until you laugh; laugh until you cry; cry until you are free.

In my day-to-day life, I’m a nice guy who is easy to work with. I am intelligent, polite, and friendly. I listen well, I’m adept at finding compromise when issues reach an impasse, and I can work with just about anyone.

People like me.

But they don’t know me.

Oh, my other sides come out now and then. The edge in my voice when someone pushes too far. My refusal to back down when I know someone is clearly in the wrong (no matter how high up the food chain they are; I hate bullies).

And, of course, the occasional conversation with some of my colleagues. They’re not particularly predatorial, but…

—

The phone rang; I answered it without looking away from my screen. “Off-site team, how can I help you?”

“This is Laura in the NOC, I’ve got a ticket for you.” One of the NOC’s responsibilities is to route tickets to the different teams. I usually get one or two a day, but not often from the same NOC technician. This was the second day in a row that Laura had called me with a ticket.

“How come you never call just to say hi?” I finished the e-mail and hit the SEND button. Leaning back in my chair, I added, “It’s always, ‘I have a ticket for you.’ or, ‘Do you know they have an SLA with us?’. It’s never ‘how are you today?’ or ‘I just had to call and tell you how much I appreciate you.'”

She laughed, “How are you today? I want you to know how much I appreciate you. How are you feeling? How was the drive into the work? How was your weekend-“

“Okay, okay. What’s the ticket number?” She gave it to me, along with a few details on the issue. I thanked her and added, “You’re going to make this a habit, calling me. Best be careful.”

***

The next morning, sure enough, another call. It’s Laura again.

I smiled, “You just can’t keep away, can you?”