All These Years

How long is a year, really? Logically speaking, the question answers itself. A year is a year. 365 days, 52 weeks, a trip around the sun; a year. But a year measured in life passes very differently for each of us. As example, newlyweds may describe their first year as a blur of new sex; while a couple ten years past nuptials will see each of those years marked with more enduring and less volatile tides. Or, a year in prison measured against one spent in luxury will stretch a thousand times past, each miserable day a year of its own.

Yet, the question remains. How long is the year? For most, the answer comes the morning after you went to bed as a 12 year-old and woke at 50. It is when waiting to live your life that life happens and, if you aren’t careful, passes by you. Each year passed towards the unknown end of your days is shorter through no fault of the sun’s, but of wasted life itself. Unheeded advice, untasted fruit and experiences untaken and left on the table all chip away from the robust flesh of living, leaving only brittle bones. The old are fond of saying that youth is wasted on the young, not because they begrudge the youth of time, but rather because they have so little to lose besides another day of life they are no longer willing to waste.

In your years, you can do much or little…such is the prerogative of each. But what you do must be measured against all the others in your life and reconciled with what you hoped to do. Each year is its own debt paid; for, whatever you do with it, you’ve traded that time in your life for it and can never get it back.

I’ve wasted much in my life. Money, love, effort…and precious time. I have awoke from a dreamless sleep of many years months to find that they were gone and I was left with nothing to show but trinkets and crumbs. Lamenting lost time is as useless as losing the time itself, but it is the curse of Eden to regret, and I have certainly done my share. The past year; however, has not been wasted in the least.

The past year has been marked by growth and change; both my own and that at least partially influenced by my counsel. So much has happened; things begun, things finished and those delicious things that live and grow still at its end. Mostly though, it’s been about things accomplished. I’ve rarely….no, never had a year in which I felt like I got so much done. Looking back, I wish for other things, projects, to be completed, but that is more than balanced by what I did finish. Of course, none of this happened in a vacuum, so I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge what I did through others or those who embraced my visions and carried them to fruition. They are the true measure of my year, and I will always hold them special and sacred.

Stephen King writes in Eyes of the Dragon, “I think that real friendship always makes us feel such sweet gratitude, because the world almost always seems like a very hard desert, and the flowers that grow there seem to grow against such high odds.” So, true as it is that I’ve written the ending to a happy and fruitful chapter in my story, it is pleasing to know that this one will never truly end. Good works endure, good memories fade without vanishing, and the love of friends only multiplies with years beyond the forge.

So, how long is a year? If lived well, it can last your whole life.

Many people on both sides of the fence would gasp in horror at the mention of Tim Russert and George Carlin in the same breath, but at a time when we mark the passing of these iconic personalities within weeks of one another, I have to smile at what Heaven must be like today. While they held rather different audiences in daylight, Russert and Carlin both made careers from asking really hard questions that the unwashed didn’t even know they wanted answered until put before us. They took no prisoners, took no bullshit and absolutely refused to take no for an answer…at least not without one more try. Pop culture and politics is forever changed with their passing, and I miss them already for their wisdom and the rarity of their type.

Do good things with the week to come, learn something new and be safe.

Has anyone seen my friend George?

While George Carlin’s most famous routine was about the seven words you couldn’t say on television, his enduring legacy was for inverting the language we used every day. He insisted that we get in the plane, not on it. He wondered if flight attendants were speaking English. And, he declared that the planet is fine, it’s the people who are…well, insert one the forbidden words here.

George Carlin died on Sunday at the age of 71 as probably the most influential and revered comic of the 20^th century. From his first appearances on the Ed Sullivan show, during what he called “eight or nine years of what essentially were the extended 1950’s” he gave his audience no choice but to listen, if for no other reason than to wonder what he would say next. After growing a beard and a reputation for squashing taboo for sport, Carlin landed in such historic places as the first episode of Saturday Night Live (1975) and the United States Supreme Court. Such was the pioneer he was…by his own admission finding the lines just to deliberately cross them; over and over again.

