Don’t concern yourself, dear reader, as I have no intention on being too sappy here. Just a couple thoughts:
For the past week or so, I’ve been focused on an anniversary coming up. No, not the wedding or anything near that important. It’s a date that marks my landing on the East Coast of this great country. The end of January 2015 will mark four years in a city far, far from my boyhood home. You see, I dragged my wife here with a glimmer in my eye and my head in the clouds, dreaming of the steps to take to make a better life. I wanted to go to law school, and I was aiming squarely for a school within the boundaries of the city where I now reside. A city 1800 miles away from my home, from everything I knew.
I had high hopes, big dreams, and zero fear. I was working through the last year of my undergrad, and was running headlong toward the American Dream. I was determined to fly unrestrained through my legal education, after which I was gonna hold this world by its coattails and shake the gold from it’s pockets. I know, I know, financial gain is one among the litany of wrong reasons to attempt such a foolhardy endeavor. Fear not, dear reader, as my morals are intact, the delusions of untapped wealth washed from my eyes. Very near the time to make the big leap, I became as frightened as ten-year-old girl in a busy biker bar on a Friday night.
Perspective is a funny thing. You see something far off in the distance, it always looks small enough to pick it up and put it in your pocket. As the time to apply for law school approached, I slowed as a runner slows to get a drink, and took another look. Perspective was no longer on my side. I was now standing at the base of an enormous monolith. Most specifically, the financial expense of what a law education required rolled over and over through my head (Roughly $150K). This and every other possible reason I could think of poured over me like a bucket of water, extinguishing the flames of fearlessness. The thought of the potential debt given my status as a man of a certain age, was overpowering. What the hell was I thinking?
Therefore: I am not, nor do I plan on, attending law school.
Which brings me to the point of this post. I got caught up earlier in the Thanksgiving week with a bit of a humbug bug, I had a couple of solid days, thinking to myself: Well here I am, four years in this joint, could’ve would’ve been graduating from law school but I chickened out. I’m not really any farther ahead than I was before I got here, or got this useless undergrad degree, or this crap job. Wallowing in self pity. It’s an ugly place to be.
I’ve been a bit down on myself lately, as I tend to equate my own level of success with what I see around me; not necessarily material things, but quality of life stuff: Apartment or House? 14 year old, sputtering Ford Focus or fairly new Mustang? But then I started finding a few things upon which to be thankful for: When we moved here, all I had to provide for the four of us was a part-time job. We didn’t even have a place to live. For the first six-or-so weeks of our existence here, I had a part-time job and a 65 mile commute each way because my wife’s sister had agreed to let us live in her unfurnished basement for a bit. I moved up to selling car parts full-time at a retail store to supplement my part-time income. Shortly after we landed an apartment where we could bring our “children”, two furry, spoiled, loving, Labradors. I got a better full-time job. We got a better apartment. My full-time job said we’d really like it if you quit your part-time job, here’s a pay raise equivalent to what they pay you. There’s certainly enough to be thankful for. Everybody has tough circumstances. We just tend not to see it. Or we try to ignore it.
When people post the really shitty parts of their lives on BookFace (or their blog, thanks for stickin’ with me), we roll our eyes and call them dramatic. When people display all their successes: We call them undeserving a-holes and avoid them like the plague. I challenge you to be really successful at something, and see how many people are cheering you on, and for how long. We don’t really want to see illustrations of life any better or worse than we’ve got it, but the human experience is really just the same for all of us in a lot of different ways. We all have the same range of emotions to work from: Joy, happiness, despair, exuberance, pain, grief. Which ones we experience are really just a matter of choice. Admittedly there are exceptions. But I made a choice: A couple days ago I decided that I needed to be more grateful. More thankful for the great opportunities that have been presented to me on a silver platter. I’m holding countless opportunities to do a great many things, all I have to decide is how much fear and uncertainty can I tolerate.
In order to experience a greater number of the good emotions, while minimizing the crappy ones, I’ve got to be more grateful. Being pissed off about one’s circumstances is a sure fire way to experience all the wrong emotions. More importantly, an attitude of gratitude might lead me to be a nicer person to hang out with, and lend to the introduction of better things to come.
I’ll keep ya posted.
-D.
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