We were born into the comparison game. There was never a need to read the instructions or pick up your game piece at the door; the comparison game is just one of those things we were born knowing how to play. Why couldn’t we born knowing how to do something useful like solving complicated math equations?
I’m really good at the comparison game. Or really bad, depending on your view. I’m really good at it, because I compare a lot which is really bad. Physical attributes, cake-baking skills, house-cleaning habits, getting up from spills, hits on the funny meter, being neater, perhaps even a little sweeter. That’s just a short list – made infinitely shorter from the out-of-nowhere urge to rhyme.
I was born into the comparison game. I was not born with things like a set of bodacious ta-tas, an insatiable urge to clean my house twice a week or the gift of sitting around the campfire and telling funny stories. Which is fine, most of the time. Until I run into a situation where I find myself glancing down at my chest and wondering what it might be like to have Hells Canyon-type cleavage or wishing I could use my windows as a mirror for flossing my teeth or being able to wring laughs out of a group with no more effort than taking a breath. (Depending on who you are with that last one. If you’re a dead guy, then taking a breath is probably an almighty big effort. And with the second, if you have no teeth, then you probably don’t want a mirror-like window. And for the first, if you’re a man…I personally don’t think you should be desiring Hells Canyon cleavage.)
The comparison game is depressing for me. Rarely do I ever compare myself with someone where I might “win”. Which, if I did, I’d struggle with admitting that anyway, because who wants to be friends with someone who picks on the little guy while he’s down? You don’t step on people like that. Unless you accidentally don’t see them, because they just tripped over a crack in the sidewalk and you were too busy talking on your cell phone to notice. Hands-free is the way to be!
But also, who wants to be friends with the person who sets themselves up to lose? ALL the time. I just as well walk around with my finger and thumb in the shape of an L on my forehead (Song, anyone? Anyone??) Because you see, I never choose to compare something I’m okay with. I always pick something that I’m staggering along the cliff of insecurity with.
Comparisons are ridiculous. I always fall short, and I’m already quite short enough, thank you. I think it is human nature to compare. Our looks, our possessions, our families, our personalities – we compare, because of that whole keeping-up-with-the-Jones’ type thing.
Well. I don’t want to be like the Jones’. I want to be like me, all my imperfections and shortcomings to boot. So I’m not turning heads and I don’t have a clean house and I’m not stand-up comedian funny? Okay, that’s cool, I can deal. What I can’t deal with is feeling like I’m trying to mold myself into someone’s skin and doing things and pursuing ideals that don’t fit me simply because I came up short when I played the comparison game.
No more comparison game. I don’t like it. I’d rather think about other things. Like complicated math equations and the properties of dish soap and why the Nutcracker is so popular.
My heart has stopped no less than four times today, and my mind is stuck on a repeat so relentless a robot would be annoyed with it. I can only assume these symptoms are a result of this weekend’s moment when I ripped my finger open on an impossibly rusty chunk of barbed wire. While my first 18 thoughts, emotions and hollerings consisted of something similar to “ow”, my 19th was a fleeting musing about when my last tetanus shot was. I’m sure there’s absolutely nothing else that could be causing these symptoms.
I have to distract myself sometimes. Give myself something to pin my dreams on when my current life isn’t giving me enough to pin a dirty sock on let alone a dream.
So I do things like make bucket lists and eat copious amounts of greasy pizza. I read books to make me think about grandiose philosophical theories instead of the things in my life I’ve blown into overgrown elephants instead of their original frog-like sizes. (And also because I want to say I’ve read Tolstoy and Wilde and Proust?) I dive into years-long projects with my eyes squinted half-way shut so I’ll actually leave the precarious edge I’m perched on. If we truly had our eyes all the way open about most of the decisions we make in our lives, we’d never move forward with much of anything.
Before I know it, I’ve got a whole line of overgrown elephants stacked up in my backyard. Taking up space, eating my grass and blocking the sunshine. Even if I wanted to start thinning out the herd, I can’t because I’m juggling all the distractions I gave myself to ignore the original Fatty McFatterson who first took up residence.
While these distractions aren’t a total waste, (Some of them are – when will I ever need to quote Marcel Proust? I find stuffy academic debates to be rather overbearing, arrogant, and boring. Big words don’t impress me; other big things do. Like mountains.) they don’t accomplish what I originally intended. They never do, of course. Distractions simply add more clutter and chaos to mask the original clutter and chaos.
We all do it, I think. Dream up distractions to one level or another. It’s easier that way, for the right now. It feels a little easier to breathe if we can just push off some problems and focus on other things that aren’t quite so difficult. And sometimes it feels easier to add distraction after distraction until life becomes so crazy that it’s impossible to think about anything.
Maybe that’s an ideal place to be, distraction from the dirty sock. Ceasing to think, simply to be.
I wish I had words…no, I wish I could share the words I have written. I envy the people who can spill their insides out there for others in the world to see. I wish I could manage to do that – and not even for the whole world! If I could spill open my insides for just one, that would be enough, I think.
