Why do I feel so darn entitled to great things? Today I have been thinking about how negative I have been lately. It was sometime during an old song called Alison Road by the Gin Blossoms. When it came on my Zune I started bobbing my head and sounding out the lyrics, it brought me back to my high school days when Steven Lowery and I used to dance around and sing at the top of our lungs. Everything just seemed so carefree and perfect in those days. It occurred to me at that moment that I have been taking life way to seriously. In fact I saw a patient today who despite having been told she now has metastatic cancer that has invaded her breast bone, is doing “quite well”. What the hell has happened to me? On my drive home tonight I began to evaluate some of my recent attitudes, and why I have become so darn negative? listening to this old song, I smiled with a deep old fashioned grin and it felt so good.
This week, partly why I am in a great mood is because I will be leaving to Seattle. I love this city, I love the way it smells, the way the city illuminates the sky at night, the Cascade mountains, it is like God personalized this city as one of the most beautiful on earth. Or maybe it is also an association, kind of like this song from my childhood. It brings me back to such a wonderful time in my life. I still remember all those moments. Even the small ones, and the big ones that would effect my life forever. Like the sent of my wife on our first date, and how sweet and beautiful she looked in that blue dress. God those were wonderful times. And I am aware of the hardships as well. In fact it was during those same times that I remember standing on my roof in Stockton one cold December night and wondering if that would be a good time to put and end to it by jumping off. But I figured it wasn’t high enough and I would only get hurt. I can’t imagine this, I had so much going for me at the time, I just felt so damn depressed. I lacked so much self confidence.
It is funny how all this beauty can be scarred by so much pain, yet the two exist I guess to compliment each other. I am blessed to live the life I live. The current situation that I find myself in just reminds me that this “IS” life. I wish every day I could step back and see the big picture.
An eastern philosopher once said that it is wise to contemplate death for five minutes every day. I think he is right. Although sometimes it is my contemplation of death that makes me so angry at life. Or angry at the lack of continuity, the idea that one could invest so much, in fact everything we have, to possibly throw it all away in the end. This I guess is where faith comes in. A belief in purpose, a belief that what we do today will effect our future outcome, weather for a one way ticket into eternal peace or I guess possibly damnation, at least there is some kind of finality. I am concerned at times that life will be like one of those bad movies that ends without resolution, I mean what is the point of that movie anyway? Doesn’t our hero have to learn something meaningful in the end? Isn’t this why we went to see the movie in the first place?
Either way, I need to complain less, and maybe today is the day to make a difference. In fact for anyone reading this who knows me, and I know there aren’t a whole lot of you. When you see me if you here me complain, please stop me. I give you my permission, in fact I am begging you as part of my 12 steps to peace and tranquility. Starting last week I have been going on a news fast (again), and despite not knowing till today that there was a big fire nearby I have been a better person. Less angry, less anxious and with infinitely more time to watch good TV like “so you think you can dance”. We all have our hidden passions, oh if I could only channel my inner Fred Astaire.