Nostalgia

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Living in a Van down by the River

It’s Open Mic Night for motivational speakers.  I’m up…

Mission statements are lame.  So dumb.  Glorified BS.  They don’t motivate me whatsoever.  I remember in 8th grade our middle school bought a big banner with our new official mission statement on it and posted it near the main office.  To mock the concept, I memorized it and quoted it as fast as I could like that Micro Machines guy from the ‘80’s, every day as I walked to lunch with Mrs. Ray’s English class.

Ultimately what every mission statement boils down to is this: “I will do my best to please The Man, therefore The Establishment and The System, and by successfully doing so, ultimately, I will please Society.”

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.  That’s just how life works.  Simple American reality.  It’s that mindset that helps a random group of people find a focus that will keep them unified and motivated.

I don’t need a lofty mission statement.  Just tell me the rules.  Tell me the expectations.  Give me a chance to learn the culture.  Then once I fit in, I can focus on utilizing my actual talents and skills in order to show my worth in that society, in addition to getting the job done.  That makes me an individual, despite having to confirm to the norm.

The Man is good.  Thank God for the man.  He gives me the opportunity to make money without having to depend on starting my own business and having to keep up with all that overheard and stress.  Until I can find a way to make a good living off of this website or end up writing a successful book, I depend on The Man.

I like The Man.  But I am not The Man.

The Establishment and The System are great too.  They are the structure to my means of earning a living.  If The Establishment or The System only allows me to wear jeans on Friday but not Monday through Thursday, then I will go along with that silly Simon Says game.  Individuality has its place, but rocking the boat outside of a moral issue isn’t cool.

And Society.  The good with the bad.  Enough capable people these days are choosing not to reach their full potential, which provides an opportunity for an average guy like to me step in and become qualified for a role in society that I wouldn’t normally be eligible for.

Which gives me new experience.  Which earns me new skills.

And for those in society who are the overachievers, well, they become my role models.  I watch every move they make so I become like them.  So, yeah, society is a good thing too.

I should become a motivational speaker and take my “No BS Mission Statement” idea to the road.  Power point presentations.  Laser pointers.  Wearing a suit jacket with jeans on the last day of the conference.  I can see it now…  (Looks up, turning head towards Stage Left with glazed over eyes, hands clasped together up to chest, while a harp-like sound effect begins.)

“Try to picture the man to always have an open hand and see him as a giving tree.  See him as matter, matter of fact he’s not a beast.  No, not the devil either.  Always a good dead doer.  And it’s laughter that we’re making after all.”

– “Live High” by Jason Mraz

Related Posts by the Same Author:

The Modern Day Tortoise  http://wp.me/pxqBU-kP

Life is Just Simply Showing Up  http://wp.me/pxqBU-kf

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Russian Roulette with a Made in China Cap Gun

I’ve heard the phrase “we’re not promised tomorrow” enough throughout my lifetime that it’s become a cliché. And what else can I really do to truly “live my life” and “make the most of it”? My issue is that I’m too aware of how short and precious life is.

During the summer of 1998, right before my senior year of high school, I spent a few weeks at a music camp in which us kids stayed overnight in the dorms of the college at Snead State in Gadsden, AL. I wasn’t the kind of kid who looked for trouble when not supervised. So instead of sneaking out at night, one of the things us teenage boys did in that dorm was play Russian Roulette, with a toy cap gun that was made in China.

Because, what else would we do?

In other words, the seven of us staying in that hall gathered in one room around a toy gun that we loaded with its accompanying ammunition, the equivalent of Snap and Pops. It had a barrel just like a real gun and we would only place one “bullet” in at a time. Meaning that there was only a one-in-six chance that the toy gun would make a big “POP!” when the trigger was pulled.

We all took a turn, passing the toy gun to the next guy after we pressed it to our own temple and pulled the trigger. If it was just a “blank”, we stayed in the game. If it went off, we were out.

It was a very entertaining game. Actually addicting.

But at the same time, it made us nervous. Our hearts would speed up in the anticipation. All over a popping sound from a toy gun bought at a gas station.

Just a dumb game we played that summer. But for me, it brought some reality to the fact of how true that analogy is in every day life. I do everything possible to eat and drink healthy, to exercise regularly, and to reduce stress. Preventing disease and cancer is a lifestyle to me.

Yet, as people who smoke cigarettes and who regularly eat fast food and who don’t make an effort to exercise daily all tell me, “we all gotta go sometime”.