Carlin’s art, and it is art, was weaving a coarse quilt of anti-bullshit so tightly that none could penetrate, even that which we generate from the inside. No one was safe: eight presidents, the media, athletes and Tippy the farting dog were all favorite targets of maybe this last of pure situational comics. See, George didn’t need a funny story to make you laugh. He instead held that which you held sacred and without humor up to his light and spun it until you snorted in spite of yourself.

In his later years, George turned more cynical and less funny, progressing to a point that some would call just plain angry. But he never lost the edge that separated real from pure mockery, and his knack was spreading that as wide as possible to cultivate the obscure humor in what to the untrained and unanointed looked like just dirt.

His career spanned five decades and included 11 feature films and three bestselling books in addition to his countless albums, discs and TV specials. He will be most remembered; however for his riotous stage shows which usually sold all their seats, but left people on the floor in tears.

George Carlin lamented on stage in 1973 “Jeez, I hope I don’t die. By the way, you’re all going to die. Didn’t mean to remind you, but it is on your schedule” He went further to speculate on the afterlife, saying dying “should be sorta fun..the next big adventure. We’re going to find out where we’re gonna go” I am certain George is somewhere surrounded by people who cannot stop laughing.

For seven words you can and will say anywhere from now on, try these:

George, we are going to miss you.

BENDING THE LIGHT

Webster’s defines a prism as “a medium that distorts, slants or colors whatever is viewed through it.” Anyone who has ever held one knows that ordinary white light passed through a prism will break into the individual colors of the spectrum. Depending on how you hold it in the light, the color bands will be wide or narrow, fuzzy or distinct. At more acute angles to the source, the colors are crisper, more defined. But hold it obtusely and the lines of transitions become blurred.

Perspective is like the colors from a prism—the closer you are to a problem, the clearer and more narrow the lines of thought issuing towards the solution. But each step away makes it less defined; more subtle and open to interpretation. Or misinterpretation. Or freaking out.

There is no entry in Webster’s for “freaking out”, as much as our culture does it. We freak out about love (Does she want me?). About money (Is this enough?). About work (Am I good enough?). About the unknown. My definition of freaking out is the complete loss of rational thought about a single event based on a single, often skewed perspective. Whatever it’s about, it is usually groundless, almost always unwarranted and doesn’t make anything any better. Unless, of course, it helps you find perspective.

High handed as I may sound, I am not immune to the occasional bout of freak out. Lately, I’ve worried if I’m really good enough to do the things I’ve been entrusted to do, or if I’ll even make it far enough to prove that I am. Seems like the times when you least need a horror story about an experience you’re preparing to have, someone sends you theirs. Recently, I heard a story about someone else’s journey through the place I’m getting ready to go that made Freddy Kruger sound like the Easter Bunny. I took from this tale the knowledge that the totality of my dream rests on a knife’s edge and is beyond my control. Well, when the story was over, the freak out began. It seemed that the culmination of my career could be undone with the wrong word or a single failed test, and I slowly began losing it. I was in the process of unraveling to my newest friend when she quite forcefully said “Stop it.” Her tone was enough to give me pause, and she continued.

She told me a story of a friend of hers who had a dream not unlike mine with the same sort of conditional testing before he was allowed to begin. During this quest, she said, it was found that he had a serious medical problem for which the solution was life-changing surgery. Here I am convinced that the worst possible thing would be to not get my job, and this poor guy went for weeks wondering if he would even survive.

That’s where I got it, and the bent light was straight once again.

Our lives are driven, governed even, by a succession of triumphs and failures; the triumphs fleeting and the failures potentially devastating. As we move closer to the sources of our happiness, the lines between success and defeat become sharp as the knife on whose blade our illusions of that happiness rest. But, moving away, far enough away to see the big picture, we can appreciate the subtleties or our achievement enough to appreciate the degrees of accomplishment where true joy lives. Often, whatever is as bad as you can imagine in this moment was only the front door to someone else’s walk through hell, yet they survived, and so will you.

By the way, the guy—my unexpected source of perspective—did just fine. He’s gone on to live a wonderful life full of good friends and family. As was his desire, his destiny, and his life.

