Maybe eight or 10 years ago, I was walking with my sister in Berkeley. We were walking from her Ford Escort wagon with the architecture nerd bumper stickers on it and the Taco Bell toys in it to the YMCA downtown, where we took a totally empowering kick-ass (ahem) boxing class together.
She is more than two years older than me, which at some point in our lives was a significant difference. It must have been around the time she'd just graduated from college and she said, "You know, when you're small you think you can or will do everything in the course of your life. Maybe you'll live in Africa, or Panama, and you'll go up on a blimp, and maybe you'll go up in space. You won't necssarily do anything in particular, but you can and might do everything. And then at some point, you realize that you won't or can't do everything. You pick some things you want to do, and you may not do the rest. And you realize that and accept it, and that's just the way it is."
At the time, I found this very shocking and upsetting--I don't even know that I really believed it was true yet. I've since realized that you do make some choices, and some choices you make render other things unlikely or impossible. Kind of. But the trick is to continually think of your life as a changeable entity, because you can always do something else. Maybe you can't do everything in the in the realm of possibility for human beings, but you always control your option to do something else that might make you very happy. (If the person who inspired this post is reading, then for god's sake, go find a place for yourself at a public art organization that moves you! I want to you to be happy. I want everyone to be happy!)
My sister also said to me one time, after she called her boss in San Francisco and announced that she wasn't coming in, not ever again (and then moved briefly to Alabama): "We always imagine the consequences of our actions are so dire. But it's really not always that serious."
It's not really that serious. It's not.
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2 comments:
Ok cute, Dubes. But your fact checker might be drunk or something. Did I say that stuff? I must have been sublimely, philosophically channeling Dad.
As for the boss, it was this guy in Oakland that I only worked for for one month, and he was such a jerk and it was no fun, so I quit and took that intensive summer school Russian class instead. All that happened after Alabama, but it was pretty empowering to quit just like that (although scary to do it). Are the consequences of our actions all that dire? Maybe sometimes they aren't. Maybe sometimes you think you will be hurting someone or screwing them over, but you actually aren't. Maybe better things are out there waiting, like discussing Russian literature at Jupiter over lunch.
Your sister is a very smart lady.
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