There are still car accidents. There are still those random deaths like an unexpected brain aneurisms, and I don’t even know that that is.

I am completely over-aware that every morning I wake up, it’s a game of Russian roulette. Maybe not a one-in-six chance of life ending. Maybe more like one-in-a-half-a-million.

But to me, I’m only alive another day because God let it happen. So really, it’s not a matter of any chances. Not one-in-an-anything.

And that truth is one of the most sobering, frightful, and yet grace-filled thoughts I can think of.

 

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The Nickbob Ability Test

 

In the spring of 1992 in 5th grade, I decided to make recess more interesting during our “free play” days outside on the playground by inventing a secret society.  I would recruit 1 to 4 of my friends to take the Nickbob Ability Test during each P.E. class.  It was a combination of physical skill, physical agility, and artistic effort:

Physical Skill: With hula hoops laid out flat strategically on the asphalt, the recruits had to throw rocks from a certain distance and land them in the hula hoops.  There were five levels of difficulty they had to complete to make it to the Physical Agility portion.

 

Physical Agility: Using my friend Michael Brooks’s stopwatch, I would time the recruits as they ran through the playground.  They had to make it through the “obstacle course” within a minute and 45 seconds.  Then they could finish the last portion of the Nickbob Ability Test, the Artistic Effort portion.

 

The Artistic Effort portion simply meant the recruits had to draw and color a picture of themselves and give it to me.  I kept them as a collection of those who passed the Nickbob Ability Test.

 

All together there were about 30 of my classmates who participated.  I know for a fact that the following people took and passed it:  Brian Winkles, Amanda Duckett, Meg Guice, Susan Johnson, Alex Igou, Jenny McElroy, Michael Brooks, and Jonathan Grupp.

 

The few.  The proud.  The… Nickbob Ability Test Takers?…

 

 

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Dr. Deja Vu: The Scenic Route

If I could go back in time and speak to the version of myself from ten years ago, I would give myself “good advice”. About which college to go to, what to major in, what hobbies to take up, and where to live after I graduate college. About what to say to people and what not to say. There are a lot of things I would tell myself to do differently. So that I could become the best me.

But then I would be a much different person today. In essence, I wouldn’t be me. Though I would have life figured out, it wouldn’t be my life.

From 1995 to 2006, I spent hundreds of hours writing and recording and performing music. All that time, it seems all I really did was keep myself entertained. At the surface, it led to nothing lasting.

But writing hundreds of songs made it easy for me to write for this website. It took an old hobby to make a new one.

If I went back to myself ten years ago and told myself to take up an interest in daily creative writing (instead of music) so I could eventually have a website that a small corner of the world reads, the younger version of myself probably wouldn’t have been very motivated.

Life is made up of countless bland surprises that end up shaping who we are.  The ordinary turns into the exciting.

And of course my musical past is only one minor detail in the strand of events that brings me to my present day.  But without it,  I wouldn’t have moved to Nashville to pursue a musical career and a year later met my wife.

So what’s the best advice I can give myself today? Don’t go back in time and give yourself advice. It would only mess up everything. Not help it.

As much as I try to structure and plan out my life, it has ended up being something slightly different instead. Instead of taking the interstate, by instinct I end up on the scenic route every time. Capturing my current thoughts and perspectives in my writings which become like snapshots. Scenic route snapshots.

“And when I look behind on all my younger times, I’ll have to thank the wrongs that led me to a love so strong.” – “Perfectly Lonely” by John Mayer

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Life’s Too Short: The Sad Truth that the Past is an Imaginary Place We Can Never Return To

 

About a year ago I was watching American Idol and Simon was interrogating one of the male contestants on why he wants to become a professional singer. The man explained he has a wife and a kid and he wants to be sure they’re taken care of financially. Simon asked the man again, “I get that, but WHY do you want to be a singer?” The man again explained it was because he has a wife and a kid… then Simon (who was obviously looking for an answer involving the man’s passion for music, etc.) cut him off with, “I get that, just sing for us.”

We focus so much on “right now”. Chances are, you’re never going to have enough money. Because once you do, you’re going to buy a bigger house or find a new way to get yourself in debt. Money is never enough.

 

Chances are, you’re never going to have enough time. America has set so much pressure on its people to be thin and in shape, yet it remains one of the most overweight countries in the world. We’re too busy to eat the right foods and to exercise, so instead of making time to be healthy, 74% of the population is overweight but carries the heavy burden of wanting to look like Jennifer Anniston or Brad Pitt, two people who are paid to make time to live healthy lifestyles. So obviously if we as a nation don’t have enough time to be healthy, we’re never going to have enough time.