Too many times we distort our own light, trying to filter it too narrowly through skewed notions of what our happiness is. It is only when we step back and allow the lines between joy and despair to fade that in the spaces between we find where life is really lived.

A bittersweet week comes before me. I have three more days at work before I take about 10 days off in preparation for starting the new job. On the one hand, I’m so excited (and anxious) about the adventure I’m looking forward to, but I really do hate leaving where I am. It’s not fear of the unknown or some weird reverse of the “grass-is-greener” adage at all, but really…I’m just going to miss what I am doing and the people I work with. We’ve done so much good together in the past year that walking away now almost feels like leaving a story incomplete.

After the last goodbye on Wednesday, I’m headed to the beach for a few days to do nothing. At least, that’s my plan. Really looking forward to a little downtime before beginning the next chapter.

Do good things with the week to come, learn something new and be safe.

Eyes Wide Open

Probably the most common reasons that endeavors great or small end in failure is not our inability to achieve the goal, but rather the unwillingness to set a reasonable goal in the first place. Had man tried to land the very first airplane on the moon, we likely would still be trying to find our way there. Instead, we first learned to fly, moving in delicate baby steps towards the Sea of Tranquility. Life is about the same small steps, each representing a single attainable goal in a series of small victories on the way to the prize of your choosing. With so much in life today marked as disposable, we have been lulled by savvy marketing into the belief that anything is worth trying, and equally worth throwing away if you don’t figure it out on the first try.

Two of our greatest challenges come to mind when I think of attainable goals and the utter failure of man to recognize them: marriage and careers.

After we’d been married about two years, my wife asked me “Did you ever think you’d be this happy?”

Quite directly, I said “Yes. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have done it” Comparatively speaking, I waited a long time to get married, mostly because I knew I wouldn’t have been any good at it beforehand. I’ve loved and been loved by some amazing women, but I was never willing to put someone ahead of my dreams for myself and they were never willing to come in second. With my wife, the timing and our place in each other’s lives was perfect, and there was no doubt we belonged together. But we made that choice as informed, experienced adults; not starry-eyed kids in a fantasy or just tired of being alone. Marriage is a fairy tale, but it’s also a job. A big, rewarding and often tough job; not for the weak and not for everyone. There is an oft-quoted statistic that says over half of all U.S. marriages end in divorce. This number is based on faulty account and is misleading (the actual figure is closer to 41% as of 2005). One number that is true and shockingly large: 60% of all marriages that do end in divorce do so within the first 10 years. (HURLEY, 2005) Clear evidence that lots of couples don’t pay attention to the signs and advice given them along the way…a true lover’s leap.

And then there’s the other kind of job…work. Your career. As most faithful readers know, I will soon set out on my next professional adventure and while I’m a little nervous, I know clearly what I’m getting myself into. One of my younger friends said to me the other day “You’re going to be flying again?”

I said yes.

“That is so cool”

While I’d have to agree with him, the path I’ve chosen is about so much more, and the road to get here has been rough and rocky, littered with bad decisions and unheeded advice. Nonetheless, it has gotten me to the same place as a lot of people: a dream. Dreams; however, come in the night but must be realized in daylight, where they often fall short of everyone’s hopes. So many, too many, set their sights on their “dream job” having no idea what it really is or the foggiest notion of how to do it. These are the same people that often find themselves unhappy in careers they never intended and with no direction of escape. They are the saddest of all.

Whether it is of love or money, it is imperative to believe that you can achieve anything. Our nation was built by hands that believed they had no limits. But those hands belonged to men and women who also had no aversion to hard work and no illusions how much it would take to make their nocturnal dreams into waking reality.

Dream; but dream of what could, and will, be real.

The news broke to the world on Monday of my impending departure from my current job and the new adventure that waits before me. I find I’m so excited I can barely hold a thought in my head, yet I’m still a little anxious to pull up my professional stakes yet again. But I can say, unequivocally, that the friends and colleagues I’ve come to know in the last year are some of the best, and their absence in my daily life will be remarkable. You guys rock, and I’ll miss you.

Do good things with the week to come, learn something new and be safe.