Sometimes I feel like I handle myself with a curb bit, and I marvel at the freedom that appears to come from running around in a snaffle or a hackamore – or nothing at all! But I’m the horse and the rider all in one; rarely do I give myself permission to ease up on the reins.
And I wonder, how does life feel when you’re not trotting through your days with a heavy-handed rider on the end of a curb bit?
A little part of me died this weekend. Something inside that used to be alive is no longer there. It’s odd, I will admit. Perhaps even more odd is that I’m sitting here so calmly. I say that a little part of me died with the same tone of voice I would use to say that I’m out of butter. Unfortunately, my calmness is not born from absence of emotion but the overspent of emotion.
As people living the lives we’re given, change is something that becomes our close walking companion. We get new jobs, we pursue new careers, we date, we marry, we have families, we move across town, across the state, across the country, we exchange vehicles, we buy new clothes, more stuff, an extra grill and a refurbished lawnmower to replace the old one that didn’t have any brakes.
Even for those of us who don’t make big outwardly changes – those who stay in the same job and the same house for 50 years – the insides of ourselves are constantly changing. Our thoughts, our views, our emotions, our opinions – they are always changing, even when we don’t notice it.
And often we don’t notice it, not these inside changes. Not until we wake up one day, and we realize we aren’t the same person as we were yesterday. It seems sudden to us. It seems like an orange tossed across the plate after a thousand pitches made with a regular baseball. We watch the orange whoosh by, and we’re called for a strike because we were too busy being baffled by the presence of an orange in the game of baseball to think about swinging the bat.
But in reality, inside changes have been going on the whole time. Gradually shaping us and morphing us into the person who wakes up and wonders where the orange came from. Even if we can see the orange coming, it still takes time to adjust, because really, how do you deal with an orange in baseball?
Inside changes are difficult, because we can’t see them. We can’t run numbers or take a picture of inside changes the way we can of a new house or a reinstalled toilet seat. But we can feel them. We can feel it when something pops up inside that wasn’t there before, and we can feel it when something withers away and dies. A new way of being, all from something we can’t see.
I’m trying to conjure up some type of feeling about this. I’m trying to wonder how the landscape will be shifted, if piles of dirt will exist where there used to be grassy hills. I’m trying to force myself to figure it all out, but all I can really think about is how would you hit an orange in baseball without giving the entire front row of spectators their daily glass of OJ?
I bought a hammer and a tape measure today. I’m not building anything, not today. Not tomorrow even, but someday, somewhere, eventually, I know I’ll be building something, and I want to be prepared.
As humans, we build a lot of things. Buildings. Roads. Bridges. Houses.
And, as humans, we build a lot of things. Relationships. Careers. Families. Legacies. Traditions. Futures. Pasts.
Today, I bought a hammer to be prepared for anything I might need to build in the future.
Why do I keep forgetting that I’ve already got all the tools I need to build the things that could last longer than any pile of sticks?
I breathe in; I breathe out. I take conscious note of each one, holding them close, thanking God I’m standing here alive. I am not one to write elaborate tales of gratitude platitudes. I’m not going to stand here and say “Live like you’re dying”, because I’ve known too many people who haven’t had to pretend to live like they’re dying. But today, this day, I think it is important for me to stand here, breathe in and out and remember to not take my ability to do that as lightly as I sometimes do.
My coworker’s best friend’s son died. He and a buddy were on their way back from a rodeo, pulled off in a parking lot to sleep and died of carbon monoxide poisoning. They were high school seniors and the one, the best friend’s son, had won the saddle bronc competition – his first win at a PRCA rodeo. They were here, in this world, chasing their dreams and catching them. And the next moment, they were gone. Dreams turned to ash and life snuffed out.
I take life lightly sometimes. We all do. It’s really not very realistic to walk around with a mantra rolling through your head to consciously appreciate each breath you take, not to mention more than slightly morbid. I don’t think it wise to dwell on death; but I do think it important to dwell on life. Do we do that?
Do I do that? Not in ways that I should. Instead of appreciating all the things I have, I grumble about the things I don’t. I think about all the “should haves” and “could haves” and “what ifs”. It rarely crosses my mind that I wouldn’t be thinking about any of those things if I wasn’t alive.
What I think I’m trying to say is something that Nick said far better than I ever could have: “You cannot squeeze 50 years into five years. It can’t be done. Anyone who lives 45 years longer than I do will have different life experiences. That’s life. The real trick is trying to squeeze five years of living into five years. Or one year of living into one year. Or one month of living into one month. Each one of those units of time is composed of days. And days, by nature, have their limits. You can only do so much in a day after all. But, you can do so much in a day.”
I am thankful for this day. And even on my crappiest of days, I will try to remember that the ultimate crappiness would be to not have a day at all. You can do so much in a day, but you have to have the day first.
