(This is an encore presentation)
Well, it’s that time of the year again.
It’s personal inventory time.
I do this every year, usually more than once, for my birthday and in the spring.
Since sometime in my early teens, I began to keep a journal. It’s a good way to monitor your movement through life. When it comes to personal inventory at birthday time, my entries have been varied.
There have been the “Oh My God? What have I accomplished? What is next?!!” times.
There have been the “What the f— was I thinking?!!!” times.
There have been the “Please God! Help me do or not do that again!” times. (More NOT do – Ha!)
Then, there have been the times when alcohol has been involved and I’ve found myself confessing and apologizing to the air around me for things going back to age 4. The journal entries for these times are particularly difficult to read because my handwriting has been clearly compromised. These particular “Come to Jesus” moments don’t really count I think.
This year I’m going in a different direction.
It’s decision time.
I’ve reached the conclusion that there are three ways I don’t want to leave this earth that I can actually control somehow.
I don’t want to die Fat, Incarcerated, or Toothless.
Yep. I know. Crazy, right? No. Not crazy at all. Think about it.
I cannot control severe illnesses or acts of nature or wars or terrorism or simply being at the wrong place at the wrong time and at the wrong end of whatever wrong happens at that moment.
I do feel like I can control my weight gains and losses, personal criminal acts, and dental care. It is definitely possible to be fat and incarcerated. Right now, you may be thinking, how can one be fat and toothless? It’s possible. I know as a result of all my recent dental visits to insure against the latter, there are plenty of already soft, fattening foods out there and plenty of others open to pureeing. My objective is to keep my teeth in my head and not on the nightstand while being svelte and free from jail at the same time.
I was born on a Friday the Thirteenth so whenever my birthday comes on one I pay closer attention. My other revelation moments generally come around Easter when spring and rebirth are all around us. These are the times I generally try to make some decisions that count. I have all the Friday birthdays mapped out until my 84th. I stopped there because anything after that will likely only be about the cake and limiting the drooling — the drooling guests that is — I’m planning to be quite the young octogenarian.
Listen, I’ve got no real complaints in the scheme of things. A lot of life is about perspective.
Some people complain about rain. I see it as a free car wash opportunity. Some people moan about traffic. I say either leave earlier, or Thank God you left at the exact right time to not have been involved in the accident that’s causing the traffic jam – plus a Plan B route to your destination is not an illegal thing to possess – I developed several after the fat cop kept closing Rock Creek Parkway right in front of me and before the designated time of 3:45 pm.
OF COURSE I WAS NOT ALWAYS LIKE THIS but that’s the beauty of getting older. You live and you learn – well, you should learn. Life is not really all that serious and when it ends what will you truly have in your hands? Maybe a morphine drip button if that happens to be the way you go…
A few years ago, I was in a very dark place. Having been fortunate enough to know unconditional love from my parents, the inevitable loss of both some years apart left me alone and wanting. A colleague told me after my dad died, “You will think you didn’t do enough, but you did.” She was right. I felt exactly that way. The truth is, in any situation, you do what you know to do at the time and you say you’d do things differently if you had the chance, but if you had it to do again, all you’d know to do is what you know at the time.
After that, I explored various suicide scenarios – just because my mind needed to plan something.
Suicide was NEVER REALLY AN OPTION for me because
1) I was raised in the Catholic church so to commit that mortal sin would defeat the purpose, since according to doctrine I’d be denied visitation privileges with the very persons I was missing and
2) I’m a punk. I don’t really do pain.
Beyond that, every final scene I imagined, some more comical than others, ended with some critical loss of bodily functions and a grotesquely distorted facial expression with me hearing my mom say,
“Well, that’s not very attractive.”
Once I had explored all possibilities, I turned the corner and decided not just to live, but to live with some panache. I became determined to see, touch, taste, visit, and experience things while I could still appreciate them. You hear so many stories of people who waited until they retired to do stuff and sometimes you find out they died before they could do anything, or were too feeble to enjoy it. I’m committed to not going out like that.
I’ve been fortunate enough to follow most of my dreams to date to fruition. Again, it’s just perspective. Not all my dreams have been big, but ALL OF THEM HAVE BEEN ABOUT BEING HAPPY.
It’s like the “when life gives you lemons make lemonade”* thing. Well, lemonade has its place, sure – but what makes me happy is instead of consuming all that proverbial sugar, I let my mind cut those damn lemons up into chunks, name them for some of those personal inventory DON’Ts (people, places, or things), and grind those suckers up in my mental garbage disposal. Try it. You will have a beautiful citrusy fragrance in your head and you will have eliminated some “wish I had punched you in the face” feelings on top of it. (Grinding lemons in the actual garbage disposal works at home too – in case you haven’t tried that either – very fragrant!)
So, that’s where this year’s decision finds its’ place. I don’t want my last view of life to be through bars, or looking down wondering where my feet went but I definitely DO want to be able to bite the last person I see in case the situation warrants it. Plus, God willing, I’ll be a candidate for admittance into Heaven where I’m sure there will be steak and I want to bring my own choppers.
*(This was written before the release of Beyonce’s Lemonade Video and has nothing to do with that.)