Maybe I’m weird for not questioning the meaning life, but it’s never really been an issue for me. I’ve just always kind of known. I’ve understood since the age of six that this life is barely a speck of dust in comparison to the life after this. I’ve understood that God has blessed us with friends and family and we need to value them like the precious a gift they are. I’ve understood, more importantly, that God loves us and what it really comes down to our relationship with Him.  Even that goes back to loving people.

 

I subscribe to a magazine called Details. The thing I like most about it is its unique, random, and yet relevant articles. I realize as someone who earned a degree in English that quotes are only supposed to be a few lines, but for this I will cheat:

“…I climbed eagerly abroad this one-way rocket to Death in Adulthood and left the planet of my childhood forever in starry wake. I know this. My grandparents, my boyhood bedroom furniture… I will never see those or a million things again. And yet, lurking somewhere in the back of my mind is the unshakable, even foundational knowledge- for which certainty is too conscious a term- that at some unspecified future date, by unspecified means, I will return to those people and those locales. That I am going back. No, that’s false. The delusion is not really that I believe, or trust, that I will be returning one day to the planet of childhood…”
– an excerpt from “Time Bandits” by Michael Chabon

my Italian grandfather, Albert Metallo

Only a few weeks after I got married last July, my Italian grandfather died. He is the only one of my grandparents I have lost. Only second to my dad, he had the most influence on me as far as what it means to be a man. I know a lot of the reason I randomly talk to strangers in public is because of him. He always did it. I learned from him that much heaven can be found in spending hours working in a garden and then being able to enjoy the beauty of it. (Even though I don’t yet have a house with a yard.) It was because of his decision to move from Buffalo, NY to Fort Payne, AL in 1973 that I am alive. Otherwise my parents wouldn’t have met.

Like that article reminds me, all those weekends I spent at his house in the late ‘80’s and early ‘90’s as a kid are only now a memory. He would push me and my sister down the hill in his front yard in barrels. Then when we got too dizzy, he would get in the barrel and make us push him down the hill. We would do that for hours it seemed.

Then he would take us to Burger King for lunch. We would sit next to the window right by the drive-thru and he would make funny faces at the people waiting in the drive-thru. It was hilarious to see a man in his sixties being so goofy in public.

 

We would go back to his house and he would watch taped professional wrestling from the night before (WWF- Ric Flair, Randy Savage, Vince McMahon… the whole gang) and we would get out the toys (which were Styrofoam blocks). After about 15 minutes of my sister and me playing, and him watching wrestling, he pick up some of our Styrofoam blocks and throw them at our heads. Which would start an all out war in the living room. Then we would sneeze for 15 minutes afterwards from all the dust in the air from those blocks.

He had a bathroom closet full of nothing but bars of soap. And a freezer full of freezer-burnt TV dinners and ice cream bars, which were a treat to us. He wore a flannel shirt, navy pants, and black shoes no matter the occasion. Except for my sister’s wedding, which he wore a tux and sunglasses. He really looked like he was part of the mafia.

And all these strange and funny memories make up who he was to me. There is a major importance to “showing up to life”. He definitely did that. He was always there for every family get-together and would look for an excuse to visit our family, like bringing over a junky knick-knack he bought at a yard sale the weekend before. He knew what life was really about.

 

I was watching my favorite movie, Garden State, recently and though I’ve seen it probably at least ten times, I heard (and finally processed) what is one of the major themes of the movie:

“You know that point in your life when you realize that the house that you grew up in isn’t really your home anymore? All of the sudden even though you have some where you can put your stuff that idea of home is gone.
…It just sort of happens one day one day and it’s just gone. And you can never get it back. It’s like you get homesick for a place that doesn’t exist. I mean it’s like this rite of passage, you know. You won’t have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it’s like a cycle or something. I miss the idea of it. Maybe that’s all family really is. A group of people who miss the same imaginary place.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Y2snCNXT2k

I’ll always have that sense of “home” when I think of my grandfather. I still have a lot of family and friends whom I still have that sense of home with. Despite whatever shortage of money or time, despite whatever amount of stress or chaos calls for, life is too short to worry. And if you feel you must worry, pray instead.

Classic song…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6xMqo3wFxw