I don't want it to be summer. I need it to be summer.
It always seems to come right when you most desperately need it.
I was in the car with two of my friends and they started talking about how the other day one of their mutual friends had been driving and gesticulating while talking to the passenger and had broken the rear view mirror.
And I thought about it. Particularly because something I tend to say a lot is "life's always better with someone riding shotgun." And because driving is one of the things that I love, and something that keeps me sane, in a very weird way.
If you're anything like me and you occasionally think about the journey of life in automotive terms, then you'll understand why the 'rear view mirror' story started me on a spiral of thought.
Life without a rear view mirror is like life without anything in your trunk. You put your keys in the ignition and you drive. No baggage. The absence of hindsight would be a strangely blissful drive, in life terms. Nothing to look at but the open road ahead.
Rear view mirrors make things safer, though. You can keep an eye on what you've passed and can know what's coming before it hits you. They give you greater perspective.
Or at least I can hope so. Sometimes I want to smash it and just keep on driving.
This is being published soon in a campus magazine, which has revived my dream of actually publishing some of my writings some day in a book and has made me so simultaneously humbled, proud, and hopeful that I thought I'd re-post it.
*
airport thoughts
This is a melee. There is so much noise. It’s almost too much humanity to handle without headphones on. The old moccasin man in front of me is doing Sudoku in pen. There are babies gurgling, handhelds clicking, and plastic voices coming over the intercom.
I am angry. I guess that proves that I care.
There are few things I love more than traveling alone. There is a simple independence in it. You casually buy a sandwich and a bottle of water, sit at your leisure, casually keeping an eye on the time. You don’t have to talk to anyone or deal with anyone else’s crap. You’re going somewhere, getting away for a while, just you, yourself. You can probe the corners of your brain in the quiet. They fucked up your sandwich, it’s not what you ordered, but it still tastes just fine.
There are no outlets in this place.
A father is lovingly gazing at his son, a reminder that he is not alone, and, if he’s lucky, he may have a few more generations of remembrance than the rest of us. In our hope to leave our mark we leave our children, and we hope to god they will like us so they’ll tell the world about how great we were, or we thought we were.
I’m going somewhere today. I’m always going somewhere. But where am I really going?
We actually put thought into things like matching our bracelets with our headbands and shoes.
You can see the world in an airport. All types of people. The business executive taps away, the clefts in his forehead growing as you watch. The harangued parents sprint back and forth in some bizarre relay, handing off babies and bottles and clinky colorful toys. Restless leg gal jackhammers the ground in the hopes that she might be able to sink into it and hide for a while. You can read the sadness on some, and you wonder where they’ve been, where they’re coming from…and why they look so god damned exhausted with life. Give me your tired and your sick, your weary and your broken? They’re all here, lost in the limbo that an airport is; a junction between this place and the next, suspended somewhere between numbness, sterilized silver countertops and really ugly carpet.
You, just watching life froth and bubble in front of you, passing you by. Waiting for something to pick you up off the ground and take you somewhere new.
*
A friend posted this the other day and I thought I'd share it's beauty.
*
A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, he wordlessly picked up a very large empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls.
He then asked the students, if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.
The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls.
He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.
The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up the other spaces in the jar.
He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous 'yes.'
The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar, effectively filling the empty space between the sand.
The students laughed.
'Now,' said the professor, as the laughter subsided, 'I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things - family, children, health, passions.
Things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.
The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, house, and car. The sand is everything else --the small stuff.
If you put the sand into the jar first,' he continued, 'there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you.
So pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your partner out to dinner.
There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first -- the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.'
One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented.
The professor smiled.
'I'm glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there's always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend.'
