My Dad said something to me once that went along the lines of, " You spend the second twenty years of your life trying to get over the first twenty and the third twenty trying to get over the first forty. Now that I'm almost halfway into my third trimester I think I might finally understand what he was trying to say. A few days ago I came to the awareness that I've spent most of my adult life trying to stay out of peoples way, to not be noticed... like a ghost. Feeling even when I'm entering a place of business that I'm somehow bothering or inconveniencing them when I know in fact that without customers they wouldn't have a business. Always the diplomat, the comedian, being early (the problem with being punctual is nobody's there to appreciate it), avoiding conflict and telling people what they want to hear rather than what I really felt like saying to them. You know what happens when you become a good listener ? You hear a lot of boring, uninteresting stories (friends excluded, everybody needs an ear once in a while). I always seemed to feel like I was hiding something something even when I was telling the truth because when you finally do manage to be honest, people never forget it and usually take it as an personal assault on their character (We had a saying in baseball which seems appropriate, "Suck it up ya moe."). Speaking of honesty, how many people are truly honest with loved ones, friends and family? If you were my guess is you would no longer have either (and this is bad because...). People like to speak of this "unconditional love"... I've yet to see the universe that exists in. Even "bible believers" speak of God's unconditional love but if you don't believe in Jesus you'll roast and toast in H-E-double hockey sticks forever, how "unconditional" is that?... hang on here I need to go get my laundry out of the dryer or somebody I don't know in the building won't like me...
I didn't mean to get off on a rant on honesty or maybe I did...whatever, it's my blog. Even on this blog I find myself editing what I want to say to make sure it's "P C" enough even though hardly anyone reads it. The ancient Greek philosopher Thales said "Know Thyself", which it seems is a lifelong process. So here's to more of the third twenty being spent trying to recover from the first forty and possibly learning a little more honesty, humility and remaining exactly as I am because does anyone really change anyway... improve maybe. I didn't ask Dad, "Do you think we'll need to use the fourth twenty to get over the first sixty?"
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