If I am totally honest, I've come to the conclusion that their is no conclusion. Whether I am a product of the TV and movies that I have poured into my head over the past four decades or just flat out actor/artist crazy, or both, I existed for much of my life with the conception of reality as episodic. I don't know when exactly I woke up and I realized that most of the decisions I have made in my life where made with the insane misconception that in somewhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours and twenty minutes, the whole of any situation, whether comic or tragic, big or small, epic or minute, can and would be resolved. Basically, my life was nothing but episode after episode with their own story arcs, rising actions, climaxes, and denouements, repeated one after another. My decisions were based not on seeing my life as a whole, but with no more thought for the future than what would be the cheery ending at the bottom of this day's/week's/month's episode.
The pure irrationality of living life as if you are Arnold Drummond, or Ironsides, or Denise Cosby, or any one of the fading stars visiting Fantasy Island, has led me to bizarre and strange situations. I have carried with me exactly one friend from high school. Most of the rest, I have not seen since. I have carried one friend with me from college. Most of the rest, I have not seen since. Don't get me wrong. I have 500 friends from high school and college on Facebook, but when it comes down to it, I find it nothing but a false since of connection, like an expanded town gossip page from days of yore, when one's apple pie baking victory, out of town guests, and traveling more than forty miles from the center of town was written up by someone's elderly aunt who had nothing better to do that listen in on the party line. I do enjoy the successes and mourn the tragedies of these wonderful people who knew me during my formative years. I wish them all well and I have no intention of deleting that Facebook account anytime soon. I even send notes from time to time to some of the folks I have met along the way. But back to the point, because I have lived life as if I was the star or at least major supporting character in my own life's ABC Movie of the Week, I made decisions that led me not to make lasting friendships and to a walk away from phases of my life as if shutting a door and not looking back, even on the great and good times.
One day, I don't know when, I woke up, peeled my children's bananas, fixed our breakfasts, ate my eggs, drank my coffee, walked to the sink, looked out at the barn dominating our backyard view, and realized that though I had lip serviced the idea that "all my decisions have led me here", that I never really contemplated the real meaning. It sounds pretty obvious that we are all products of our decisions, but what struck me was the paradigm with which I applied to my reality. I stood there and looked back and my children, and thought of my wife, who was either already out at dance class or I was giving her a rare Monday sleep-in, and knew that for this happiness we had as a family to continue, I had to buy me a new paradigm.
In this past year of self-contemplation and goal setting, I seem to have found great areas of my life that needed strip mining and replanting in both a spiritual and physical sense. In the previous decade, I began shedding the baggage I carried, starting with the poisons I put in my body, mainly cigarettes and booze. The past six years have seen me struggle with the monkey I wish on no one's back: sugar (food in general). It was if I had stepped out of myself that morning and could
do that cool thing in sci-fi where the person stands in front of a holographic projection of a computer screen and moves pictures around, kind of like the Xbox Kinect now that I think about it. I saw that I had sorted my life into these episodes and movies and such. And there I was, commenting on my lack of self observation, eating humble pie because I was not quite as clever as I thought I was, and realized what a fecally gifted cranium I possessed. Maybe it was seeing my children's lives out in front of them, or maybe it was knowing what kind of life my wife deserves for always seeing the man I want to be when the man I am is not him.
Ogres are like onions. We all know that. I guess I am like a cake the size of a house. That cake is my life. It is not about anything but the little bites of fluffy cake and sweet frosting that see you to the end. Bad analogy. My life is like a box of chocolates . . . That is old and done. My life is a house. I build a little more on it every day. I am going to be able to leave it for my family and for future generations to be proud of or be a tar paper shack out in the holler. I have to make sure each stage is planned and execute with diligence and care lest it all fall down with me inside.
That morning I embraced who I had been. I looked at him and I loved him and I pitied him some. I forgave myself. I pulled him close to me and, then, I threw him out the door. That isn't me now. I am not cursed to the same mistakes. I can remake who I am and how I treat the world. Not only can I be the man my family wants and needs me to be, but I am already him. I am both the marble and the sculptor. I bought myself a new paradigm.
Months later, I am still on the journey, but I have seen changes in the way our family operates or the choices I make. It is the difference between checkers and chess. Life is chess but we are all taught to play checkers, it seems.
And for the record, Journey rocks. I watch the first season and a half of Glee because Kallie showed me the first episode when they sang a Journey song. It never lived up to that again, in my opinion. Others, even in my own household, would disagree. Here's the chorus:
Don't stop believin'
Hold on to that feelin'
Streetlight people
I am grateful for innocent children, eggs over medium, strong coffee, and Journey, among many other things.
